Master’s Degree in Language Sciences Final Thesis The Expression of Indefiniteness in Italo-Ferrarese Bilectal Speakers Supervisor Prof. Anna Cardinaletti Assistant supervisors Prof. Giuliana Giusti Dr. Gianluca Lebani Graduand Cristina Procentese Matriculation number 857274 Academic Year 2019 / 2020 Table of contents Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................1 Introduction .............................................................................................................3 1. Bilectalism in Italy: an integrated approach ...................................................11 1.1 The Italian sociolinguistic situation: an overview...............................................................11 1.1.1 The varieties of Italian: axes of variation ..............................................11 1.1.2 The nature of the Italian continuum .......................................................13 1.1.3 The diatopic dimension ..........................................................................14 1.1.4 Italo-Romance dialects: distribution, classification and variation .........15 1.2 The perspective of contact linguistics ..........................................................18 1.2.1 Contact situations: the case of Italy .......................................................18 1.2.2 Geographical diffusion and leveling ......................................................19 1.2.3 Stability divergence and convergence ...................................................20 1.2.4 Transfer of morphology and facilitating factors ....................................21 1.3 Bilectalism in Italo-Romance speakers .......................................................22 1.3.1 Bilingualism, Bidialectalism and bilectalism: terminological issues ..23 1.3.2 The notion of grammar .......................................................................23 1.3.3 Theories for bilectal grammars of Italo-Romance speakers ...............26 1.4 Summary .......................................................................................................29 2. Current studies on partitivity, pseudo-partitivity and indefiniteness ..........31 2.1 Partitive elements: definition and typological distribution .........................31 2.1.1 Partitive elements: a definition ...........................................................31 2.1.2 PE across European languages............................................................33 2.2 Relevant issues related to indefiniteness in Italo-Romance .......................35 2.2.1 Areal issues .........................................................................................35 2.2.1.1 Indefinite determiners in Italo-Romance .......................................36 2.2.2 Formal issues ......................................................................................42 2.2.2.1 Indefinite determiners in Italo-Romance: syntax ...........................42 2.2.2.2 Semantic and sentential features interacting with indefiniteness ..46 2.2.2.2.1. Argument position .................................................................46 2.2.2.2.2. Aspect ....................................................................................50 2.2.2.2.3. Polarity and scope ..................................................................51 2.2.2.2.4. Clause type .............................................................................58 2.2.2.2.5. Noun classes ...........................................................................60 2.2.2.2.6. Semantic specialization ..........................................................62 2.2.2.3 Indefinite determiners and CLLD in Italian and French ................64 2.2.2.3.1 Main properties of CLLD ......................................................65 2.2.2.3.2 Direct case clitics and quantitative clitics ..............................68 2.2.2.3.3 CLLD and scope ....................................................................70 2.3 Summary .......................................................................................................71 3. The Ferrarese dialect ........................................................................................73 3.1 Geographical and sociolinguistic background ............................................73 3.1.1 Emilia-Romagna region and dialect division ......................................73 3.1.2 The province of Ferrara ......................................................................75 3.2 Origins, classification, and contacts ............................................................76 3.3 The expression of indefiniteness in Ferrarese ............................................79 3.4 Phonological aspects of Ferrarese ..............................................................80 3.4.1 The phonosyntax of Ferrarese: insertion of “moving” vowels ...........81 3.4.2 Allomorphs of the preposition d .........................................................82 3.4.3 Allomorphs of the definite article .......................................................82 3.4.4 Allomorphs of the partitive determiner ...............................................83 3.4.5 Allomorphs of subject and object clitics .............................................83 3.4.6 Allomorphs of the quantitative clitic ..................................................87 3.5 Clitic Left Dislocation in Ferrarese .............................................................87 3.5.1 Accusative clitics ................................................................................89 3.5.2 Nominative clitics ...............................................................................90 3.5.3 Quantitative clitics ..............................................................................91 3.6 Summary .......................................................................................................92 4. The research .......................................................................................................95 4.1 Method ..........................................................................................................95 4.1.1 Participants .........................................................................................95 4.1.1.1 Sociolinguistic profile ....................................................................95 4.1.1.2 Bilingual profile .............................................................................98 4.1.2 Materials ...........................................................................................102 4.1.2.1 Socio-demographic questions ......................................................102 4.1.2.2 BLP: adaptation and scoring ........................................................104 4.1.2.3 Stimuli .........................................................................................107 4.1.3 Procedure ..........................................................................................114 4.1.4 Statistical analysis .............................................................................117 4.1.5 Ethical issues ....................................................................................118 4.2 Results .........................................................................................................119 4.2.1. Judgments’ distribution: the acceptance rates ........................................119 4.2.2. Probability of acceptability according to the best predictors .................125 4.2.3. Optionality and semantic specialization.................................................136 4.3 Discussion ...................................................................................................147 4.3.1 Indefinite determiners in Italian and Ferrarese .................................147 4.3.1.1. Clitic Left Dislocation .................................................................151 4.3.2 The effect of the BLP score ..............................................................154 4.3.3 The grammar of bilectal Italo-Ferrarese speakers.............................154 4.3.4 Methodological remarks: the limits of our research .........................155 Conclusions ..........................................................................................................157 References ............................................................................................................161 Acknowledgements I would like to express my deep gratitude to my thesis supervisor Anna Cardinaletti, who guided me with patience and precision throughout all phases of this research. I particularly appreciated her guidance at the very early stages of the project, by which I was inspired and thanks to which I was able to reach the present outcome. I would also like to thank Giuliana Giusti, who introduced me to the web-based tool Qualtrics and provided me valuable feedback on the research results. A special thank goes to Gianluca Lebani as well, whose contribution, assistance and kind support were fundamental during statistical analysis. I am grateful to all three of them for having given me the opportunity to contribute to the VariOpInTA (Variazione e Opzionalità in Italoromanzo) project, which was an enreaching experience form both a professional and personal point of view. I am deeply grateful to my parents, who have never stopped believing in me and encouraging me to follow my passions. A special thank goes to my best informants, Marco, Cosetta and Chiara, who taught