Non-integrated conditionals as speech-event modifiers: evidence from Romance
-
Nicola Munaro
Abstract
Capitalizing on the basic distinction between central and peripheral adverbial clauses, the main aim of this contribution is to shed some light on certain left-right asymmetries in the distributional properties of integrated and non-integrated (concessive) conditional clauses in standard Italian, drawing indirect evidence from multiple complementizer constructions in (early) Romance. By exploring the distribution of preposed central conditional clauses in multiple complementizer constructions in some early Italo-Romance varieties and in modern Ibero-Romance, I argue, following previous analyses, that this kind of adverbial clauses occupy a topic-related specifier position within the left periphery of embedded clauses; similarly, in modern Italian and in some Italo-Romance varieties, central (concessive) conditional clauses may undergo fronting to the specifier of a functional projection situated within the higher Topic field, but crucially below the Force node. I claim that, unlike central conditionals, non-integrated addressee-oriented conditional clauses should be analyzed as sentential speech event modifiers generated within the specifier of a speech-act related projection in the left-periphery above the Force node of the main clause, which accounts for their peculiar distributional properties.
1 Introduction
At its origins speech act theory conceived language essentially as an instrument for action and embraced an account of linguistic meaning which abstracted away from any structural notions; Austin’s (1962) concept of speech act was based on the postulation that every sentence has an intrinsic pragmatic dimension and results in a specific illocutionary act. This conventionalized view of speech acts was challenged by other theories which interpreted illocutionary force in terms of the speaker’s communicative aims (notably Searle 1969, 1975), claiming that the performative meaning of a sentence emerges from the use of the utterance in the particular conversational context in which the expression is uttered.
A more structural approach to speech acts was instead advocated by Ross (1970), who in his performative hypothesis postulated a universally available structure at the top of every expression that includes the representation of speaker and addressee and a predicate representing what the speaker is trying to achieve though his/her utterance; this analysis was taken even further by Sadock (1974), who associated the underlying syntactic structure with a superordinate one that contains a predicate specifying the relevant illocutionary function.
A new comparative perspective was then introduced into speech act theory by Sadock and Zwicky (1985), who studied sentence type systems in a typologically diverse set of languages, finding a remarkable similarity among such systems; it turned out that in most languages sentences can be classified, according to some mutually exclusive formal features, into a small number of sentence types, each conventionally associated with a certain illocutionary potential. In this sense, the default communicative functions of the three main cross-linguistic clause types – declarative, interrogative and imperative – are, respectively, an assertion, a question, and a directive.
Within the generative framework, most contemporary linguistic research on the syntax-pragmatics interface relies heavily on the by now current assumption that discourse-related phenomena, and more generally pragmatic functions of human linguistic behavior, have precise structural (mainly syntactic) correlates, and that syntax plays a major role in structuring the mental organization of the language faculty (a position which is not devoid of controversial aspects, as discussed in Trotzke 2015). It is on this general conceptual background that the present contribution should be read; in particular, the general theoretical framework adopted here is the cartographic project (cf. Cinque and Rizzi 2010), where the sequence of functional projections which constitute the structural layout of the clause is associated to formal features ultimately responsible for the crosslinguistically parametrized lexicalization of specific functional heads as well as for the displacement of lexical material.
Some cartographic accounts of the left-periphery have restricted the structural node responsible for illocutionary force to the highest position of the C-domain sequence proposed by Rizzi (1997), namely the Force node; this is essentially viewed as a clause-typing position, whose function is the embedding of the propositional content in the context (that is, in the conversational or situational background), or, in the case of a subordinate clause, under the predicate of the main clause. Capitalizing on this seminal proposal, a series of subsequent studies, following essentially the original analysis of Speas and Tenny (2003), have developed an innovative view of different aspects of the interface properties characterizing the nature of the relation between utterance and discourse, enriching the basic sequence with additional functional positions where the relevant interpretive features can be hosted; such relation is arguably encoded in the feature inventory of single functional projections of the left-peripheral functional spine. In particular, the proposed analysis relies crucially on the hypothesis that basic syntactic principles constrain projections of pragmatic relevance as well as the inventory of grammatically encoded pragmatic roles.
This approach has then been extended to include aspects of speech act meaning, as can be seen in particular in the work of Haegeman and Hill (2013), Haegeman (2014), and Krifka (2014), who postulate the existence of a dedicated speech act domain. Some very recent implementations of this line of research propose an important structural distinction between a lower left-periphery, encoding information structure layering (namely the sentence-internal discourse context linked to the propositional core of the utterance), and a higher level of discourse-oriented meaning that relates the proposition to the communicative goals of the speaker as well as to relevant information pertaining to the speech event and to the interaction between the two interlocutors (Corr 2022; Miyagawa 2022; Wiltschko 2021), with interesting potential implications for the expressive dimension of language (Trotzke 2017).
