Linguistik Aktuell Linguistics Today 252 Structuring Variation in Romance Linguistics and Beyond In honour of Leonardo M. Savoia Edited by Mirko Grimaldi Rosangela Lai Ludovico Franco Benedetta Baldi John Benjamins Publishing Company Structuring Variation in Romance Linguistics and Beyond Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today (LA) issn 0166-0829 Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today (LA) provides a platform for original monograph studies into synchronic and diachronic linguistics. Studies in LA confront empirical and theoretical problems as these are currently discussed in syntax, semantics, morphology, phonology, and systematic pragmatics with the aim to establish robust empirical generalizations within a universalistic perspective. For an overview of all books published in this series, please see http://benjamins.com/catalog/la Founding Editor Werner Abraham Universität Wien / Ludwig Maximilian Universität München General Editors Werner Abraham Elly van Gelderen Universität Wien / Arizona State University Ludwig Maximilian Universität München Advisory Editorial Board Josef Bayer Hubert Haider Ian Roberts University of Konstanz University of Salzburg Cambridge University Cedric Boeckx Terje Lohndal Lisa deMena Travis ICREA/UB Norwegian University of Science McGill University and Technology Guglielmo Cinque Sten Vikner University of Venice Christer Platzack University of Aarhus University of Lund Liliane Haegeman C. Jan-Wouter Zwart University of Ghent University of Groningen Volume 252 Structuring Variation in Romance Linguistics and Beyond In honour of Leonardo M. Savoia Edited by Mirko Grimaldi, Rosangela Lai, Ludovico Franco and Benedetta Baldi Structuring Variation in Romance Linguistics and Beyond In honour of Leonardo M. Savoia Edited by Mirko Grimaldi University of Salento Rosangela Lai University of Florence Ludovico Franco Nova University of Lisbon Benedetta Baldi University of Florence John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of 8 the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984. doi 10.1075/la.252 Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress: lccn 2018034776 (print) / 2018057881 (e-book) isbn 978 90 272 0190 4 (Hb) isbn 978 90 272 6317 9 (e-book) © 2018 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com Table of contents Chapter 1 Introduction: Structuring thought, externalizing structure: Variation and universals 1 M. Rita Manzini Part I. Micro‑ and macro‑variation in syntax Chapter 2 Gender, number and inflectional class in some Northern Italian dialects: The plural inflection ‑i and the interpretation of N morphology 31 Benedetta Baldi and Ludovico Franco Chapter 3 Objects and subjects in the left periphery: The case of a‑Topics 57 Adriana Belletti Chapter 4 Notes on infinitival relatives in Italian 73 Guglielmo Cinque and Paola Benincà Chapter 5 Negation and negative copulas in Bantu 85 Gloria Cocchi Chapter 6 On gender and number: A psycholinguistic review 97 Paolo Lorusso vi Structuring Variation in Romance Linguistics and Beyond Chapter 7 Micro‑ and macro‑variation: From pronominal allomorphies to the category of irreality/non‑veridicality 111 M. Rita Manzini Chapter 8 Concealed pseudo‑clefts? Evidence from a Lombard dialect 121 Diego Pescarini and Giulia Donzelli Chapter 9 Negation patterns across dialects 133 Cecilia Poletto and Michèle Oliviéri Chapter 10 A note on left‑peripheral maps and interface properties 149 Luigi Rizzi Chapter 11 Italian faire‑infinitives: The special case of volere 161 Norma Schifano and Michelle Sheehan Chapter 12 Optional vs obligatory movement in Albanian (pseudo)‑raising constructions 177 Giuseppina Turano Part II. Clitics and pronouns from a theoretical perspective Chapter 13 Clitic stress allomorphy in Sardinian 195 Laura Bafile and Rosangela Lai Chapter 14 Clitics and vowel epenthesis: A case study 215 Jacopo Garzonio and Silvia Rossi Chapter 15 Overabundance in Hungarian accusative pronouns 223 Maria Grossmann and Anna M. Thornton Table of contents vii Chapter 16 Unstable personal pronouns in Northern Logudorese 241 Michele Loporcaro, Serena Romagnoli and Mario Wild Chapter 17 Object clitics for subject clitics in Francoprovençal and Piedmontese 257 Ian Roberts Part III. Sound pattern and syntactic structure Chapter 18 Are Sardinian vocatives perfectly regular? 