DOCSLIB.ORG

Russian Case Morphology and the Syntactic Categories David Pesetsky (MIT)1 • Terminology: I Will Use the Abbreviations NGEN, DNOM, VACC, PDAT, Etc

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

Russian case morphology and the syntactic categories David Pesetsky (MIT)1 • Terminology: I will use the abbreviations NGEN, DNOM, VACC, PDAT, etc. to remind us of the traditional names for the cases whose actual nature is simply N, D, V, and 1. Introduction (types of) P. The case-name suffixes to these designations are thus present merely for our convenience. • Case morphology: Russian nouns, adjectives, numerals and demonstratives bear case Genitive: The most unusual aspect of the proposal will be the treatment of genitive as suffixes. The shape of a given case suffix is determined by two factors: N -- with which I will begin the discussion in the next section. 1. its morphological environment (properties of the stem to which the suffix attaches; e.g. declension class, gender, animacy, number) ; and • Syntax: The treatment of case as in (1) will depend on two ideas that are novel in the context of a syntax based on external and internal Merge, but are also revivals of well- 2. its syntactic environment. known older proposals, as well as a third important concept: The traditional cross-classification of case suffixes by declension-class and by case- name (nominative, genitive, etc.) reflects these two factors. 1. Morphology assignment: When [or a projection of ] merges with and assigns an affix, the affix is copied α α β α • Specialness of the standard case names: Traditionally, the cases are called by onto β and realized on the (accessible) lexical items dominated by β. special names (nominative, genitive, etc.) not used outside the description of case- systems. The specialness of case terminology reflects what looks like a complex This proposal revives the notion of case assignment (Vergnaud (2006); Rouveret & relation between syntactic environment and choice of case suffix. Vergnaud (1980); Chomsky (1980; 1981)). Other properties of older notions of case assignment, however, continue to follow from the theory of agreement (Chomsky • Eliminating the special case-names: How we perceive the relation between case and (2000; 2001); Pesetsky and Torrego (2007); and others). The integration of these two syntactic environment depends not only on our view of the syntax-morphology notions is work in progress. relation, but also on our view of how the syntax itself works. In this paper, I offer two proposals about syntax offer an interesting simplification of the theory of 2. Undermerge: morphological case. Internal Merge may create new complements, not just new specifiers. I will use the name undermerge for complement-forming Merge, and overmerge for specifier- In particular, these proposals allow one to abandon some of the traditional case forming Merge. The proposal generalizes to phrase-to-head movement an analysis terminology, and instead distinguish several of the case suffixes as instances of more familiar in the domain of head-to-head movement (Travis (1984), Baker (1988); familiar syntactic categories: Pollock (1989), Chomsky (1991)). It also revives the proposal of Raising to Object (Rosenbaum (1967), Postal (1974)). (1) Genitive = N Accusative = V Nominative = D Obliques = P The relevance of points 1 and 2 to morphological case in Russian: Undermerge of a new complement to a head that already has one bleeds morphology assignment A genitive-marked word is thus a stem to which a suffix of category N has been to the previous complement. attached; a nominative-marked word is a stem with a suffix of category D; and an accusative bears a suffix of category V (with some caveats discussed below). 3. Phases: Also important will be the notion of syntactic phase as a Spell-out Domain. A dative, instrumental, prepositional or locative-marked word bears a suffix of category P. Only the distinctions among these last cases will fail to correspond to The relevance of points 1 and 3 to morphological case in Russian: Morphology syntactic category distinctions, but may reflect the kinds of lexical differences that assignment cannot affect the lexical items of a domain D after D is spelled out or independently distinguish subcategories of overt prepositions. linearized. • Undermerge and the spelling out of phases thus serve as two brakes on an otherwise 1 This paper arose in the context of ongoing joint work on undermerge and related issues with Esther general process of Morphology Assignment. The value of these brakes to us is that Torrego (UMass/Boston), though responsibility for the Russian sections should be laid fully at the door of they freeze for our inspection earlier stages of the derivation, allowing us to verify our the present speaker. Thanks to Masha Polinsky, Esther Torrego and Morris Halle for discussion, and to John Bailyn and Andrew Nevins for useful remarks by e-mail. theory of that derivation. -2- Counterparts to these compounds in French and Russian 2. The hidden genitive