Different sources of convergent patterns in the Alps

1 Introduction

The particle-verb template constituted by a verb combined with an original spatial adverb as the lexicalization pattern for different kinds of events diffused across neighboring Upper German, Rhaeto-Romance and Italo-Romance Alpine dialects is one of the relevant features for the consideration of the Alps in an areal perspective. The template may be illustrated by the examples in (1) referring to stative situations. In each example the copula is accompanied by a spatial adverb, ‘out(side)’ in (1a) and ‘in(side)’ in (1b, c), specifying in a redundant way the location of the subject entity with respect to the situation referred to.

Particle-verbs are an inherited feature in German dialects as in Germanic languages in general. They are attested in the oldest extant documents in various Old High German dialects, as shown e.g., in gurtun sih iro suert ana ‘[they] girded up their sword’ (Hildebrandslied, end of eighth, beginning of ninth century, verse 5, cf. Braune and Ebbinghaus 1979: 84). In modern dialects and languages particle-verbs have been the subject of several investigations mainly devoted to their syntactic behavior, as in the contributions collected in Dehé et al. (2002) where Dutch and Swedish are dealt with besides German. As to the Alpine region, particle-verbs are dealt with by Berthele (2006) in his investigation of lexicalization patterns of movement events in Swiss Alemannic dialects – besides Rhaeto-Romance – and in various studies of the archaic Alemannic and Bavarian dialects spoken in so-called Sprachinseln on the South side of the Alps. Reference may be here made to Gaeta and Angster (forthcoming) for two (Alemannic) Walser communities in Aosta valley and Bidese and Schallert (2018) and Bidese et al. (2016) for the Bavarian communities in Veneto and in Trentino respectively, whose formation goes back to the 11th and 12th centuries.

The template of motion verbs modified by a spatial adverb as the source of particle-verb constructions is attested in Latin (Mair 1984) and appears to be diffused as an option in all Medieval Romance languages as discussed in Iacobini (2015: 639–640). As to the area of Italo- and Rhaeto-Romance Alpine dialects at issue here, the template is found with non-motion verbs too in written documents in Trentino since the 19th century (Cordin 2011: 54). In the spoken dialects they are likely older, but no conjecture is yet possible as to their age and to their development in autonomous processes or as a result of contact with contiguous German dialects in the Alps.

The trigger of their development is reconsidered in this paper with the aim of responding to two research questions pertaining to:

1. The identification of different sources of particle-verb constructions on the basis of the patterns of their geographical distribution across Italo- and Rhaeto-Romance dialects as represented in 13 AIS maps referring to the means of expression of 12 different events;^[2]

2. The potential role of topographical deixis in the communicative habits of dialect speakers in the Alpine area as the source of the spatial specification of actions/states by means of particle-verbs.

The response to these research questions will allow a better understanding of the specific weight of autonomous developments of verb plus spatial adverb as against transfer processes triggered by bilingual speakers in the central and eastern sections of the Alps where Germanic-Romance contact is found. As is well known, in the Central Alps Alemannic borders Romance in the Lepontine Alps and in the Rhaetian Alps, where it is replaced by Bavarian in correspondence of the Resia Pass (Ger. Reschenpass) at the border between Central and Eastern Alps. Further East, Bavarian borders Romance in the area South of the Brenner Pass, in the Dolomite Mountains and in the Carnic Alps.^[3] On the Romance side, Gallo-Italic and Venetian dialects are involved in the contact areas, together with Swiss Rhaeto-Romance in the Grisons and its related varieties of Ladin Rhaeto-Romance and Friulan in Italy.

The AIS data allow to consider Italo-Romance dialects at the time when they were mainly spoken by native monolingual speakers. In fact, AIS data were collected between 1911 and 1925 and represent a synchronic cut in the first half of the 20th century, prior to the thorough spread of Italian, started after the establishment of the unified Reign of Italy in 1861. They also allow the correlation with the geographical background of speaker communities. As a matter of fact, these may be of primary importance for the aim of gaining insights into interactional patterns potentially relevant for the diffusion of certain features, as claimed in recent investigations by De Busser (2015), Palmer et al. (2017), and in particular by Forker (2019) for the Caucasus and Liver (1989) and Prandi (2017) for the Alps.

