Paolo Lorusso

• PhD Cognitive Science and Language - Comparative Languages, Literature and Culture
• Professor (Assistant) at University of Udine

In Italian, causatives are expressed through a periphrasis make + infinitival V. When the embedded verb is transitive, the embedded subject is generally introduced by a to/by preposition. For this reason, some scholars have analyzed causatives as a verbal complex with a single argument structure, involving a complex functional layer. In this paper,...

This book offers a comprehensive exploration of bilingualism and multilingualism, delving into topics such as code-switching, corpus linguistics, languages in contact, and language policies. Featuring chapters authored by participants of the International Summer School of Bilingualism and Multilingualism (ISSBM 2022), this collection showcases hete...

This paper explores the potential of multilingual practices in a multilingual classroom to facilitate the learning of linguistic theoretical tools and the development of metalinguistic thought. To teach linguistics to graduate students from diverse backgrounds, it is essential to provide a solid foundation of basic concepts, such as phonology, morp...

The present paper addresses the categorial content of affixes forming a set of denominal adjectives in Italian, arguing that they are substantially the derivational counterpart of oblique case/adpositions. Specifically, we argue that they act as elementary relators, following Manzini and Franco, who characterized oblique cases and prepositions as g...

Verbal Pseudo-Coordination (as in English ‘go and get’) has been described for a number of individual languages, but this is the first edited volume to emphasize this topic from a comparative perspective, and in connection to Multiple Agreement Constructions more generally. The chapters include detailed analyses of Romance, Germanic, Slavic and oth...

In this paper, we will provide a N-to-D analysis able to account for the punctual vs. habitual reading of proper temporal names in Italian, focusing on names of days, which clearly signal a difference in their possible aspectual encoding at the morphosyntactic level. When these items appear as adverbials modifying an event: i) such event is interp...

In this paper we describe the distribution of subject clitics in nominal copular constructions in the Veneto variety of Este (Padova province). In nominal copular sentences in a pro-drop language like Italian, the copula always agrees with the subject of the small clause both in canonical (preverbal NP subject) and in inverse (postverbal NP subject...

In Italian, relative clauses are syntactically ambiguous between a subject and an object reading when the subject and the object have the same number. In the absence of disambiguating cues, the parser analyzes the sentence as a subject relative clause, as subject relative clauses are easier to process than object relative clauses. However, the obje...

In this paper we argue that the fact that a verb can be interpreted as a manner or result predicate mainly depends on the properties of the syntactic structure in which (nominal) roots are incorporated. Specifically, we assume that the dichotomy between manner and result is an effect of the syntactic template in which a given root is inserted and,...

This work explores two kinds of asymmetries within the class of nominal copular (NC) constructions under the unified theory of copular sentences deriving the two basic configurations from a unique underlying structure via raising, namely canonical vs. inverse. Using acceptability judgments, we first tested wh- sub-extraction from both determiner ph...

In this paper we describe the distribution of propredicative clitics in nominal copular constructions across different Italo-romance varieties. Different lexical items are recruited from the lexicon to cliticize the predicative NP, all of them either lack inflection or show a neuter inflection: the ‘uninflected’ status of propredicatives, in fact,...

Dative adpositions instantiate part-whole/inclusion (⊆) relations that hold between the goal and the direct object in the thematic grids of ditransitives. We assume that the same primitive part-whole relation is found: i) when the dative adposition is used in locative contexts; ii) with genitive adpositions, as shown by the widespread genitive/dati...

Italian commonly introduces motion-to and state-in with two different adpositions, respectively a (at, to) and in (in) that can convey different locative flavors. We propose an account on their distribution in Italian built on the differences in the selectional restriction of each locative preposition: while a instantiates a terminal coincidence re...

In this volume scholars honor M. Rita Manzini for her contributions to the field of Generative Morphosyntax. The essays in this book celebrate her career by continuing to explore inter-area research in linguistics and by pursuing a broad comparative approach, investigating and comparing different languages and dialects.

Phonological regularities in a given language can be described as a set of formal rules applied to logical expressions (e.g., the value of a distinctive feature) or alternatively as distributional properties emerging from the phonetic substance. An indirect way to assess how phonology is represented in a speaker’s mind consists in testing how phono...

In this paper we discuss two types of nominal copular sentences (Canonical and Inverse, Moro 1997) and we demonstrate how the peculiarities of these two configurations are hardly considered by standard NLP tools that are currently publicly available. Here we show that example-based MT tools (e.g. Google Translate) as well as other NLP tools (UDpipe...

This paper explores the distribution of progressive aspect in some varieties of the Barese (dialect of Apulia). In many of these varieties the progressive is expressed through an aspectual inflected construction (in the terms of Manzini & Savoia 2005): it is formed from an inflected stative verb stɛ (=‘to stay’), a connecting element a (=‘to’) and...