in all Russian nouns (6) French and Russian counterparts of Germanic compounds a. l'arrêt de bus ostanovka avtobusa 'bus stop' Key properties of compound nouns in English stop of bus stop bus-GEN.SG (2) Terminology for endocentric compounds b. station de métro stancija (moskovskogo) metro 'subway station' computer repair station of subway station Moscow-GEN.SG subway ↑ ↑ c. réparation d'ordinateur %remont komp'jutera 'computer repair' dependent member head repair of computer repair computer-GEN.SG d. location de voiture arenda avtomašiny 'car rental' Property A. Dependent member is a bare NP (i.e. not a DP): rental of car rental automobile-GEN.SG (3) Dependent member must not contain D... a. the [bus stop] vs. *the [a bus] stop e. Palais de Culture dvorec kul'tury 'culture palace' b. a [computer repair] vs. *a [the computer] repair palace of culture palace culture-GEN.SG f. Maison de Livre Dom Knigi Buchhaus ...even when the N requires it... house of book house book-GEN.SG c. a [Bronx apartment] vs. *a [the Bronx] apartment g. Maison d'étudiant Dom studenta 'Student House' (but: I grew up in *(the) Bronx) house of student house student-GEN.SG h. rue de Beethoven ulica Betxovena 'Beethoven street' d. a [UN diplomat] vs. *a [the UN] diplomat street of Beethoven street Beethoven-GEN.SG (but: I work for *(the) UN) i. Fondation de France fond Francii 'France Foundation' ...but may be phrasal, allowing a prenominal modifer foundation of France fund France-GEN.SG c. some [foreign car] rental vs. *[some [[the foreign car] rental] musée de cire muzej voska 'wax museum' d. the [South Bronx] Expressway vs. *[the [the South Bronx] Expressway] museum of wax museum wax-GEN.SG [ok I live in the Bronx vs. *I live in Bronx] j. agence de voyages bjuro putešestvij 'travel agency' agency of trips bureau trip-GEN.PL Property B. Morphologically singular dependent member substitutes for expected k. tanec života 'belly dance' plural: dance belly-GEN.SG (4) Morphologically singular dependent member may have plural interpretation... a. computer repair (= repair of computers) b. car rental (= rental of cars) • Conjecture: We are seeing the same construction in all three languages: a compound. (5) ...even allowing singular forms of pluralia tantum as the dependent member: Thus: The English and French compounds teach us about Russian. a. pant leg b. scissor repair c. drug problem • Properties of dependent member in French, English and Russian: • Strategy: I will take property A as defining a type of construction (a "compound") 1. English, French: absence of D on the dependent member whose dependent member is a bare NP. I use property B as an additional way of 2. Russian / French: genitive case2 / de spotting compounds. [3. English, Russian, French: singular form may have plural interpretation] 2 I will not discuss Russian or French exocentric compounds that do not show GENitive, such as gorod-geroj / ville-héros 'hero city' (lit. 'city-hero'). In French the second member lacks an independent article, but this might reflcct N-N coordination, rather than the subordination of an endocentric compound. Also not discussed here are the much-discussed aGENt and intrument compounds like French grille-pain 'toaster' (lit. 'grills-bread'), which Russian lacks, and Russian semi-counterparts like ledokol 'icebreaker' (M.Polinsky, p.c.) or ljudoed 'cannibal'. -3- (7) Syntax of dependent member of a compound ...so we must distinguish the affixation of NGEN -- a collection of features -- from the The dependent member of a compound is a bare NP in all three languages.3 context-dependent phonological realization of these features (Pesetsky (1985), Halle and Marantz (1993)). • ...and genitive morphology is the sign of a bare NP. • Any adjective phrase merged with a noun in the genitive case must itself bear genitive morphology... The nature of Russian genitive morphology • Observation: The Russian noun contains just one slot for pronunciation of an (11) Genitive adjective + noun as dependent member of compound inflectional suffix. remont stiral'n-oj mašin-y repair washing-FEM.GEN.SG machine-GEN.SG • If this observation is a matter of pronunciation, as in (8)... 'washing machine repair' (8) The One-Suffix Rule (Russian Nouns) ....but we delay our discussion of the reasons for this concord for a bit. Only the final overt inflectional suffix on a noun is pronounced Nominative ... then the One-Suffix Rule (8) allows the following characterization of genitive • I propose that nominative morphology results from the affixation of D to N. By the morphology: • One-Suffix Rule (8), the Nominative DNOM suffix suppresses the pronunciation of the NGEN suffix: (9) Genitive morphology is N Each Russian noun enters the syntax with a suffix N, realized as genitive morphology. (12) Suppression of NGEN suffix by DNOM Attaching N to a stem categorizes it as a noun. stem NGEN sg. DNOM sg. stem NGEN pl. DNOM pl. • The fact that nouns are not always morphologically genitive reflects situations in a.
Recommended publications
  • The Strategy of Case-Marking