As to the geographical background relevant for the consideration of the Alpine dialects, Johanna Nichols (2015: 270) claimed with reference to the Northern Caucasus that mountain ranges constitute one peculiar type of language spread zone. This type is characterized by “a standing uphill direction of language spread which leaves truncated branches, isolates, and archaisms in the highlands and brings in innovations and new languages from the lowlands”. Both sides of the Alps meet with this scenario. As to the Romance side, uphill direction of spread is discussed by Forner (2015: 228) for the diffusion of Piedmontese in the Maritime Alps. As for isolates, spread of German and Italo-Romance has left Swiss Rhaeto-Romance as well as Ladin and Friulan as truncated branches of a previous compact area. As for archaisms, the cluster Consonant+l is maintained in the highlands in the western and central Alps as shown by isogloss 2 in Pellegrini’s (1977) map of Italian dialects.

Spread zones as defined in Nichols (1992: 16–20) constitute a “classic dialect geographical area with innovating center and conservative periphery” and are characterized, among other things, by “rapid spread of languages […] and consequent language succession”, whereby “the spreading language serves as a lingua franca for [at least] a large part of it”. The Alps appear to be a collision and therefore a contact area between spread zones since ancient times.^[4] As to modern times, spread of Germanic is pervasive in the Grisons whereas in South Tyrol Italian has spread over the former compact Bavarian area since the end of World War I. Furthermore, as mentioned above, all Romance Alpine dialects are receding in front of Italian and are spoken by mainly bilingual speakers.^[5]

It should also be mentioned that, as a dialect continuum, the Alpine area may be punctuated by innovations whose chance of diffusion is related to communicative needs shared by groups of speakers living in similar ecological environments and connected by tight networks of interactions induced by economy and trade as e.g., between highlands and lowlands. Diffusion among dialects and contact triggered by collision are therefore the competing motivations for the emergence of the convergent patterns considered in this paper on the basis of the verb plus spatial adverb template.^[6]

After this general introduction, the semantic and syntactic features of Romance particle-verbs are discussed on the background of the relevant literature in Section 2. Section 3 presents the methodology employed for the interpretation of the sample of AIS maps, whose data are analyzed in Section 4. Section 5 discusses the data with respect to the sources of phrasal verbs in Romance as evidenced by the sample of selected AIS data and Section 6 presents some concluding remarks on the specific weight of autonomous development and contact in the diffusion of phrasal verbs in the Romance dialects of the Alps.

2 Particle-verbs in Romance

Different lexicalization patterns in Italo-Romance dialects were at first pointed to by Gabriele Pallotti in a poster presented at the annual Congress of the Società di Linguistica Italiana in Padua in 1997 (Pallotti 1997). With reference to Leonard Talmy’s typology of motion events (Talmy 2000), Pallotti identified a major split between Northern (and Alpine) dialects and Central and Southern dialects. The former code the path in an adverbial or prepositional element outside the verb as in satellite-framed languages in terms of Talmy’s typology, i.e., by means of particle-verbs. The latter code the path in the verbal root as in verb-framed languages in terms of Talmy’s typology.

Since then, the morphological, syntactic and semantic features of particle-verbs in Italo-Romance have been the object of several investigations in Italian, starting with Simone (1997), and in the dialects, as in the essays edited by Cini (2008). As to Italian, particle-verbs appear to be present since the beginning of the literary tradition in Ancient Florentine, as shown by Masini (2006). However, the dialects may have played a major role in their diffusion in the contemporary spoken language as a consequence of the shift to Italian by the overwhelming majority of dialect speakers in the second half of the 20th century, as claimed by Iacobini (2009). As for Northern Italy, the presence of particle-verbs is described in Iacobini (2015: 645–650) for Rhaeto-Romance and Italo-Romance dialects^[7] and in Cordin (2011: 35–40) with particular regard of the dialects spoken in Trentino. This is an area where Italo-Romance and Ladin Rhaeto-Romance have been in contact with German (and Bavarian) since many centuries (Cordin 2011: 41–81).^[8] Finally, particle-verbs in a Lombard dialect are the object of detail studies in Bernini (2008, 2012.

Rhaeto-Romance particle-verbs are described at length for the Grisons in Liver (1989), for the Gardena and Badia Valleys in South Tyrol in Gallmann et al. (2007: 170–172), and for Friulan in Vicario (1997) in a typological perspective. Word order in particle-verbs is investigated by Bidese et al. (2016) for Fassan, a variety of Ladin Rhaeto-Romance in contact with Trentino dialects and Cimbrian, the isolate German variety mentioned in Section 1.