Within this landscape, the aim of the present work is to contribute to a more detailed definition of the syntactic representation of pragmatically relevant factors in the clausal left-periphery, and more generally to the dynamics of the syntax-pragmatics interface; in particular, I will try to shed some light on certain left-right asymmetries in the distributional properties of (integrated and non-integrated) conditional clauses in standard Italian, drawing evidence from multiple complementizer constructions in (early) Romance. I will explore the distribution of preposed central conditional clauses in multiple complementizer constructions in some early Italo-Romance varieties and modern Ibero-Romance, arguing that this kind of adverbial clauses occupy a topic-related specifier position lower than Force within the left periphery of embedded clauses; this seems to be confirmed by data from modern Italo-Romance dialects. I conclude that, unlike central conditionals, non-integrated conditional clauses do not contribute to the propositional meaning of an utterance; rather, they encode an independent speech act and should be analyzed as sentential speech event modifiers generated within the specifier of a speech-act related projection higher than Force within the left-periphery of the main clause, which accounts neatly for their peculiar distributional properties.[1]
I will capitalize on the basic distinction between central and peripheral adverbial clauses proposed by Haegeman (2003, 2012) and the more recent ternary classification of adverbial clauses of Frey (2020) and Badan and Haegeman (2022), who distinguish between:
central adverbial clauses contributing to the propositional meaning of the associated main clause, namely event conditionals modifying the event encoded by the host clause:
| Se ti stanchi molto, avrai un più alto rischio di problemi alla schiena. |
| ‘If you get very tired, you will be at a higher risk of back problems.’ |
peripheral adverbial clauses, that is, factual conditionals or conditional assertions echoing contextually salient propositions providing a background for the matrix proposition:
| Se non posso più andare a trovare mia madre, dovrei incoraggiarla a installare Skype? |
| ‘If I’m no longer going to be allowed to visit my mother, should I encourage her to install Skype?’ |
non-integrated dependent clauses not contributing to the propositional meaning of the associated main clause, but rather working as speech event modifiers by means of which the speaker links his/her speech act to the discourse context (and to the discourse participants):
| Se ti ricordi, i primi casi in Italia sono stati segnalati solo un mese fa. |
| ‘If you remember, the first cases were reported in Italy only a month ago.’ |
The focus of this article will be on the contrast between central versus non-integrated conditional clauses exemplified in (1) and (3) respectively, leaving somewhat aside peripheral conditionals of the type in (2).
The article is structured as follows: in Section 2 I present some relevant distributional contrasts between central and non-integrated conditional clauses in modern standard Italian; in Section 3 I discuss the potential landing site of preposed (concessive) conditionals in a split left-periphery drawing evidence from standard Italian and some North-Eastern Italian dialects; in Section 4 I present some evidence from complementizer doubling structures in early Italo-Romance and modern Ibero-Romance suggesting that preposed conditionals display a topic status; in Section 5 I propose an explanatory account for the different distribution of central and non-integrated conditionals in modern standard Italian; Section 6 concludes the article.
2 The puzzle
In modern standard Italian, both a non-integrated conditional (4b) and a central conditional (4a) can freely appear at the right periphery of a clause:
| Mi hanno detto che dovremo parlare con Gianni, se il tuo collega non verrà alla riunione. |
| ‘They told me that we will have to speak with John, if your colleague will not join the meeting.’ |
| Mi hanno detto che dovremo parlare con Gianni, se proprio vuoi saperlo. |
| ‘They told me that we will have to speak with John, if you really want to know.’ |
However, the situation is much more intricate when the conditional clause appears at the left of the embedded clause; a central conditional clause interpretively associated to the embedded clause follows generally the subordinating complementizer che (5a), while its positioning between the embedding predicate and the complementizer (5b) or before the main clause (5c) yields (more or less) deviant sequences, as witnessed by the following contrast:[2]
| Mi hanno detto che, se il tuo collega non verrà alla riunione, dovremo parlare con Gianni. |
| ‘They told me that, if your colleague will not join the meeting, we will have to speak with John.’ |
| ?(?)Mi hanno detto, se il tuo collega non verrà alla riunione, che dovremo parlare con Gianni. |
| ‘They told me, if your colleague will not join the meeting, that we will have to speak with John.’ |
| ??Se il tuo collega non verrà alla riunione, mi hanno detto che dovremo parlare con Gianni. |
| ‘If your colleague will not join the meeting, they told me that we will have to speak with John.’ |
Interestingly, the grammaticality pattern is exactly the reverse with a non-integrated conditional clause, which preferably precedes the main clause (6c), while its occurrence after the embedding predicate (6b) or after the embedding complementizer (6a) results in a degraded structure:[3]
| ??Mi hanno detto che, se proprio vuoi saperlo, dovremo parlare con Gianni. |
| ‘They told me that, if you really want to know, we will have to speak with John.’ |
| ?Mi hanno detto, se proprio vuoi saperlo, che dovremo parlare con Gianni. |
| ‘They told me, if you really want to know, that we will have to speak with John.’ |
| Se proprio vuoi saperlo, mi hanno detto che dovremo parlare con Gianni. |
| ‘If you really want to know, they told me that we will have to speak with John.’ |
The same restrictions seem to apply to ‘polar’ concessive conditionals and ‘alternative’ concessive conditionals (after the terminology adopted by König 1986, 1988).
In the former, which are introduced in Italian by anche se ‘even if’, the apodosis holds independently of the value of the antecedent condition, which expresses the extreme value on a scale together with less unlikely values on the same scale (cf. Quer 1998); so both a central polar concessive conditional (7a) and a non-integrated polar concessive conditional (7b) can freely appear at the right periphery of a sentence:
| Mi hanno detto che dovremo parlare con Gianni anche se il tuo collega non verrà alla riunione. |
| ‘They told me that we will have to speak with John even if your colleague will not join the meeting.’ |
| Mi hanno detto che dovremo parlare con Gianni, anche se lo saprai già. |
| ‘They told me that we will have to speak with John, even if you probably already know.’ |
Restricting now the attention to central polar concessive conditionals, it seems that they can easily occur after the embedding complementizer (8a), more marginally before the embedding complementizer (8b), and very marginally before the main clause (8c):