    The Strategy of Case-Marking

    Case marking strategies Helen de Hoop & Andrej Malchukov1 Radboud University Nijmegen DRAFT January 2006 Abstract Two strategies of case marking in natural languages are discussed. These are defined as two violable constraints whose effects are shown to converge in the case of differential object marking but diverge in the case of differential subject marking. The strength of the case bearing arguments will be shown to be of utmost importance for case marking as well as voice alternations. The strength of arguments can be viewed as a function of their discourse prominence. The analysis of the case marking patterns we find cross-linguistically is couched in a bidirectional OT analysis. 1. Assumptions In this section we wish to put forward our three basic assumptions: (1) In ergative-absolutive systems ergative case is assigned to the first argument x of a two-place relation R(x,y). (2) In nominative-accusative systems accusative case is assigned to the second argument y of a two-place relation R(x,y). (3) Morphologically unmarked case can be the absence of case. The first two assumptions deal with the linking between the first (highest) and second (lowest) argument in a transitive sentence and the type of case marking. For reasons of convenience, we will refer to these arguments quite sloppily as the subject and the object respectively, although we are aware of the fact that the labels subject and object may not be appropriate in all contexts, dependent on how they are actually defined. In many languages, ergative and accusative case are assigned only or mainly in transitive sentences, while in intransitive sentences ergative and accusative case are usually not assigned.
  • Does English Have a Genitive Case? Amyrose@Linguist.Umass.Edu

    Does English Have a Genitive Case? [email protected]

    2. Amy Rose Deal – University of Massachusetts, Amherst Does English have a genitive case? [email protected] In written English, possessive pronouns appear without ’s in the same environments where non-pronominal DPs require ’s. (1) a. your/*you’s/*your’s book b. Moore’s/*Moore book What explains this complementarity? Various analyses suggest themselves. A. Possessive pronouns are contractions of a pronoun and ’s. (Hudson 2003: 603) B. Possessive pronouns are inflected genitives (Huddleston and Pullum 2002); a morphological deletion rule removes clitic ’s after a genitive pronoun. Analysis A consists of a single rule of a familiar type: Morphological Merger (Halle and Marantz 1993), familiar from forms like wanna and won’t. (His and its contract especially nicely.) No special lexical/vocabulary items need be postulated. Analysis B, on the other hand, requires a set of vocabulary items to spell out genitive case, as well as a rule to delete the ’s clitic following such forms, assuming ’s is a DP-level head distinct from the inflecting noun. These two accounts make divergent predictions for dialects with complex pronominals such as you all or you guys (and us/them all, depending on the speaker). Since Merger operates under adjacency, Analysis A predicts that intervention by all or guys should bleed the formation of your: only you all’s and you guys’ are predicted. There do seem to be dialects with this property, as witnessed by the American Heritage Dictionary (4th edition, entry for you-all). Call these English 1. Here, we may claim that pronouns inflect for only two cases, and Merger operations account for the rest.
  • Possessive Constructions in Modern Low Saxon

    Possessive Constructions in Modern Low Saxon

    POSSESSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS IN MODERN LOW SAXON a thesis submitted to the department of linguistics of stanford university in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of master of arts Jan Strunk June 2004 °c Copyright by Jan Strunk 2004 All Rights Reserved ii I certify that I have read this thesis and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts. Joan Bresnan (Principal Adviser) I certify that I have read this thesis and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts. Tom Wasow I certify that I have read this thesis and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts. Dan Jurafsky iii iv Abstract This thesis is a study of nominal possessive constructions in modern Low Saxon, a West Germanic language which is closely related to Dutch, Frisian, and German. After identifying the possessive constructions in current use in modern Low Saxon, I give a formal syntactic analysis of the four most common possessive constructions within the framework of Lexical Functional Grammar in the ¯rst part of this thesis. The four constructions that I will analyze in detail include a pronominal possessive construction with a possessive pronoun used as a determiner of the head noun, another prenominal construction that resembles the English s-possessive, a linker construction in which a possessive pronoun occurs as a possessive marker in between a prenominal possessor phrase and the head noun, and a postnominal construction that involves the preposition van/von/vun and is largely parallel to the English of -possessive.
  • Romani Syntactic Typology Evangelia Adamou, Yaron Matras

