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- Title
The Interclausal Relations Hierarchy vis-à-vis the data of eight Sardinian complex predicates.
- Authors
CASTI, FRANCESCO
- Abstract
The aim of this paper is to examine the linguistic properties of eight Sardinian complex predicates and thus to verify if they respect the rationale of the Interclausal Relations Hierarchy, an interlinguistic hierarchy which ranks complex predicates according to both their semantic and syntactic degree of cohesion. This hierarchy has been conceived of inside the linguistic framework of Role and Reference Grammar theory (van Valin 2005 and van Valin and LaPolla 1997) and its prediction is that the tightest syntactic linkage realising a particular semantic relation should be tighter than the tightest syntactic linkage realising looser semantic relations. The complex predicates I analysed are: (i) Camp(idanese) ai / Log(udorese)-Nu(orese) àere a + inf(initive), lit. ‘have to’ + inf., expressing future time reference; (ii) Camp. dèppi(ri) / Log.-Nu. dèvere/ dèppere + inf., lit. ‘must' + inf., conveying both deontic modality and future time reference; (iii) Camp. fai / Log.-Nu. fàghere/fàchere a + inf., lit. ‘do to’ + inf., with the sense of ‘being possible/able/allowed to do something'; (iv) Camp. fai / Log.-Nu. fàghere/fàchere + inf., lit. ‘do’ + inf., is a causative construction; (v) Camp. lassai / Log.-Nu. lassare + inf., lit. ‘let' + inf., is another causative construction; (vi) Camp. torrai a/po / Log.-Nu. torrare a/pro + inf., lit. ‘return to’ + inf., meaning both ‘go back' with both prepositions a / po/pro and ‘do again', with reiterative sense, with the only preposition a; (vii) Camp. andai / Log.Nu. andare a + inf., meaning ‘go to’ + inf., with purposive value; (viii) Camp. (am)megai / Log.-Nu. (am)megare de/a + inf., whose etymology is still uncertain and under debate (see, for instance, Blasco Ferrer 1991 or 2002 and Casti 2012). Originally, the construction would have indicated ‘pretend', ‘threaten' or ‘have an aim', but nowadays conveys progressive aspect of the ‘to be doing' type, or the nuance of ‘intending to do something'. The fact that the construction expresses progressive aspect means that it is rather up in the hierarchy; however, its degree of syntactic cohesion is instead quite low in the same hierarchy, especially if compared to its degree of semantic cohesion. This construction represents the most striking exception to the rationale of the hierarchy. I thus tried to explain this exception by stating that the semantics of this complex predicate has developed more rapidly than its syntax, which has crystallised in diachrony. Another minor exception to the prediction of this hierarchy is that of deontic dèppi(ri) / dèvere/dèppere, which is semantically lower than the majority of the other constructions, but is more cohesive than them from a syntactic point of view. Despite these exceptions, I can state that Role and Reference Grammar is a linguistic theory that described well the linguistic peculiarities of the eight complex predicates examined in this work, and, signally, the Interclausal Relations Hierarchy turned to be an efficient means to ‘graduate’ and thus rank these complex predicates in line with both the semantic and syntactic properties they have shown.
- Subjects
SARDINIAN language; PHONOLOGY; LINGUISTIC typology; SEMANTICS; SYNTAX (Grammar)
- Publication
L'Italia Dialettale: Rivista di Dialettologia Italiana, 2017, Vol 78, p35
- ISSN
0085-2295
- Publication type
Article