| Mi hanno detto che, anche se il tuo collega non verrà alla riunione, dovremo parlare con Gianni. |
| ‘They told me that, even if your colleague will not join the meeting, we will have to speak with John.’ |
| ?(?)Mi hanno detto, anche se il tuo collega non verrà alla riunione, che dovremo parlare con Gianni. |
| ‘They told me, even if your colleague will not join the meeting, that we will have to speak with John.’ |
| ??Anche se il tuo collega non verrà alla riunione, mi hanno detto che dovremo parlare con Gianni. |
| ‘Even if your colleague will not join the meeting, they told me that we will have to speak with John.’ |
As for non-integrated polar concessive conditionals, the judgements are exactly reversed, as witnessed by the following examples:
| ??Mi hanno detto che, anche se lo saprai già, dovremo parlare con Gianni. |
| ‘They told me that, even if you probably already know, we will have to speak with John.’ |
| ?Mi hanno detto, anche se lo saprai già, che dovremo parlare con Gianni. |
| ‘They told me, even if you probably already know, that we will have to speak with John.’ |
| Anche se lo saprai già, mi hanno detto che dovremo parlare con Gianni. |
| ‘Even if you probably already know, they told me that we will have to speak with John.’ |
The same syntactic behavior is attested with alternative concessive conditionals, which are expressed by a disjunction of a conditional and its negation and entail that the consequent holds independently of the value of the antecedent condition (cf. Quer 1998). Again, both a central (10a) and a non-integrated (10b) alternative concessive conditional can appear at the right of the embedded clause:
| Mi hanno detto che dovremo parlare con Gianni, che il direttore voglia o non voglia. |
| ‘They told me that we will have to speak with John, whether the director wants or not.’ |
| Mi hanno detto che dovremo parlare con Gianni, che tu ci creda o no. |
| ‘They told me that we will have to speak with John, believe it or not.’ |
As above, a central alternative concessive conditional is preferably placed immediately after the embedding complementizer (11a), while a non-integrated alternative concessive conditional tends to precede the main clause (12c); alternative solutions give rise to marginal or severely deviant sequences:
| Mi hanno detto che, che il direttore voglia o non voglia, dovremo parlare con Gianni. |
| ‘They told me that, whether the director wants or not, we will have to speak with John.’ |
| ?(?)Mi hanno detto, che il direttore voglia o non voglia, che dovremo parlare con Gianni. |
| ‘They told me, whether the director wants or not, that we will have to speak with John.’ |
| ??Che il direttore voglia o non voglia, mi hanno detto che dovremo parlare con Gianni. |
| ‘Whether the director wants or not, they told me that we will have to speak with John.’ |
| ??Mi hanno detto che, che tu ci creda o no, dovremo parlare con Gianni. |
| ‘They told me that, believe it or not, we will have to speak with John.’ |
| ?Mi hanno detto, che tu ci creda o no, che dovremo parlare con Gianni. |
| ‘They told me, believe it or not, that we will have to speak with John.’ |
| Che tu ci creda o no, mi hanno detto che dovremo parlare con Gianni. |
| ‘Believe it or not, they told me that we will have to speak with John.’ |
I will provide an account for these at first sight puzzling distributional properties below in Section 5.
3 Fronted conditionals in a split left-periphery
In this section I discuss the topical status of fronted central (concessive) conditionals, trying to determine their precise landing site within a layered left-periphery.
3.1 Fronted central (concessive) conditionals as clausal topics
The informational status of an if–clause, namely its topical or non-topical nature, plays a decisive role in determining the respective order of main clause and adverbial clause (cf. von Fintel 1994).[4] Interestingly, central conditional clauses with inversion – when preceding the associated main clause – can optionally be resumed by the connector (al)lora both in standard Italian (13a) and in Paduan (13b):
| Fosse Mario arrivato in tempo, (allora) avremmo potuto partire. |
| were Mario arrived in time, (then) could have left |
| Fùsse-lo Mario rivà in tempo, (lora) gavarissimo podùo partire. |
| were-scl Mario arrived in time, (then) could have left |
| ‘Had Mario arrived in time, (then) we could have left.’ |
In the case of preposed alternative concessive conditionals, the insertion of an appropriate resumptive element in the main clause is almost obligatory, as exemplified here with Italian (14a) and Friulian (14b) respectively:
| Sia Antonio arrivato o meno, io me ne vado comunque/in ogni caso/lo stesso. |
| be Anthony arrived or less, I cl-cl-go anyhow/in any case/the same |
| Sédi-al rivàt o no sédi-al rivàt, jo o vai vie istés. |
| be-scl arrived or not be-scl arrived, I scl-go away the same |
| ‘Whether [Anthony/he] has arrived or not, I’m going away anyhow.’ |
Notice that the possibility of being resumed by a resumptive form is shared by all preposed central (concessive) conditional clauses, irrespectively of whether they contain subject inversion or are introduced by the subordinating complementizer se.
Crucially, this is not the case with non-integrated conditionals, which do not admit a resumptive form within the host clause, as witnessed by the following contrasts. In (15) we have an ordinary conditional, in (16) a polar concessive conditional, and in (17) an alternative concessive conditional:
| Mi hanno detto che, se il tuo collega non verrà alla riunione, allora dovremo parlare con Gianni. |
| ‘They told me that, if your colleague will not join the meeting, then we will have to speak with John.’ |
| Se proprio vuoi saperlo, (*allora) mi hanno detto che (*allora) dovremo parlare con Gianni. |
| ‘If you really want to know, (*then) they told me that (*then) we will have to speak with John.’ |
| Mi hanno detto che, anche se il tuo collega non verrà alla riunione, (comunque) dovremo (comunque) parlare con Gianni (comunque). |
| ‘They told me that, even if your colleague will not join the meeting, we will have to speak with John anyhow.’ |
| Anche se lo saprai già, (*comunque) mi hanno detto che dovremo (*comunque) parlare con Gianni (*comunque). |
| ‘Even if you probably already know, (*anyhow) they told me that we will have to speak with John (*anyhow).’ |
| Mi hanno detto che, che il direttore voglia o non voglia, dovremo (in ogni caso) parlare con Gianni (in ogni caso). |
| ‘They told me that, whether the director wants or not, (in any case) we will have to speak with John (in any case).’ |
| Che tu ci creda o no, (*in ogni caso) mi hanno detto che dovremo (*in ogni caso) parlare con Gianni (*in ogni caso). |
| ‘Believe it or not, (*in any case) they told me that (*in any case) we will have to speak with John (*in any case).’ |
As can be seen, in all cases the central conditional can be resumed by a lexical element within the associated clause (examples in (a)), while the non-integrated version does not have the same option (examples in (b)).[5] We can conclude that central conditionals, unlike non-integrated ones, display a topic-like behavior, as the possibility of inserting a resumptive form witnesses a tighter syntactic link with the host clause.