    Romani Syntactic Typology Evangelia Adamou, Yaron Matras

    Romani Syntactic Typology Evangelia Adamou, Yaron Matras To cite this version: Evangelia Adamou, Yaron Matras. Romani Syntactic Typology. Yaron Matras; Anton Tenser. The Palgrave Handbook of Romani Language and Linguistics, Springer, pp.187-227, 2020, 978-3-030-28104- 5. 10.1007/978-3-030-28105-2_7. halshs-02965238 HAL Id: halshs-02965238 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-02965238 Submitted on 13 Oct 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Romani syntactic typology Evangelia Adamou and Yaron Matras 1. State of the art This chapter presents an overview of the principal syntactic-typological features of Romani dialects. It draws on the discussion in Matras (2002, chapter 7) while taking into consideration more recent studies. In particular, we draw on the wealth of morpho- syntactic data that have since become available via the Romani Morpho-Syntax (RMS) database.1 The RMS data are based on responses to the Romani Morpho-Syntax questionnaire recorded from Romani speaking communities across Europe and beyond. We try to take into account a representative sample. We also take into consideration data from free-speech recordings available in the RMS database and the Pangloss Collection.
  • The Term Declension, the Three Basic Qualities of Latin Nouns, That

    The Term Declension, the Three Basic Qualities of Latin Nouns, That

    Chapter 2: First Declension Chapter 2 covers the following: the term declension, the three basic qualities of Latin nouns, that is, case, number and gender, basic sentence structure, subject, verb, direct object and so on, the six cases of Latin nouns and the uses of those cases, the formation of the different cases in Latin, and the way adjectives agree with nouns. At the end of this lesson we’ll review the vocabulary you should memorize in this chapter. Declension. As with conjugation, the term declension has two meanings in Latin. It means, first, the process of joining a case ending onto a noun base. Second, it is a term used to refer to one of the five categories of nouns distinguished by the sound ending the noun base: /a/, /ŏ/ or /ŭ/, a consonant or /ĭ/, /ū/, /ē/. First, let’s look at the three basic characteristics of every Latin noun: case, number and gender. All Latin nouns and adjectives have these three grammatical qualities. First, case: how the noun functions in a sentence, that is, is it the subject, the direct object, the object of a preposition or any of many other uses? Second, number: singular or plural. And third, gender: masculine, feminine or neuter. Every noun in Latin will have one case, one number and one gender, and only one of each of these qualities. In other words, a noun in a sentence cannot be both singular and plural, or masculine and feminine. Whenever asked ─ and I will ask ─ you should be able to give the correct answer for all three qualities.
  • Introduction to Gothic

    Introduction to Gothic

    Introduction to Gothic By David Salo Organized to PDF by CommanderK Table of Contents 3..........................................................................................................INTRODUCTION 4...........................................................................................................I. Masculine 4...........................................................................................................II. Feminine 4..............................................................................................................III. Neuter 7........................................................................................................GOTHIC SOUNDS: 7............................................................................................................Consonants 8..................................................................................................................Vowels 9....................................................................................................................LESSON 1 9.................................................................................................Verbs: Strong verbs 9..........................................................................................................Present Stem 12.................................................................................................................Nouns 14...................................................................................................................LESSON 2 14...........................................................................................Strong
  • Serial Verb Constructions Revisited: a Case Study from Koro