We may now summarize the major features of Romance particle-verbs with respect to Germanic particle-verbs, following Bidese et al. (2016: 120–121). In morphology, the nominalization process is blocked with Romance particle-verbs and allowed with German(ic) particle-verbs, as shown by Ger. ausgehen ‘go out’ vs. Ausgang ‘exit’ and It. andare fuori ‘go out’ vs. *andata fuori. In semantics, particle-verbs may cover a range of uses comprising locative, aspectual and idiomatic meanings in Germanic and in Romance as well. These are exemplified in Table 1 for German, Ladin and Trentino dialects (Bidese et al. 2016: 123 for Trentino, 134 for Ladin and German) in the combination of locative ‘out’ with different types of verbs.^[9]

In syntax, the basic VO order of Romance is reflected in the order Verb-Particle as in (1a), whereas in German the particle is a “separable” prefix. Its position reflects the OV basic order and is found before non-finite and finite verbs in final position of subordinate clauses. In main clauses, the particle is found in final position too: before a non-finite verb in compound verb forms or alone as a consequence of the raising of finite verbs in V2 position as in (1c).^[10]

In Romance the order Verb-Particle interacts with that of PP (and NP) in a complex way related to the role of the original locative adverb in the particle-verb construction.^[11] The order V-Loc-XP, is found with aspectual and idiomatic uses, where the adverb is not an argument of the verb and carries a grammatical or metaphorical meaning, as in (2a) and (2b) respectively.^[12]

The V-Loc-XP order is also found with non-argument locatives specifying the position or the movement of an entity involved in a situation as in (3), drawn from the AIS data to be presented in Section 4. In (3) the position of the stain and the direction of the tearing need not to be mentioned and respondents of different dialects have actually chosen different locative adverbs besides ‘up’ and ‘out’ as in the elicitation point illustrated there.

In locative uses the adverb may specify the position of an entity in a stative situation or the path to or from a location in a motion event. The examples in (4) refer to a motion downwards to a basement, elicited for the AIS by means of the Italian input sentence scendere alla cantina ‘to go down to the basement’. In the verb-framed input the downward path is codified in the verb scendere and the goal is expressed by a prepositional phrase.^[14] The downward path is explicitly specified in (4a) by a locative adverb and left unexpressed in (4b), the path toward the basement being easily retrieved from the shared knowledge of the interlocutors.

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AIS maps 1341, 1342 (‘to go down to the basement’)

a.	AIS point 229, Sonico (Brescia province)
	anda	dọ̄́	ndαl	amvọ́lt
	go:inf	down	in:the	basement

b.	AIS point 225, Mello (Sondrio province)
	na	yn	kantnα
	go:inf	in	basement

In both examples the goal PP belongs to the argument frame of the predicate ‘to go’. However, in (4a) the locative adverb may be interpreted as the head of a complex argument prepositional phrase as shown in (5a) or as a specification of the direction of movement in a particle-verb construction as in (5b).^[15]

Complex PPs as in (5a) may be found as modifiers of other NPs (in preverbal position, cf. 6a) and when other constituents separate the complex PP from the verb (cf. 6b).

In postverbal position, however, the locative adverb tendentially remains close to the verb and intervening NPs may separate it from the PP (underlined), as in (7).

This is evidence for the tendential interpretation of the locative as the adverbial constituent of a particle-verb construction (cf. 5b) in the dialects of Bergamo. The same seems to hold for the Italo-Romance dialects of Trentino showing the order V-Loc-(NP)-(PP) according to Bidese et al. (2016: 122).^[17]

Unlike Italo-Romance, the Ladin of the Fassa Valley allows both orders V-Loc-XP and V-XP-Loc with different functions. The V-Loc-XP order codes the goal or the point of departure of a motion; the V-XP-Loc order codes the path of transition in a motion event (Bidese et al. 2016: 130–131). The semantics of the V-PP-Loc order in Fassan Ladin rules out the possibility of German influence, notwithstanding the surface order of constituents as in Fassan Ladin L ven da Trent su and German Er kommt von Trient herauf ‘He’s coming up from Trento’ (Bidese et al. 2016: 124).

Finally, the combination of verb and locative adverb as a particle-verb construction is evident in the case of deletion or pronominalization of the PP. In the latter case, the pronoun is raised and cliticized to the verb, as in (8).^[18]

In the sample of 13 AIS maps the patterns of geographical diffusion of particle-verb combinations for the expression of 12 different types of predicates is considered with respect to areas showing simple verb expression for the same functions. The sample is actually a selection of a larger number of maps which might be of interest for the reconstruction of the diffusion of particle-verb constructions in Italo- and Rhaeto-Romance dialects. Cordin (2011: 35, note 55), e.g., lists 41 maps showing the particles ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘out’, ‘away’, however with no precise geographical location.