3.2 On the landing site of fronted central (concessive) conditionals
An analysis of the ordering restriction discussed in the previous section in terms of movement leads to a precise determination of the position targetted by preposed conditional clauses. In this section I will try to identify the relevant landing sites with respect to the functional projections which have recently been argued to make up the richly articulated structure of the left periphery of the sentence.
The functional skeleton of the split left periphery has been outlined by Rizzi (1997) as in (18), a proposal that has been revised and further expanded by Benincà (2001) as in (19) and by Rizzi and Bocci (2017) as in (20):
| [ForceP [TopP [FocP [TopP [FinP ]]]]] |
| [DiscP Hanging Topic [ForceP Excl-wh [TopP Left Disl [FocP Interr-wh/Focus [FinP ]]]]] |
| Force > Top > Int > Top > Foc > Top > Mod > Top > Qemb > Fin |
Here I will try to determine the relative order of preposed concessive conditional clauses with respect to the different kinds of constituents that can appear in the left periphery on the basis of the sequence in (19).
As shown by the following data from Paduan, in interrogative clauses containing a topicalized constituent a preposed conditional or concessive clause must precede both the left-dislocated constituent (21), and the wh-item along with the inflected verb (22):
| a. | Fùsse-lo vegnùo anca Mario, a to sorèla, cossa garissi-to podùo dirghe? |
| b. | ??A to sorèla, fùsse-lo vegnùo anca Mario, cossa garissi-to podùo dirghe? |
| c. | *A to sorèla, cossa, fùsse-lo vegnùo anca Mario, garissi-to podùo dirghe? |
| d. | *A to sorèla, cossa garissi-to, fùsse-lo vegnùo anca Mario, podùo dirghe? |
| were-scl come also Mario, to your sister, what have-cond-scl been able tell her? | |
| ‘If Mario had come as well, what could you have told to your sister?’ |
| a. | Anca ben vegnisse-la, a chi podarissi-to presentarghela? |
| b. | ??A chi, anca ben vegnisse-la, podarissi-to presentarghela? |
| c. | *A chi podarissi-to, anca ben vegnisse-la, presentarghela? |
| even well came-scl, to whom could-scl introduce-her? | |
| ‘Even if she came, to whom could you introduce her?’ |
[Correction added after online publication 18 April 2024: The sentence in the translation of example (21) has been updated from “‘If Mario had came as well, what could you have told to your sister?’” to “‘If Mario had come as well, what could you have told to your sister?’”]
This suggests that the landing site of the conditional clause is higher than FocusP, standardly viewed as the target of wh-items, but also higher than TopP, the landing site of left-dislocated constituents.[6]
Interestingly, the preposed conditional clause must follow a constituent functioning as hanging topic, which is not introduced by the preposition and has an obligatory pronominal resumption inside the main clause:
| a. | Mario, (anca) gavesse-li telefonà in tempo, no garìssimo dovùo dirghelo. |
| b. | ??(Anca) gavesse-li telefonà in tempo, Mario, no garìssimo dovùo dirghelo. |
| [Mario], (even) had-scl phoned in time, [Mario], not have-cond must tell-him | |
| ‘Mario, (even if) had they phoned in time, we shouldn’t have told’ |
We must conclude that the movement operation preposing a (concessive) conditional clause targets a specifier position inside the left periphery of the main clause which is located higher than TopicP but lower than DiscP, the position allegedly occupied by phrasal constituents functioning as hanging topics establishing a link to a previous discourse.[7]
3.3 Two different targets
Alternative concessive conditionals are compatible with if-clauses and tend to precede them, as shown by the following contrasts attested in Paduan and Friulian, respectively:[8]
| Che piova o che no piova, rivàsse-lo subito, podarissimo partire. |
| that rain or that not-rain, arrived-scl soon, could leave |
| ??Rivàsse-lo subito, che piova o che no piova, podarissimo partire. |
| arrived-scl soon, that rain or that not-rain, could leave |
| ‘Whether it rains or not, if he arrived soon, we could leave’ |
| Fossj-al vignùt o no fossj-al vignùt, s’al véssi clamaat, avaréssin podùt dìgilu. |
| were-scl come or not were-scl come, if-scl-had called, could have told-him-it |
| ??S’al vessi clamaat, fossj-al vignùt o no fossj-al vignùt, avaréssin podùt dìgilu. |
| if-scl-had called, were-scl come or not were-scl come, could have told-him-it |
| ‘Had he come or not, if he had called, we could have told him’ |
These data clearly point to the postulation of a different (and higher) position as landing site for (alternative) concessive conditionals, which, following Munaro (2010), I take to be the specifier of a functional projection labelled Conc(essive)P.[9]
The ordering restriction in (24)/(25) also suggests that preposed conditionals target a specifier position lower than Conc(essive)P, most likely a dedicated slot in the left periphery of the host clause, along the lines of Munaro (2005, 2010), as we will see in detail in the next section.
4 Further evidence from complementizer doubling
Complementizer doubling structures unequivocably show that the landing site of fronted central conditionals is a functional specifier of the Topic field, hence lower than Force, as suggested – among others – by Munaro (2016a, 2016b, 2018).