    Serial Verb Constructions Revisited: a Case Study from Koro

    Serial Verb Constructions Revisited: A Case Study from Koro By Jessica Cleary-Kemp A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Associate Professor Lev D. Michael, Chair Assistant Professor Peter S. Jenks Professor William F. Hanks Summer 2015 © Copyright by Jessica Cleary-Kemp All Rights Reserved Abstract Serial Verb Constructions Revisited: A Case Study from Koro by Jessica Cleary-Kemp Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Berkeley Associate Professor Lev D. Michael, Chair In this dissertation a methodology for identifying and analyzing serial verb constructions (SVCs) is developed, and its application is exemplified through an analysis of SVCs in Koro, an Oceanic language of Papua New Guinea. SVCs involve two main verbs that form a single predicate and share at least one of their arguments. In addition, they have shared values for tense, aspect, and mood, and they denote a single event. The unique syntactic and semantic properties of SVCs present a number of theoretical challenges, and thus they have invited great interest from syntacticians and typologists alike. But characterizing the nature of SVCs and making generalizations about the typology of serializing languages has proven difficult. There is still debate about both the surface properties of SVCs and their underlying syntactic structure. The current work addresses some of these issues by approaching serialization from two angles: the typological and the language-specific. On the typological front, it refines the definition of ‘SVC’ and develops a principled set of cross-linguistically applicable diagnostics.
  • Objective and Subjective Genitives

    Objective and Subjective Genitives

    Objective and Subjective Genitives To this point, there have been three uses of the Genitive Case. They are possession, partitive, and description. Many genitives which have been termed possessive, however, actually are not. When a Genitive Case noun is paired with certain special nouns, the Genitive has a special relationship with the other noun, based on the relationship of a noun to a verb. Many English and Latin nouns are derived from verbs. For example, the word “love” can be used either as a verb or a noun. Its context tells us how it is being used. The patriot loves his country. The noun country is the Direct Object of the verb loves. The patriot has a great love of his country. The noun country is still the object of loving, but now loving is expressed as a noun. Thus, the genitive phrase of his country is called an Objective Genitive. You have actually seen a number of Objective Genitives. Another common example is Rex causam itineris docuit. The king explained the cause of the journey (the thing that caused the journey). Because “cause” can be either a noun or a verb, when it is used as a noun its Direct Object must be expressed in the Genitive Case. A number of Latin adjectives also govern Objective Genitives. For example, Vir miser cupidus pecuniae est. A miser is desirous of money. Some special nouns and adjectives in Latin take Objective Genitives which are more difficult to see and to translate. The adjective peritus, -a, - um, meaning “skilled” or “experienced,” is one of these: Nautae sunt periti navium.
  • Tagalog Pala: an Unsurprising Case of Mirativity

    Tagalog Pala: an Unsurprising Case of Mirativity

    Tagalog pala: an unsurprising case of mirativity Scott AnderBois Brown University Similar to many descriptions of miratives cross-linguistically, Schachter & Otanes(1972)’s clas- sic descriptive grammar of Tagalog describes the second position particle pala as “expressing mild surprise at new information, or an unexpected event or situation.” Drawing on recent work on mi- rativity in other languages, however, we show that this characterization needs to be refined in two ways. First, we show that while pala can be used in cases of surprise, pala itself merely encodes the speaker’s sudden revelation with the counterexpectational nature of surprise arising pragmatically or from other aspects of the sentence such as other particles and focus. Second, we present data from imperatives and interrogatives, arguing that this revelation need not concern ‘information’ per se, but rather the illocutionay update the sentence encodes. Finally, we explore the interactions between pala and other elements which express mirativity in some way and/or interact with the mirativity pala expresses. 1. Introduction Like many languages of the Philippines, Tagalog has a prominent set of discourse particles which express a variety of different evidential, attitudinal, illocutionary, and discourse-related meanings. Morphosyntactically, these particles have long been known to be second-position clitics, with a number of authors having explored fine-grained details of their distribution, rela- tive order, and the interaction of this with different types of sentences (e.g. Schachter & Otanes (1972), Billings & Konopasky(2003) Anderson(2005), Billings(2005) Kaufman(2010)). With a few recent exceptions, however, comparatively little has been said about the semantics/prag- matics of these different elements beyond Schachter & Otanes(1972)’s pioneering work (which is quite detailed given their broad scope of their work).
  • Nominative and Objective Cases Reteaching