3 The AIS data

AIS data were originally elicited with the aim of collecting the designations of persons, tools and activities related to the peasant way of life of the majority of Italy’s inhabitants in the first half of the 20th century. The input sentences of the questionnaires employed in the interviews were formulated in order to elicit phonetics, morphology, syntax and lexicon of dialects.^[19] Particle-verb constructions were not specifically targeted. Only three inputs explicitly elicited an intransitive or transitive motion verb accompanied by the locative adverbs fuori ‘out’ and via ‘away’ usually found in particle-verb constructions, i.e., non vada fuori ‘don’t let him go out’ (maps 355 and 356), spingetelo via ‘push it away’(map 1648), butta via queste pietre ‘throw these stones away’ (map 1674).^[20] However, particle-verbs may be detected in the responses to input with no particle-verbs represented in many maps, allowing a survey of their geographical diffusion, as e.g., in the responses to togli il coltello a codesto bambino ‘take the knife away from this child’ (map 979).

Although several dozens of the AIS maps might be considered in the investigation of the geographical diffusion of particle-verbs in Rhaeto- and Italo-Romance dialects, only a sample of 13 maps is discussed in this paper in order to define the general outline of their geographical diffusion and to relate it to the potential factors involved in their origin, as in the research questions reported in Section 1.

The 13 maps refer to the dialect responses to 12 Italian input sentences as reported in Table 2, two maps representing separately the verb and the locative adverb of a single stimulus. They are grouped in five sets, according to the presence of a locative adverb in the stimulus (maps 355 + 356, and 1674, first set in Table 2) and to the semantics of the predicates of the input. The second set comprises six maps referring to three motion events (go down, fall, sit down) for some of which the AIS provides different sentences as input; the third set comprises one map (1550) referring to a stative situation and the fourth set to an action implying the motion of an object (979). Finally, the last set comprises two maps referring to actions involving no apparent movement and no directionality (168, 657).^[21]

In the map survey particle-verbs are identified by means of a two digits code: the first digit refers to the type of verb and the second to the presence or absence of a particle, as illustrated in Table 3.

Table 3:

Typology and coding of particle-verbs.

Code	Definition	Type	Example (AIS map/point)
10	deictic verb and no particle	GO	1341/225 na
11	deictic verb and particle	GO DOWN	1341/310 nr ǵú
20	full motion (or stative) verb and no particle	DESCEND	1341/616 kal
21	full motion (or stative) verb and particle	DESCEND DOWN	1341/736 šnnə gso
30	action verb involving motion and no particle	TAKE	979/258 tœ̣̋[ga] […]
31	action verb involving motion and particle	TAKE OUT	979/254 tœ̣[ga] fọ̋
40	action verb with no movement and no particle	WAKE	657/129 dizvę̄ǵa[lų̀]
41	action verb with no movement and particle	WAKE OUT	657/238 dẹsẹda̋l họ

The two digits codes identify eight predicate types. Non particle-verb types and particle-verb types are identified by 0 and 1 respectively as the second digit. The first digit identifies the verbs according to their semantics: deictic verbs (1), full motion or stative verbs (2), verbs referring to actions with an entity involved in a movement (3) and finally verbs referring to actions with no apparent movement involving an entity (4).

Besides Italo- and Rhaeto-Romance the lexicalization patterns found in the AIS is considered for Gallo-Romance too as spoken in the outskirts of the Western Alps for comparative reasons. Franco-Provençal is spoken in Aosta Valley and in Canavese in Piedmont (elicitation points 121, 122, 123, 131, 132, 142, 143, 144, 153), Provençal in Piedmont in the valleys of the provinces of Turin and Cuneo (elicitation points 140, 150, 152, 160, 161, 170, 181, 182). The survey does not comprise the couple of elicitation points where Albanian (arbëresh, 751 in Calabria) and Greek, (748 in Puglia, 792 in Calabria) are spoken, irrelevant for the aim of this paper, and Sardinia, whose dialects do not belong to the Italo-Romance diasystem.

4 Survey of the AIS maps

4.1 Particle-verbs as elicitation input

The survey of the relevant AIS maps starts from two motion situations, one intransitive and one transitive, elicited by means of input sentences comprising an explicit locative adverb with no mention of the goal of the event, i.e., fuori ‘out’ as in Non vada fuori! ‘he might not go out!’ and via ‘away’ as in Butta via queste pietre! ‘get rid of these stones’, but literally ‘throw these stones away!’ (cf. first set in Table 2). The relevant maps (355 + 356, 1674) allow the recognition of the correspondences to the Italian pattern proposed in the input in the responses submitted by the dialect informants.