271 Franck Floricic and Lucia Molinu Chapter 19 Phonological correlates of syntactic structure: The distribution of raddoppiamento fonosintattico in Calabrian 283 Adam Ledgeway Chapter 20 Metaphony as magnetism 297 Marc van Oostendorp and Roberta D’Alessandro Chapter 21 Some reflections on the syllabification of clusters: A view from the dialects of Italy 307 Diana Passino Part IV. Language in context Chapter 22 Diachronic and synchronic lexical interactions in the Italo‑Balkan linguistic space: From Latin lucanĭca to Italo‑Albanian lëkëngë 323 Francesco Altimari viii Structuring Variation in Romance Linguistics and Beyond Chapter 23 Lexical‑semantic analysis of the political language: Studies between 1960 and 1980 337 Paola Desideri Chapter 24 Dialects and neuroscience: A first critical review 351 Mirko Grimaldi Chapter 25 Remarks on the vulnerability of grammar 365 Giovanna Marotta Chapter 26 Some Celto‑Albanian isoglosses and their implications 379 John Trumper Language index 391 Subject index 393 Chapter 1 Introduction: Structuring thought, externalizing structure Variation and universals M. Rita Manzini University of Florence The articles collected in this volume bear witness to the important role played by studies on language variation, specifically on Romance microvariation, in the development of formal approaches to language. Leonardo M. Savoia is a central figure in this endeavor, in the twin fields of phonology and morphosyntax. In this introductory chapter, I will briefly put research into (micro)variation in Romance and other language families in the context of the recent theoretical debate in generative grammar. Despite Savoia’s unrivalled expertise in field work and the prodigious number of data we owe to him, especially on Italian and Albanian varieties, it is only within a theoretical setting that his work is truly appreciated. I will conclude each section by illustrating how the themes explored therein resonate in the several contributions to the volume. 1. Is phonology different? Language externalizes thought, integrating cognitive processes as different as perception/articulation and categorization/inference into a single behavior. For Hauser et al. (2002) it is the Faculty of Language in the Narrow sense (FLN), es‑ sentially recursive syntactic computation, that represents the crucial innovation of human language. FLN recruits around itself preexisting conceptual‑intentional systems and sensory‑motor systems, yielding the Faculty of Language in the Broad sense (FLB). For Berwick and Chomsky (2011), Chomsky et al. (2018) external‑ ization (EXT) is the locus of variation, hence essentially morphonology and the lexicon, face to the universal nature of semantics (SEM) and syntax. This simple picture leaves a number of fundamental issues open. The most obvious one, concerns the relation of phonology to syntax. The history of gen‑ erative grammar leaves little doubt that phonology is a computational system. An early classical result is the cross‑domain application of key computational https://doi.org/10.1075/la.252.01rit © 2018 John Benjamins Publishing Company 2 M. Rita Manzini notions of locality, originally defined by the notion of cycle (Chomsky & Halle 1968; Chomsky 1973) currently by that of phase (Chomsky 2001; D’Alessandro & Scheer 2013; Newell & Piggott 2014). These are seen to constrain both syntactic operations (movement) and phonological ones. The phonological model that is most explicit in advocating a parallelism be‑ tween standard syntactic models (Chomsky 1981, 1995) and phonology is gov‑ ernment phonology, starting with the seminal work of Kaye et al. (1985, 1990) Most of Savoia’s phonological work is explicitly couched within the framework of government phonology, and in opposition (explicitly or implicitly) to richer frameworks, such as the long‑dominant Optimality Theory framework. Having co‑authored one of the most widely cited works on consonant weakening in the Italian and Romance domains (Giannelli & Savoia 1978, 1979–80), Savoia’s work on the phonology of Italian and Albanian varieties then came to focus especial‑ ly on the fine variation defined by the interaction between metrical and syllabic structure and vocalic realization with specific attention to harmonic processes, i.e. so‑called metaphony (Savoia 1990a, 1994a, 1997a, 2005; Savoia & Maiden 1997; Savoia & Marotta 1994). This work, using Italian (and Albanian) microvariation to pry some of the most classical problems in theoretical phonology, culminates in two recent monographs (Savoia 2014, 2015a) and in a spate of very recent articles (Savoia 2016; Savoia & Baldi 2016, 2017). Among the results that more strongly characterize Savoia’s phonological work is the treatment of metaphony within the government phonology framework. Metaphony is a vowel harmony phenomenon traditionally described as triggered by a final high vowel, though the latter is very often