    Nominative and Objective Cases Reteaching

    Name Date Lesson 1 Nominative and Objective Cases Reteaching Personal pronouns change form depending on how they function in a sentence. The form of a pronoun is called its case. The cases are nominative, objective, and possessive. Nominative Objective Possessive Singular First Person I me my, mine Second Person you you your, yours Third Person he, she, it him, her, it his, her, hers, its Plural First Person we us our, ours Second Person you you your, yours Third Person they them their, theirs The nominative form of a personal pronoun is used when the pronoun functions as a subject, as part of a compound subject, or as a predicate nominative. A pronoun used as a predicate nominative is called a predicate pronoun. It takes the nominative case. SUBJECT She is my mother’s niece. PART OF COMPOUND SUBJECT She and I are cousins. PREDICATE PRONOUN The cousin I most resemble is she. The objective form of a personal pronoun is used when the pronoun functions as a direct object, indirect object, or object of a preposition. Use it also when the pronoun is part of a compound object, or when it’s used with an infinitive. An infinitive is the base form of a verb preceded by the word to —to visit, to jog, to play. DIRECT OBJECT You can see her in these old family portraits. INDIRECT OBJECT My aunt sent me invitations to her wedding. OBJECT OF PREPOSITION A distant cousin has been searching for us. PART OF COMPOUND OBJECT My aunt reserved rooms for them and us.
  • Genitive Case

    Genitive Case

    GENITIVE CASE The Genitive is the third and last case existing in both English and Latin. In English, all pronouns have a genitive case that shows possession: "his", "her", "my", "their", "whose", etc. These answer the question "Belonging to whom or what?" Regular nouns in English also have a genitive form: in the singular, the ending "'s" is added; in the plural, s'. Consider the following examples: Their father is here. The man's father is here. The boys' father is here. In Latin, the Genitive case may also show possession. However, it may be used for some other things as well, as you will see later on. It's ending of course varies depending on the original ending of the noun: for a-nouns, the singular is -ae and the plural is -ārum; for both us- and um-nouns, the singular is -ī and the plural is - ōrum. Consider the following chart: Nominative, Accusative, and Genitive Cases a-nouns us-nouns um-nouns sg. pl. sg. pl. sg. pl. Nominative a ae us ī um a Accusative Genitive ae ārum ī ōrum ī ōrum A genitive is normally paired with another noun in the sentence which it modifies. In English, it is always placed immediately before the noun it modifies: for example, "my soup", "the boy's shirt", etc. But in Latin, a genitive may be placed either before or after the noun it modifies: for example, feminae panes, panes feminae. In fact, a genitive may occasionally even be separated by another word: panes sunt feminae. Also, keep in mind that the grammatical possession that the genitive case signifies is a fairly broad and vague connection.
  • From Latin to Romance: Case Loss and Preservation in Pronominal Systems

    From Latin to Romance: Case Loss and Preservation in Pronominal Systems

    FLORE Repository istituzionale dell'Università degli Studi di Firenze From Latin to Romance: case loss and preservation in pronominal systems Questa è la Versione finale referata (Post print/Accepted manuscript) della seguente pubblicazione: Original Citation: From Latin to Romance: case loss and preservation in pronominal systems / Manzini, MARIA RITA; Savoia, LEONARDO MARIA. - In: PROBUS. - ISSN 1613-4079. - STAMPA. - 26, 2(2014), pp. 217-248. Availability: This version is available at: 2158/891750 since: 2016-01-20T16:23:29Z Terms of use: Open Access La pubblicazione è resa disponibile sotto le norme e i termini della licenza di deposito, secondo quanto stabilito dalla Policy per l'accesso aperto dell'Università degli Studi di Firenze (https://www.sba.unifi.it/upload/policy-oa-2016-1.pdf) Publisher copyright claim: (Article begins on next page) 27 September 2021 Probus 2014; 26(2): 217 – 248 M. Rita Manzini* and Leonardo M. Savoia From Latin to Romance: case loss and preservation in pronominal systems Abstract: The evolution from Latin into Romance is marked by the loss of case in nominal declensions. In most Romance varieties, however, pronouns, specifi- cally in the 1st/2nd person singular, keep case differentiations. In some varieties 1st/2nd singular pronouns present a three-way case split, essentially the same re- constructed for proto-Romance (De Dardel and Gaeng 1992, Zamboni 1998). We document and analyze the current situation of Romance in the first part of the article (section 1). In the second part of the article we argue that the Dative Shifted distribution of loro in modern Italian, accounted for by means of the category of weak pronoun in Cardinaletti and Starke (1999), is best construed as a survival of oblique case in the 3rd person system (section 2).