4.1 Multiple complementizers in earlier stages of Italo-Romance
In Old Italian – by which I essentially mean 13th century Florentine – a preposed central conditional clause usually followed the subordinating complementizer che:
| … pensando che se sarà compagno di Dio nelle passioni, Ø sarà suo compagno nelle consolazioni. |
| ‘… thinking that if he will be God’s companion in the sufferings, he will be his companion in the consolations.’ (Bono Giamboni, Libro, chap.7, par.12) |
We can schematically represent the structure of (26) as in (27), where the subordinating complementizer che lexicalizes the head Force°, while the preposed adverbial clause targets the specifier of a Topic projection whose head is phonetically empty:
| Main clause [ForceP [Force° che] [TopicP conditional clause [Topic° Ø] … ]] |
Beside the ordinary structure in (26) with one complementizer introducing the embedded clause, in Old Italian we can find numerous examples where the protasis appears sandwiched between two instances of the complementizer che, one preceding and one following the preposed clausal adverbial associated to the embedded clause:
| … però vi priegho in lealtade e fede che, se ttue vuoli del mio avere, che ttu ne tolghi |
| ‘… therefore I ask you in loyalty and faith that, if you want my belongings, that you take some …’ (Libro della distruzione di Troia, p.155, ll. 26-27) |
| … ti priego che, se egli avviene ch’io muoja, che le mie cose ed ella ti sieno raccomandate. |
| ‘… I ask you that, if it happens that I die, that my things and she be entrusted to you.’ (Decameron, 2,7,84) |
Ledgeway (2005) – discussing some similar examples of complementizer doubling in dialects of Southern Italy from the 14th–15th century – interprets the first occurrence of che as the lexicalization of Force° and the second one as the phonetically realized trace left in the intermediate landing site Topic° by the complementizer raising from Fin° up to Force°. In the same vein, Paoli (2005, 2007), discussing some cases of complementizer doubling in early Romance, takes the second occurrence of che to head the TopicP projection, which hosts the topicalized adverbial clause in its specifier:
| Main clause [ForceP [Force° che1] [TopicP conditional clause [Topic° che2] … ]] |
The overt realization of the complementizer in Topic° is taken to reflect a spec-head agreement relation between Topic° and the clausal constituent occupying Spec, TopicP. From these data we can conclude that in early Italo-Romance varieties if-clauses – and adverbial clauses in general – were among the most plausible candidates to fill the position sandwiched between the two occurrences of the complementizer, the higher one heading the Force node, the lower one heading a Topic projection.
In early Italo-Romance a further possibility was sporadically attested, namely the presence of three complementizers, with topicalized lexical material appearing between them. Vincent (2006) reports the following example, where a central conditional clause occurs between the highest che and the intermediate che, while a heavy topicalized constituent, the subject of the embedded clause, appears between the intermediate che and the lowest che:
| Ancora statuemo e ordenamo che se alcuna persona de la dita Confraria fosse maroto che subitamenti quello chi saverà de quello ditto fraello maroto che ello lo debia denuntiar a lo prior |
| ‘We further establish and order that, if any person of the mentioned Company died, that soon who will know about that dead brother, that he should announce it to the prior’ (Statuti della Compagnia dei Caravana del porto di Genova, 1340) |
Capitalizing on the recursive nature of Topic projections postulated by Rizzi and Bocci (2017), we could analyze this example as follows, namely with the second and the third instance of the complementizer lexicalizing the heads of recursive Topic projections, where the topicalized conditional clause occupies a specifier position higher than the one targetted by the topicalized subject:[10]
| Main clause [ForceP [Force° che1] [TopicP conditional clause [Topic° che2] [TopicP topicalized constituent [Topic° che3] … ]]] |
If this analysis is on the right track, it provides evidence for a possible location of the conditional clause in a relatively high Topic position within the left periphery of the host clause in early Italo-Romance. We can safely conclude that in multiple complementizer constructions the function of the highest complementizer is to lexicalize the subordinating head Force°, while the lower occurrences of the complementizer mark the boundary of the two Topic subfields into which the Topic layer can be split, along the lines of Benincà and Poletto (2004); moreover, whenever an embedded clause is introduced by a single complementizer, this invariably lexicalizes Force° (the optionality in the lexicalization being restricted to the lower Topic heads).
4.2 Recomplementation in modern Ibero-Romance
Within the Romance domain, the possibility for a topicalized constituent or an if-clause to intervene between two instances of que is robustly attested in modern Ibero-Romance, as witnessed by the following examples from Spanish (in (32)), Catalan (in (33)), and European Portuguese (in (34)), taken from Villa-Garcìa (2012), Gonzalez I Planas (2014), and Mascarenhas (2014), respectively:
| Me dijeron que si llueve, que viene Guillermo. |
| me told that if rains that comes William |
| ‘They told me that if it rains, William will come.’ |
| Susi dice que, a los alumnos, que les van a dar regalos. |
| Susi says that to the students that cl-go to give presents |
| ‘Susy says that they are going to give the students presents.’ |
| La secretària em va dir que si pagava l’import abans d’una setmana, que encara em podia matricular. |
| the secretary me told that if paid the amount before a week that still me could register |
| ‘The secretary told me that if I paid the amount before a week I could still register.’ |
| Ha dit que els convidats, que estan asseguts a taula. |
| has said that the guests that stay seated at table |
| ‘(S)he has said that the guests are seated at the table.’ |
| Acho que se lhe ligasses que tudo se resolveria. |
| think that if him/her called that all itself-solve |
| ‘I think that if you called him/her everything would turn out fine.’ |
| Espero que a Ana que traga o livro. |
| hope that the Ana that brings the book |
| ‘I hope that Ana brings the book.’ |
According to the above mentioned scholars, in the complementizer doubling structures in (32)–(34) que1 lexicalizes the Force° head, while que2 lexicalizes a Topic° head which hosts the topicalized adverbial clause or the topicalized phrase in its specifier, as schematically represented in (35):
| Main clause [ForceP [Force° que1] [TopicP adverbial clause/topicalized constituent [Topic° que2] … ]] |
If we accept the correctness of this approach, then the fact that preposed protases can easily enter the complementizer doubling construction can be seen as an empirical argument in favour of the hypothesis that they belong to the Topic field of the host clause, as independently proposed by Munaro (2005, 2010).
Villa-Garcìa (2012) also discusses the following example, where a central conditional clause follows que2, and a topicalized argumental prepositional phrase appears sandwiched between que1 and que2:
| Me dijeron que a la fiesta, que si llueve, no van a ir. |
| me said that to the party that if rains not go to go |
| ‘They told me that they are not going to the party if it rains.’ |
According to him, the structural representation of (36) is the following, where the conditional clause occupies the specifier of the lower Topic projection (a possibility that was attested in Old Italian), whose head remains phonetically unrealized:[11]
| Main clause [ForceP [Force° que1] [TopicP a la fiesta [Topic° que2] [TopicP si llueve [Top° Ø] … ]]] |
The data discussed in this section unequivocably suggest that preposed central conditionals target the specifier position of a functional projection situated below the Force node.