As to Non vada fuori!, almost all Rhaeto-Romance and Italo-Romance elicitation points show the same satellite-framed pattern of the input, coded as 11 (cf. Table 3) and express the path in the adverb (as in map 356) and deixis as a kind of manner in the verb (as in map 355).^[22] Scanty exceptions in the Alps are found in one Rhaeto-Romance Surmeiran point (25) and one Ligurian point (193), besides three Franco-Provençal points (121, 122, 123) and one Provençal point (152).^[23] All these points respond with a verb-framed type 20 and lexicalize the path in the verb. More interesting and relevant are the exceptions to the general type 11 found in the most southern point of Calabria and in Sicily. Here type 20 is found (6 points over 18) besides the redundant type 21 with lexicalization of the path in the verb and in the adverb (7 points over 18) besides the general type 11 (5 points over 18).^[24]

A particle-verb construction is found as a reply to the input Butta via queste pietre! ‘Get rid of these stones!’ in all Alpine elicitation points too with one exception (Ligurian point 190) and all over Northern and Central Italy down to a line going from Southern Latium to Southern Marche, where type 31 is replaced by type 30 as in Figure 1 drawn from AIS map 1674. The isogloss goes along, but does not overlap precisely, the line dividing Central and Southern Italo-Romance (cf. Pellegrini 1977). The verb buttare implies a movement of the object in some direction (cf. Eng. throw) and the adverb redundantly adds the mention of a direction away from the addressee of the imperative. In Italian, both types 30 (Butta queste pietre!) and 31 (Butta via queste pietre!) mean ‘Get rid of these stones!’. The Italian lexical type of the input is mirrored in the majority of the type 31 points, whereas the overwhelming majority of the type 30 points respond with lexical types mirroring the Italian synonym gettare. The relevance of the actual lexical type in (non-)particle-verb constructions shall be further investigated and can just be noticed here.^[25]

Figure 1:

Isogloss 31 vs. 30 on NavigAIS map 1,674: Get rid of those stains! http://www3.pd.istc.cnr.it/navigais-web?map=1674.

4.2 Motion events

4.2.1 Go down

The second set of maps comprises three motion events. The first one is the controlled downward motion to a goal elicited by the input sentence Scendere alla cantina per prendere del vino ‘to go down to the basement to get some wine’. The responses for the verb scendere ‘to go down’ represented on map 1341 show a checkered distribution of the types 10, 11, 20 and 21. As shown in the Northern and Central sections of the NavigAIS 1341 map reported in Figures 2 and 3, the satellite-framed 11 is found all over the Central and Eastern Alps and in some sections of the facing plain and furthermore in an area of Central Italy facing the Adriatic Sea and comprising Marche and a part of Umbria. The verb-framed type 20 is found in the Gallo-Romance Western Alps, in Northern Tuscany and in Southern Italy starting from a line running close to, but not coincidental with, the one limiting the areas with satellite-frames ‘throw away’ and verb-framed ‘throw’ discussed in Section 4.1.^[26]

Figure 2:

Northern section of NavigAIS maps 1341: To go down, and 1,611: Go down there http://www3.pd.istc.cnr.it/navigais-web?map=1341; http://www3.pd.istc.cnr.it/navigais-web?map=1611.

Figure 3:

Central section of NavigAIS map 1341: To go down http://www3.pd.istc.cnr.it/navigais-web?map=1341.

Type 10 with no explicit expression of the path is predominant in the Northern plain areas and in a section of Central Italy oriented toward the Thyrrenian Sea comprising parts of Umbria and Tuscany.^[27] Type 21 is found in a small section of the Franco-Provençal Alps and in some points in Southern Italy, where the “satellite” is mainly expressed by PPs such as abballe ‘to valley’ (point 682) or abbšš ‘to the bottom’ (point 717 among others). The PP “satellite”, found in a couple of Southern points also in type 11 (710, 721, 723), is not found in the Central and Northern type 11 points, where the locative adverb corresponding to Italian giù ‘down(ward)’ is used.^[28]

As discussed in Section 2, type 11 (and 21) responses are allowed by the general availability of locative adverbs with neutralization of the stative-directional opposition. However, the syntactic dependency of the locative adverbial as a modifier of the verb or as the head of a complex PP is controversial. This is true for the NavigAIS map just discussed, although the AIS editors seem to have interpreted the locative adverb ‘down’ in type 11 dialects as a particle modifier of the verb, notwithstanding the fact that the elicited responses always comprise the reference to the basement as the goal of the motion. This is coded by way of a PP and represented on map 1342 (alla cantina ‘to the basement’). For the purpose of this investigation, it is interesting to observe the areas where a locative adverb is used with a deictic verb in a satellite-framed type 11. However, the data of map 1341 do not allow to conclude that the type 11 responses are instances of real particle-verbs.