Nominal copular sentences [DP V DP] can be distinguished in: canonical (1) subject+copula+predicative expression and inverse predicative expression-copula-subject (2) (Moro 1997). (1) [SubjDPThe picture]i is[SmallClause_ti[DPthe cause of the riot]]. (2) [PredDPThe cause of the riot]j is[SmallClause [SubjDPthe picture]_tj] Different syntactic as...

This paper explores the distribution of finite and non-finite constructions in the progressive periphrasis of (southeastern) Apulian varieties. The periphrases are formed by an inflected stay auxiliary, an optional connecting element a (=to) and an embedded verb which can be inflected or uninflected. Since progressives are commonly realized as loca...

In the theory of agreement developed by Chomsky (2000, 2001) φ features are undifferentiated, they are organized in a bundle of features, despite the intrinsically different information that each of them carries. However, while person is found to have an autonomous status in many psycholinguistic studies, number and gender show contrasting results:...

In this paper we will address the unusual behaviour of subject clitics (sbj.cl) in Pantiscu, which express a progressive aspect (Prog) value; to account for their puzzling shape, we will proposed that sbj.cl can be associated to aspectual features, following Manzini & Savoia (2002). To explain the non-compositional behaviour of the Pantiscu Prog pe...

In this paper we provide a comprehensive comparative overview of existentials sentences in Romance Creoles. Based on our empirical investigation, we also provide a theoretical analysis of existential constructions which mimic 'transitive' possession. Specifically, we assume that the pervasiveness of a predicative possession strategy for existential...

This dissertation aims at contributing to the discussion about the status of the computational mechanism of agreement and its role to the full interpretation of a sentence at the semantic interface (LF), as proposed by Chomsky (1995, 2000, 2001), Manzini & Savoia (2007,2011). The term agreement is traditionally used to refer to inflectional identit...

Italian is a pro drop language, since it allows subject drop and subject inversion. The pro-drop parameter is fixed early on (Orfitelli,2008), but both grammatical and informational factors might regulate the distribution of overt clausal subjects. On the grammatical side, the verb class influences the distribution of overt subjects: overt subjects...

In this paper, we address the morphosyntactic status of the adpositional morphemes surfacing in aspectual periphrases in Italian and beyond. We show that adposition-based aspectual periphrases share a primitive relation of ‘part-whole/inclusion’ (the same (⊆) relation which is at work with datives/genitives) of an event within a set of events or, a...

This book presents theoretical and experimental analyses of the nature of early verbs. At around the age of two years old, children start to combine words and produce their first verbs. Verbal items appear later than nouns in a child’s speech and refer to the relational concepts in the world that are represented in syntax through the argument struc...

Italian relative clauses (RCs) are ambiguous between subject and object RCs since Italian permits post-verbal subjects. In the absence of disambiguating cues, the parser au-tomatically engages in a subject RC analysis. Two grammatical cues have been shown to trigger an object RC reanalysis: i) word order (OSV), and ii) number agreement (e.g., O-SG...

In dialects of Apulia, Calabria and Sicily a restricted number of verbs, including 'stay/be', 'go', 'come' and 'want' embed finite complements, either bare or introduced by a. One aim of the present work is to make the corpus of data in Manzini and Savoia (2005) accessible in English. The corpus displays a certain amount of microparametric variatio...

In this paper we analyze the different patterns of agreement found cross-linguistically with complex NPs involving an approximate numeral/quantifiers and a preposition, which selects an embedded NP. Verbal agreement can target either the numeral item/quantifier or the embedded NP. Languages differ on whether they allow agreement just with the quant...

In this paper we will analyse the production and interpretation of the forms of the present perfect (passato prossimo) in children’s Italian. Young children use past or perfective forms mainly to refer to telic predicates and present or imperfective forms mainly to refer to atelic predicates: the Aspect First Hypothesis (Antonucci and Miller 1976)....

Verbs are produced in different clausal configurations: they differ for the number of arguments and for the underlying syntactic representations. In the traditional definition of (Perlmutter 1978) in (1) verb classes are distinguished by the loci of generation of the subjects. The main purpose of this study is to identify the structural characteris...

The distribution of the subjects in early Italian productions is used to retrieve information about the grammatical knowledge of children. We performed a cross-sectional study of 59 children’s productions (age 22/35 months) and a longitudinal study of 4 children’s utterances (age 18/39 months). The subject use is analysed in * copula versus lexical...

In this study we will investigate distribution of grammatical subjects related to verb class in early Italian sentences, in adult speakers and in aphasic productions. We looked at subject's positions and pro drop, agreement playing an important role to identify the content of the empty category. Subject phrases do not seem to have the same distribu...