5 An explanatory proposal about non-integrated conditionals
Going back now to the grammaticality asymmetries presented in Section 2 above, I will argue that these are essentially due to the different levels of attachment of integrated versus non-integrated conditionals. More specifically, my point of departure will be Speas and Tenny’s (2003) claim that basic syntactic principles constrain projections of pragmatic force as well as the inventory of grammatically relevant pragmatic roles.
In particular, I will adopt the implementation of this approach proposed by Haegeman and Hill (2013), who examine to what extent the distribution and interpretation of so called discourse particles can be captured in terms of a syntactic model along the lines of the cartographic approach.[12] Following standard cartographic guidelines they elaborate an articulated structure that maps the speech act domain as a layered shell structure, similar to that elaborated for vP/VP. At a finer-grained level, the articulation of the speech act is two-layered, as this two-layered structure is better apt to represent the relevant distribution of particles, vocatives and the complement clause. The higher speech act layer encodes the setting up of the discourse layer, while the lower layer encodes the consolidation of the discourse relation; in other words, they postulate a recursive SpeechAct layer, articulated in a higher SpeechAct2, encoding the setting up of the discourse layer with an ‘attention seeking’ attitude of the speaker, and a lower SpeechAct1 with a ‘bonding’ function, encoding the consolidation of the discourse relation and anchoring the associated clause to the discourse.
[Correction added after online publication 18 April 2024: The first sentence in the section 5 of paragraph 1 has been updated from “Going back now to the grammaticality asymmetries presented in Section 2 above, I will argue that it is essentially due to the different levels of attachment of integrated versus non-integrated conditionals” to “Going back now to the grammaticality asymmetries presented in Section 2 above, I will argue that these are essentially due to the different levels of attachment of integrated versus non-integrated conditionals”]
According to Frey (2020, 2022) and Holler (2009) a non-integrated clause, allowing for strong root phenomena, encodes an independent speech act; more precisely, it constitutes a subsidiary speech act to another speech act and links the latter to the discourse context and to the discourse participants.
Given their strong allocutive flavour, i.e. their addressee-oriented pragmatic function, I submit that non-integrated peripheral (concessive) conditional clauses should be analyzed as sentential speech event modifiers occupying the specifier of Haegeman and Hill’s (2013) SpeechAct2 projection, which is merged at the left of ForceP.[13]
On the other hand, central conditional clauses, which contribute to the propositional content of the associated clause, are merged in a much lower structural slot (presumably adjoined to vP), but – as extensively argued above – can nonetheless undergo a displacement process targeting the specifier of a Topic projection of the embedded clause – much as in Munaro (2005) – yielding the sequence in (5a)/(8a)/(11a):
| [TP Mi hanno detto [ForceP [Force°che] [TopP [CP se il tuo collega non verrà alla riunione]x [Top°] [FinP [TP dovremo parlare con Gianni] tx ]]] |
Under this approach, the sequences in (4a)/(7a)/(10a) on the one hand and (4b)/(7b)/(10b) on the other hand are produced, despite deceptive appearance to the contrary, by two radically different syntactic derivations.
When the central conditional appears in final position, this arguably reflects the basic word order with the central conditional clause adjoined to the right of the TP/vP of the host clause, as represented in (39):[14]
| [TP Mi hanno detto [ForceP [Force°che] [FinP [TP dovremo [vP parlare con Gianni [CP se il tuo collega non verrà alla riunione]]]]]] |
On the contrary, the sequence in which the non-integrated conditional appears in final position can be derived by topicalizing the whole chunk formed by main and embedded clause to the left of the peripheral conditional clause sitting in the specifier of SpeechActP2 inside the left periphery of the main clause, as in (40):
| [XP [TP Mi hanno detto che dovremo parlare con Gianni]x [X°] [SA2P [CP se proprio vuoi saperlo] [SA2°] [ForceP [Force°] [FinP [Fin°] tx ]]]] |
As for the sequence in (6c)/(9c)/(12c), where the non-integrated conditional appears at the outset of the whole sentence, it instantiates the alternative basic word order, with the peripheral conditional inside the specifier of SpeechAct2P of the main clause:
| [SA2P [CP Se proprio vuoi saperlo] [SA2°] [ForceP [FinP [TP mi hanno detto che dovremo parlare con Gianni]]]] |
The basic assumptions underlying this analysis allow us to derive all (and only) the fully grammatical sequences discussed in Section 2 above.[15]
6 Conclusions
Capitalizing on the basic distinction between integrated and non-integrated adverbial clauses (cf. Badan and Haegeman 2022 among others), in this work I have tried to account for certain left-right asymmetries in the distributional properties of conditional clauses in standard Italian, drawing evidence from multiple complementizer constructions across (early) Romance.[16]
Adopting a cartographic approach to the structure of the left-periphery and following previous diachronic studies on the distribution of conditional clauses in multiple complementizer constructions, I have assumed that in these structures the highest complementizer invariably lexicalizes the head Force°, while the other occurrences of the complementizer mark the lower boundary of the main Topic subfields. After exploring the distribution of central conditional clauses in multiple complementizer constructions in some early Italo-Romance varieties and in modern Ibero-Romance, I have argued that preposed conditional clauses target different topic-related slots within the left periphery of the host embedded clause; similarly, in modern Italian and in some North-Eastern Italian dialects, preposed central (concessive) conditional clauses target arguably dedicated clause-typing positions, namely the specifiers of functional projections situated within the high Topic field.
The main conclusions arrived at in this article are the following: integrated (concessive) conditional clauses do contribute to the propositional meaning of an utterance and, when preposed with respect to the host clause, have a topic status and a scene-setting function, and target a specifier of the high Topic field situated below the Force node; on the other hand, non-integrated (concessive) conditional clauses do not contribute to the propositional meaning of an utterance and rather provide information about the role of discourse participants in the speech situation; hence, they should be analyzed as sentential speech event modifiers generated in the specifier of a Speech-Act projection within the high left-periphery of the main clause, above the Force node.