A clue for a better understanding of the nature of the locative ‘down’ in map 1341 may be found in map 1611, representing the responses to the input sentence Scendete laggiù ‘Go down there!’. In this sentence the downward motion is expressed in the path verb scendere ‘go down’ and in the adverb laggiù (lit. there-down) as the goal, as well. Besides responses of the verb-framed type 20 reflecting the input sentence, map 1611 reports responses of types 10 and 11. In type 10 the respondent employs a deictic verb, whereby the downward motion is inferred on the basis of the goal adverb, as in the 1611 column of the examples (9a) and (9b). In type 11 responses the downward motion is doubled as in example (9c) and expressed as a path satellite and as a goal adverb.

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Maps 1341 1611

a.	AIS 32 Chironico	ná	∅	vẹ	∅	žú
		go.inf		go.2pl		down

b.	AIS 53 Prosito	a nę	žǘ	nẹ̋y	∅	žü lí
		go.inf	down	go.2pl		down.there

c.	AIS 231 Arcumeggia	na	ǵœ̨	nę̄	ǵǫ̋	ǵū lá
		go.inf	down	go.2pl	down	down.there
		‘To go	down’	‘Go down there!’

The corresponding responses of maps 1611 and 1341 for the three West Lombard elicitation points exemplified in (9) allow to hypothesize the presence of a verb-particle construction only in case the expression of the path is doubled in 1611, as in (9c). On the contrary, the absence of the locative ‘down’ in 1611 and its presence in 1341 may point to its belonging to the complex PP ‘down to the basement’ as the goal expressed by the (complex) adverb ‘down there’ in 1611. Table 4 illustrates these correspondences with the simple deictic verb as in (9).

Table 4:

Patterns of response in maps 1341 and 1611.

	1341	1611
No particle	10	10	(9a)
V (Particle PP)	11	10	(9b)
(V Particle)	11	11	(9c)

On the map 1611, type 11 responses as in (9c) are scattered in the Alps and in the Po Plain. They are represented in Figure 2 by means of dark blue circles adjoining the light blue and the green circles representing respectively the type 11 and the type 10 responses on map 1341. As for the Alps and the facing plain, 24 over 35 points show type 11 on both maps 1611 and 1341 as in example (9c). As to geography, 24 points over 35 are located in mountain areas.

4.2.2 Fall

The uncontrolled downward motion of falling (down) is represented in the AIS by six maps.^[29] Only three input sentences with different argument configurations are considered for this paper: map 220 (Il falegname) cascò (dal tetto) ‘(The carpenter) fell (from the roof)’ with animate subject and mention of the point of source of the motion; map 394 (Il fulmine) è cascato (sulla nostra casa) ‘(The lightning) fell (onto our house)’ with inanimate subject and mention of the goal of the falling; map 1621 Non cadere! Non cadete! ‘Don’t fall off!’ with animate subject and no mention of the goal of falling.^[30]

The responses to the input sentences of the three maps considered here where a lexical type for ‘to fall’ is accompanied by a locative adverb as ‘down’ are reported in Figure 4. Green circles represent particle-verbs when the source of falling is mentioned (map 220); red circles represent particle-verbs when the goal of falling is mentioned (map 395); light blue circles represent particle-verbs when the source or the goal of falling is not mentioned (map 1621); finally black circles represent responses to all three input sentences with particle-verbs. The distribution of particle-verbs allows following considerations:

1. Particle-verbs are mostly diffused when the source of falling is mentioned. They concentrate in the Central and Eastern Alps (green and black circles) and punctuate the Western Alps, Istria in the East, the central plain and the Apennines till Tuscany, where they are found in 41 cases as the only response of type 21.

2. With minor exceptions, coding type 21 in case of mention of the goal of falling (map 394) and in case of no mention of source or goal of falling (map 1621) are combined with coding type 21 when the source of falling is mentioned (black circles and red and light blue circles combined with green circles). They concentrate in the Central and Eastern Alps and in the Lombard (central) plain.

Figure 4:

Northern section of NavigAIS maps for fall (down). http://www3.pd.istc.cnr.it/ navigais-web?map=220; http://www3.pd.istc.cnr.it/navigais-web?map=394; http://www3.pd.istc.cnr.it/navigais-web?map=1621.

The data reported in Figure 4 allow to establish a hierarchy of likeliness of particle-verb constructions with the verb ‘to fall’ according to its argument configuration as illustrated in (10).

