Adjective-Noun combinations in Romance and Greek of Southern Italy

Cristina Guardiano,Melita Stavrou

doi:10.1163/15699846-01901001

Abstract

AbstractThis paper investigates aspects of adjectival modification in Romance and Greek of Southern Italy. In Italiot Greek, prenominal adjectives obey restrictions that do not exist in Standard Modern Greek, where all types of adjectives are allowed in prenominal position. As far as postnominal adjectives are concerned, in the textual tradition of Calabria Greek there is evidence of postnominal adjectives systematically articulated in definite nominal structures (henceforth DP s), in a structure similar to the so-called polydefinite construction that is typical of Standard Modern Greek (and of Greek in general since ancient times). Some residual evidence of such a construction is also found in Salento. Yet, in the varieties currently spoken in the two areas, postnominal adjectives are never articulated. The paper explores these patterns, with particular attention to the mechanisms potentially responsible for the loss of polydefiniteness.

Highlights

This study investigates aspects of adjectival modification in Italiot Greek
Guardiano & Stavrou (2014) have shown that in Italiot Greek, adjectival modifiers differ in at least two ways from Standard Modern Greek: (1) adjectives are predominantly postnominal; (2) in Salento Greek, postnominal adjectives do not take their own article in definite DP s; some varieties of Calabria Greek, instead, exhibit articulated postnominal adjectives: Guardiano & Stavrou (2014) interpret them as a sign of high resistance to change
We presented some patterns of adjectival modification visible in Romance and in Greek of Southern Italy, and we proposed a syntactic account of those patterns

Summary

Introduction

This study investigates aspects of adjectival modification in Italiot Greek. We focus on the dialects spoken in Grecìa Salentina ( Salento Greek) and Bovesìa ( Calabria Greek), and compare them with Southern Italo-Romance and Standard Modern Greek. We add to this picture a set of data collected from speakers of Calabria Greek, where there are no polydefinite structures with postnominal adjectives in definite DP s This suggests that the written varieties explored by Guardiano & Stavrou (2014) retain a pattern that was lost in more recent days, and presumably instantiate the “missing link” between the Greek system (as represented by Ancient Greek and Standard Modern Greek) and the new system observed in present day Italiot Greek, that is in turn identical to (Southern Italo-)Romance. It has been claimed that, in Standard Modern Greek, direct modification adjectives, which are linearized prenominally, most likely originate prenominally (Cinque 2010, Alexiadou et al 2007) In such a configuration, concord in phi-features, definiteness and case between the adjective and the noun is obtained through the Spec-Head relation (Giusti 2008, 2009, 2011). By using the term “direct modification”, Sproat & Shih refer to an adjective directly modifying the noun, without the

For Calabria Greek

Towards an analysis

Conclusion