-
[Correction added after online publication 18 April 2024: The reference Munaro, Nicola. 2010. has been udpated from “Munaro, Nicola. 2010. Towards a hierarchy of clause types. In Paola Benincà & Nicola Munaro (eds.), Mapping the let periphery, 125–162. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press” to “Munaro, Nicola. 2010. Towards a hierarchy of clause types. In Paola Benincà & Nicola Munaro (eds.), Mapping the left periphery, 125–162. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press”.]
References
Austin, John. 1962. How to do things with words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Search in Google Scholar
d’Avis, Franz Josef. 2004. In front of the forefield – inside or outside the clause. In Horst Lohnstein & Susanne Trissler (eds.), The syntax and semantics of the left periphery, 139–177. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Search in Google Scholar
Badan, Linda & Liliane Haegeman. 2022. The syntax of peripheral adverbial clauses. Journal of Linguistics 58(4). 1–42. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022226721000463.Search in Google Scholar
Bayer, Josef. 2001. Asymmetry in emphatic topicalisation. In Caroline Féry & Wolfgang Sternefeld (eds.), Audiatur Vox Sapientiae. A Festschrift for Arnim von Stechow, 15–47. Berlin: Akademic Verlag.10.1515/9783050080116.15Search in Google Scholar
Benincà, Paola. 2001. The position of topic and focus in the left periphery. In Guglielmo Cinque & Giampaolo Salvi (eds.), Current studies in Italian syntax – Essays offered to Lorenzo Renzi, 39–64. Amsterdam: Elsevier.10.1163/9780585473949_005Search in Google Scholar
Benincà, Paola & Cecilia Poletto. 2004. Topic, focus and V2 – defining the CP sublayers. In Luigi Rizzi (ed.), The structure of IP and CP, 52–75. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780195159486.003.0003Search in Google Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo. 2008. Two types of nonrestrictive relative clauses. In Olivier Bonami & Patricia Cabredo Hofherr (eds.), Empirical issues in syntax and semantics, vol. 7, 99–137. Paris: CNRS.Search in Google Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo. 2023. ‘Frankly’ and the syntacticization of speech acts. Available at: https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/007238.Search in Google Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo & Luigi Rizzi. 2010. The cartography of syntactic structures. In Bernd Heine & Heiko Narrog (eds.), The Oxford handbook of linguistic analysis, 51–65. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199544004.013.0003Search in Google Scholar
Corr, Alice. 2022. The grammar of the utterance. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780198856597.003.0002Search in Google Scholar
von Fintel, Kai. 1994. Restrictions on quantifier domains. University of Massachusetts at Amherst dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Frascarelli, Mara. 2017. Dislocations and framings. In Elisabeth Stark & Andreas Dufter (eds.), Manual of Romance morphosyntax and syntax, 472–501. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110377088-013Search in Google Scholar
Frey, Werner. 2020. German concessives as TPs, JPs and ActPs. Glossa 5(1). 1–31. https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.763.Search in Google Scholar
Frey, Werner. 2022. On different types of adverbial clauses appearing outside their hosts. Talk presented at the Workshop on the Syntactic Representation of Speech Acts, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, 5th December.Search in Google Scholar
Giorgi, Alessandra. 2014. Prosodic signals as syntactic formatives in the left periphery. In Anna Cardinaletti, Guglielmo Cinque & Yoshio Endo (eds.), On peripheries: Exploring clause-initial and clause-final positions, 161–188. Tokyo: Hituzi Syobe Publishing.Search in Google Scholar
Giorgi, Alessandra. 2015. Discourse and the syntax of the left periphery: Clitic left dislocation and hanging topic. In Josef Bayer, Roland Hinterhölzl & Andreas Trotzke (eds.), Discourse oriented syntax, 229–250. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/la.226.10gioSearch in Google Scholar
Giorgi, Alessandra. 2018. Discourse, sentence grammar and the left periphery of the clause. In Alessando Capone, Marco Carapezza & Franco Lo Piparo (eds.), Further advances in pragmatics and philosophy (Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy and Psychology 18), 153–175. New York: Springer.10.1007/978-3-319-72173-6_8Search in Google Scholar
Gonzalez I Planas, Francesc. 2014. On quotative recomplementation: Between pragmatics and morphosyntax. Lingua 146. 39–74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2014.04.007.Search in Google Scholar
Greco, Ciro & Liliane Haegeman. 2020. Frame setters and microvariation of subject-initial verb second. In Rebecca Woods & Sam Wolfe (eds.), Rethinking verb second, 61–89. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780198844303.003.0004Search in Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane. 2002. Anchoring to speaker, adverbial clauses and the structure of CP. Georgetown University Working Papers in Theoretical Linguistics 2. 117–180.Search in Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane. 2003. Conditional clauses: External and internal syntax. Mind and Language 18. 317–339. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0017.00230.Search in Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane. 2012. Adverbial clauses, main clause phenomena, and the composition of the left periphery. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199858774.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane. 2014. West Flemish verb-based discourse markers and the articulation of the speech act layer. Studia Linguistica 68(1). 116–139. https://doi.org/10.1111/stul.12023.Search in Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane & Virginia Hill. 2013. The syntacticization of discourse. In Raffaella Folli, Christina Sevdali & Robert Truswell (eds.), Syntax and its limits, 370–390. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199683239.003.0018Search in Google Scholar
Holler, Anke. 2009. Informationsreliefs in komplexen Sätzen. Linguistische Berichte. Sonderheft 16. 135–158.Search in Google Scholar
Iatridou, Sabine & David Embick. 1994. Conditional inversion. In Proceedings of NELS, vol. 24.1, 189–203. Amherst: University of Massachusetts.Search in Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard Stanley. 1994. The antisymmetry of syntax (LI Monographs 25). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Keizer, Evelien. 2020. The placement of extra-clausal constituents in functional discourse grammar. Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 80. 89–121. https://doi.org/10.25145/j.recaesin.2020.80.06.Search in Google Scholar