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Mention of the source of falling > No mention of source or goal of falling > Mention of the goal of falling

The use of a particle-verb when the source of falling is mentioned as in ‘falling from the roof’ recalls the question of the syntactic analysis of the locative adverb either as a modifier of the verb or as the head of a complex PP, as discussed in 2. and in 4.2.1. It is plausible that the locative adverb may be a modifier of the verb at least in the points where it is found in the responses to the input sentence ‘Do not fall!’ too with no mention of source or goal of the falling. The geographic distributions of the use of particle-verbs in response to the input sentences ‘Don’t fall!’ (map 1621, Figure 4) and ‘Go down down-there!’ (map 1611, Figure 3) overlap, although not precisely.

As to the input sentence with mention of the goal of falling, the widespread use of a deictic verb as ‘to come’ is to be noticed instead of the expected lexical types for ‘to fall’. The non-animate subject and the deictic reference to the informant’s house (cf. sulla nostra casa ‘onto our house’) may have triggered the selection of a deictic verb, found in Northern Italy as coding type 10 in 24 points and as coding type 11 in 48 points; 26 of these are located in the Central Alps.

4.2.3 To sit down

The last item of this section is the controlled postural downward movement with no dislocation elicited by means of the input sentence Sedetevi tutti quanti! ‘Sit down you all’ and reported on AIS map 664.^[31] As shown in Figure 5 by the blue circles, the redundant coding type 21 reflecting the English construction is found in an almost compact area in the Central and Eastern Alps and in the facing plain, reaching the Po river at Piacenza in southwestern Lombardy. The geographic distribution recalls that of the particle-verb found in response to the input sentence ‘Don’t fall!’ and discussed in the previous section.

Figure 5:

Norther section of NavigAIS map664: Sit down you all! http://www3.pd.istc.cnr.it/ navigais-web?map=664.

4.3 Stative situations

Stative situations may be represented by the data presented on AIS map 1550 in response to the input sentence C’è una macchia, ‘There is a stain’ with no mention of a location of the stain. The responses with coding type 21 employing a locative adverb as in examples (11) are marked by the blue circles in Figure 6.^[32]

Figure 6:

Northern section of NavigAIS map 1550: There is a stain. http://www3.pd.istc.cnr.it/ navigais-web?map=1550.

(11)

a.

l	ẹ	ä ´ ynt	œ̣nα	máklα (AIS point 35 Bivio/Beiva, Grisons)
it	is	in	a	stain

b.

g	ę	ṣǘ	na	máćα (AIS point 330 Mortaso, prov. Trento)
there	is	up	a	stain
‘There is a stain’

The particle-verb type is found again in the Central and Eastern Alps and in the facing plain, but in a more restricted area with respect to the particle-verbs discussed so far. It is noteworthy that the 40 points responding with a particle-verb on the map 1550 considered here are a fraction of the 85 found on map 664 (cf. Figure 5) with only six exceptions: points 3, 17, 44 in the Grisons, points 139 and 224 (Lombard dialect) and point 305 (Ladin).

4.4 Actions implying the motion of an object

Actions implying the motion of an object are represented by the data reported on AIS map 979 responding to the input sentence Togli il coltello (a codesto bambino), ‘Remove the knife (from this child)’. As presented in Figure 7, of the 31 points responding with a particle-verb construction, twenty concentrate in the Grisons and in the neighboring Ticino area where a Lombard dialect is spoken. Most of the remaining points are scattered in Lombardy, in the mountains and in the plain as well.^[33] Three isolated points are found in the Ladin area (305), in the Apennines (466) and on the Adria coast (479).

Figure 7:

Northern section of NavigAIS map 979: Remove the knife. http://www3.pd.istc.cnr.it/ navigais-web?map=979.

4.5 Actions involving no (apparent) movement

The two selected items for actions with no apparent movement show a different behavior with respect to the use of particle-verbs. The action of blowing one’s nose, presented on AIS map 168 Soffiare il naso. Si soffia il naso, ‘To blow one’s nose. He blows his nose’ is expressed with two types of particle verbs, covering the area of Central and Western Alps and of the facing plain. The first type may be glossed as ‘to blow down one’s nose’ and is represented by the dark blue circles in Figure 8. The second type may be glossed as ‘to do down one’s nose’ and is represented by the light blue items in Figure 8. The two types cover the Central Alps and the facing plain with a minor extension in the Western Alps and a major extension in the Eastern Trentino Alps. Within this area, the first type (‘to blow down’) is found on the edge and the second type (‘to do down’) in the middle and in the Sursilvan Swiss Rhaeto-Romance in the North.

Figure 8:

Northern section of NavigAIS map 168: To blow one’s nose, he blows his nose. http://www3.pd.istc.cnr.it/navigais-web?map=168.

Finally, the action of waking up somebody, represented on AIS map 657, shows the least amount of particle-verbs point, only 13 as in the blue circles in Figure 9 where the input sentence Sveglialo! ‘Wake him!’ elicited expression types which may be glossed as ‘Wake him out!’ (e.g., 237) and ‘Call him up’ (e.g., 267). These points are scattered in the Central and Eastern Alps and in the Lombard plain and all respond with particle-verbs to the items discussed in this section.

Figure 9:

Northern section of NavigAIS map 657: Wake him! http://www3.pd.istc.cnr.it/ navigais-web?map=657.

5 Discussion

The patterns of the geographic distribution of particle-verbs in the 13 AIS maps discussed in Section 3 allow the recognition of two major correlations. The first correlation is semantic, the second one geographic.

6 Concluding remarks

Locative adverbs liable to become constituents of particle-verb constructions are available all over Rhaeto- and Italo-Romance and appear in the case called “direct reference”, i.e., when the AIS input explicitly asked for them. However, their actual use seems to differ depending on the space dimension they designate: ‘out(side)’ is more widespread than ‘away’, the latter being found North of a line cutting central Italy.

Locative adverbs are widespread with motion verbs in Central and Northern Italy and in Switzerland, whereby deixis is coded in the opposition of ‘go’ and ‘come’ and the locative adverb codes the path (cf. Go down [to the basement]). They are also more widespread with the verb ‘fall’ in case the source of the movement is mentioned than when it is not. If in the former case the syntactic dependency of the adverb is still ambiguous as the head of a complex PP or as a verb modifier, in the latter case a real particle-verb template may be assumed.

This pattern appears to be extended to other situations, such as stative ones, and to be conventionalized in the redundant coding of the path shown for sitting down. Extension and conventionalization, on their parts, are the basis for further developments with non-motion verbs where the original locative acquires aspectual meanings as in the case of ‘wake him!’.

The particle-verb constructions appear to concentrate in the Alps in a larger number than in the Po Plain and in the Central Alps and Eastern Alps in a larger number than in the Western Alps. Many Alpine dialects share the use of locative adverbs with the function of coding the position of the speaker in a ground-oriented deictic system as “positional adverbs” (i.e., as heads of complex PP). Their absolute uses induced by the pragmatic conditions of interaction allow to extend (and conventionalize) the particle-verb construction to different situations.

Germanic-Romance contact in the dialect belt of the Central and Eastern Alps may have favored the diffusion of particle-verbs in Romance too. On the other side, interdialectal contact between Central Alps and Prealps may have contributed to the diffusion of particle-verbs in direction of the Central Po Plain.

Therefore, the availability of locative adverbs, in particular for the coding of ground-oriented deixis, may be assigned a heavier specific weight in the constitution of a convergence area in the Alps with respect to particle-verb constructions.

According to Thomason and Kaufman’s (1988: 50) framework, language-shift favored the diffusion of particle-verbs as a contact-induced change on the North side of the Central Alps (cf. spread of Alemannic and German in the Grisons) and on the South side of the Eastern Alps (cf. spread of Bavarian and German in Trentino, cf. Cordin 2011). Language maintenance with diffused dialectal bilingualism was instead the context for the diffusion of particle-verbs from the highlands towards the Central Po Plain.

In an areal perspective, particle-verbs represent a convergent pattern in the lexicon and semantics, syntax being largely unaffected (cf. Section 2). As to the dynamics of areality (Hickey 2017: 3–5), with respect to particle-verbs the Alps as represented in the AIS constitute a case of “areality enhancing” as the result of calque and sharing of the feature in language shift (Swiss Rhaeto-Romance, Ladin and Trentino dialects), increase in dialectal bilingualism with sharing of the feature and perhaps accommodation without shift in interdialectal communication. The feature in question, i.e., use of locative adverbs in particle-verbs, has arisen independently in Germanic and Romance.

As Hickey (2017: 3) points out, “The degree of areality within a region is not constant”. The AIS reports the degree of areality at the synchronic cut of the first half of the 20th century. However, on the Romance side of the Alps, continuous contact on the one side and further independent developments on the other side have enhanced the degree of areality as shown respectively in examples (14a) and (14b).

Further processes of shift from the dialects to Italian (cf. Section 2) appear to have enhanced the degree of areality in the second half of the 20th century with the development of aspectual functions in Italian particle verbs, as discussed in Iacobini and Masini (2007).

The western, eastern and southern limits of the particle verb area in the Central Alps and the surrounding plain as represented in the AIS need further investigations together with the potential pressure of Francoprovençal and Provençal in the Western Alps and of Slovenian in the far Eastern Alps in preventing the diffusion of particle-verbs.

Abbreviations

inf

infinitive

m

masculine

obl

oblique

pl

plural

refl

reflexive

sg

singular