König, Ekkehard. 1986. Conditionals, concessive conditionals and concessives: Areas of contrast, overlap and neutralization. In Elizabeth Closs Traugott, Alice ter Meulen, Judy Snitzer Reilly & Charles A. Ferguson (eds.), On conditionals, 229–246. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511753466.013Search in Google Scholar
König, Ekkehard. 1988. Concessive connectives and concessive sentences: Crosslinguistic regularities and pragmatic principles. In John A. Hawkins (ed.), Explaining language universals, 145–166. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar
Krifka, Manfred. 2014. Embedding illocutionary acts. In Tom Roeper & Peggy Speas (eds.), Recursion: Complexity in cognition, 59–88. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1007/978-3-319-05086-7_4Search in Google Scholar
Ledgeway, Adam. 2005. Moving through the left periphery: The dual complementizer system in the dialects of Southern Italy. Transactions of the Philological Society 103(3). 339–396. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-968x.2005.00157.x.Search in Google Scholar
Mascarenhas, Salvador. 2014. Complementizer doubling in European Portuguese. Rivista di Grammatica Generativa 36. 105–116.Search in Google Scholar
Miyagawa, Shigeru. 2022. Syntax in the treetops. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/14421.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Munaro, Nicola. 2005. Computational puzzles of conditional clause preposing. In Anna Maria Di Sciullo (ed.), UG and external systems, 73–94. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/la.75.06munSearch in Google Scholar
Munaro, Nicola. 2010. Towards a hierarchy of clause types. In Paola Benincà & Nicola Munaro (eds.), Mapping the left periphery, 125–162. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199740376.003.0005Search in Google Scholar
Munaro, Nicola. 2016a. Localizing conditional clauses in the left periphery: Evidence from multiple complementizer constructions in Romance. Linguistica 56. 211–224. https://doi.org/10.4312/linguistica.56.1.211-224.Search in Google Scholar
Munaro, Nicola. 2016b. A diachronic approach to complementizer doubling in Italo-Romance and the notion of downward reanalysis. Rivista di Grammatica Generativa 38. 215–228.Search in Google Scholar
Munaro, Nicola. 2018. Complementizer doubling and subject extraction in Italo-Romance. Linguistic Variation 18(2). 315–335. https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.00020.mun.Search in Google Scholar
Munn, Alan. 1993. Topics in the syntax and semantics of coordinate structures. University of Maryland dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Paoli, Sandra. 2005. COMP: A multi-talented category: Evidence from Romance. In Laura Brugè, Giuliana Giusti, Nicola Munaro, Walter Schweikert & Giuseppina Turano (eds.), Contributions to the 30th Incontro di Grammatica Generativa, 185–202. Venice: Cafoscarina.Search in Google Scholar
Paoli, Sandra. 2007. The fine structure of the left periphery: COMPs and subjects. Evidence from Romance. Lingua 117(6). 1057–1079. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2006.05.007.Search in Google Scholar
Quer, Josep. 1998. Mood at the interface. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics.Search in Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. In Liliane Haegeman (ed.), Elements of grammar, 281–337. Dordrecht: Kluwer.10.1007/978-94-011-5420-8_7Search in Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi & Giuliano Bocci. 2017. Left periphery of the clause: Primarily illustrated for Italian. In The Wiley Blackwell companion to syntax, 1–30. Wiley Online Library.10.1002/9781118358733.wbsyncom104Search in Google Scholar
Ross, John R. 1970. On declarative sentences. In Roderick A. Jacobs & Peter S. Rosenbaum (eds.), Readings in English transformational grammar, 222–272. Waltham: Xerox College Publishing.Search in Google Scholar
Sadock, Jerrold M. 1974. Towards a linguistic theory of speech acts. New York: Academic Press.Search in Google Scholar
Sadock, Jerrold M. & Arnold M. Zwicky. 1985. Speech act distinctions in syntax. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description. Clause structure, 155–196. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Searle, John R. 1969. Speech acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Searle, John R. 1975. Indirect speech acts. In Peter Cole & Jerry L. Morgan (eds.), Speech acts, 59–82. New York: Academic Press.10.1163/9789004368811_004Search in Google Scholar
Speas, Peggy & Carol Tenny. 2003. Configurational properties of point of view roles. In Anna Maria Di Sciullo (ed.), Asymmetry in grammar, 315–344. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/la.57.15speSearch in Google Scholar
Trotzke, Andreas. 2015. Rethinking syntactocentrism. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/la.225Search in Google Scholar
Trotzke, Andreas. 2017. The grammar of emphasis. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9781501505881Search in Google Scholar
Villa-Garcìa, Julio. 2012. Recomplementation and locality of movement in Spanish. Probus 24(2). 257–314. https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2012-0011.Search in Google Scholar
Vincent, Nigel. 2006. Il problema del doppio complementatore nei primi volgari d’Italia. In Alvise Andreose & Nicoletta Penello (eds.), LabRomAn: Giornata di lavoro sulle varietà romanze antiche, 27–42. Padua: University of Padua.Search in Google Scholar
Wiltschko, Martina. 2021. The grammar of interactional language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/9781108693707Search in Google Scholar
© 2024 the author(s), published by De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Original Articles
- The grammaticalization and grammatical meaning of a ‘do’ support verb in the northern Italian Camuno dialect
- Non-integrated conditionals as speech-event modifiers: evidence from Romance
- Stress deletion or stress demotion? An acoustic study of stress in Spanish lexical compounds
- Assessing coherence in the Spanish PYTA morphome
- Prominence scales and variation in differential object marking: experimental evidence from Ibero-Romance
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Original Articles
- The grammaticalization and grammatical meaning of a ‘do’ support verb in the northern Italian Camuno dialect
- Non-integrated conditionals as speech-event modifiers: evidence from Romance
- Stress deletion or stress demotion? An acoustic study of stress in Spanish lexical compounds
- Assessing coherence in the Spanish PYTA morphome
- Prominence scales and variation in differential object marking: experimental evidence from Ibero-Romance
