Greek and Romance in Southern Italy: history and contact in nominal structures
Cristina Guardiano (Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, [email protected])
Melita Stavrou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, [email protected])
Domain of research. The present work investigates some aspects of the syntax of nominal structures in the
two minority varieties of Greek spoken in Salento (henceforth Grico) and in Southern Calabria (henceforth
Bovese), which we compare to three Romance dialects, namely Sicilian, Salentino and Northern Calabrian,
along with Greek, Italian, and a selection of attested ancient varieties. In particular, the structures associated
with adjectival modification will be explored. It will be shown that the observable behavior of the adjectives
in the Greek and Romance varieties under analysis derives from a non-trivial interaction of phenomena
associated with both historical (genealogical) change and contact-induced (horizontal) variation.
Theoretical background. According to some recent analyses (Guardiano 2006, Alexiadou, Haegeman and
Stavrou 2007) of the Greek Determiner Phrase (DP), adnominal adjectives are unexceptionally prenominal,
despite some apparent evidence to the contrary, that is: (a) in definite DPs adjectives occur postnominally
only with their own definite article, (b) in indefinite DPs postnominal adjectives occur unarticulated.
(1)
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
to kalò pedì
* to pedì kalò
to pedì to kalò
ena kalò pedì
ena pedì kalò
It has been shown (Alexiadou and Wilder 1998; Kolliakou 2004; Campos and Stavrou 2004) that
articulated adjectives like those in (1)c, constituting the phenomenon so-called polydefiniteness or
determiner spread, as well as postnominal adjectives in indefinite DPs like those in (1)e, have a number
of properties setting them apart from ordinary modification of nouns by prenominal adjectives. One
more relevant claim is that the so-called polydefinite construction corresponds to postnominal
adjectives in Italian primarily in terms of interpretation (Alexiadou, Haegeman and Stavrou 2007).
According to the data collected in various works (Manolessou 2000; Guardiano 2003, 2006; Bakker
2009), the ancient varieties of Greek, starting at least from Classical Attic, show a completely
overlapping distribution. In Italian, among structured adjectives (Longobardi 2001), Speaker-Oriented
and (a subclass of) Manner adjectives only can be prenominal; all other classes surface postnominally:
(2)
a.
b.
la bella nuova macchina blu tedesca
*la bella nuova blu tedesca macchina
Furthermore, as mentioned, almost all adjectives (no matter of their class, with a few exceptions) also
occur into a non-structured postnominal projection, that can crosslinguistically be associated to that
where Greek polydefinite constructions occur. It has been shown (Bernstein 1991, 1993; Crisma 1993,
1995; Longobardi 2001, a.o.), that the behavior of structured adjectives is variable across Romance, by
virtue of the constraints on noun movement, while the postnominal non structured position seems to be
uniformly available across the group.
Data. In the Southern Italian dialects we consider, the adjectives which can occur prenominally are restricted
to the class of so-called ‘high’ adjectives, more specifically to adjectives like bello/brutto and their variants
and synonyms; all other adjectives (with the exception of numerals) are postnominal (Guardiano 2011):
(3)
(4)
(5)
a (bella/bedda) màkina nòa (bblu teteska) vs. *a nòa màkina
a (bbella/bbeda) machina nova (bblu teteska) vs. *a nova machina
a (bbella) mach∂na nova (blu tedesca) vs. *a nova mach∂na
(Salentino)
(Sicilian)
(Calabrian)
1
Grico behaves exactly like these three dialects: only orrio (‘nice/beautiful’) and its antonyms/synonyms
occur prenominally; all the other adjectives (with the exception of numerals) are postnominal, with no
determiner spreading, precisely like in the neighboring Romance varieties (the data come from onpurpose interviews with a native speaker, and from available written sources):
(6)
a.
b.
melètisa ton orrio libbro (I read the beautiful book)
ida ton àntrepo giòveno vs. *ida ton giòveno àntrepo (I saw the young man)
In Bovese, things are rather complex: apart from numerals, only the equivalent of nice/bad and the adjective liga
(i.e. ‘a few’) are prenominal; all the other adjectives are postnominal but, in contrast with Grico, always
articulated in definite DPs, just as in (all the other varieties of) Greek (the data come from written sources only):
(7)
a.
b.
c.
sas afìnno tin galìn iγia (I leave the good health to you)
kanni brute vrondaδe (bad thunders happen)
ta cèrata ta makrìa vs. *ta makrìa cèrata
vs. *ta cèrata makrìa (the long horns)
Postnominal adjectives occur without their own article only in indefinite DPs and in predicative position:
(8)
a.
b.
efaγa stafilla aplera (I ate unripe grapes)
an èhete tin akoìn galì, kùnnete (if you have the hearing good, listen)
Proposal. In the Southern Romance dialects the constraints on the position of the noun in the DP minimally
differ from those which have been explored in standard Italian and in other Romance varieties: the noun
moves across all structured adjectives, but the highest ones; apparently, such a pattern was adopted as a whole
by Grico (presumably induced by the massive lexical borrowing of adjectives from the surrounding varieties),
while Bovese seems to maintain a ‘mixed’ system. In particular, although in Bovese clear effects of the
contact with the Romance system are visible both in the lexicon and in the syntax (adjectives are massively
borrowed from Romance and are consistently postnominal, so apparently the constraints on noun movement
are of the ‘Romance’ type here too), this variety displays the Greek pattern as well, because postnominal
adjectives are always articulated, as is the case in standard Greek and in other Greek dialectal varieties. This
pattern of Bovese turns out to be aberrant. This is not surprising, considering the sociolinguistic factors
affecting the variety: if at all, Bovese is now spoken by elderly people only, and it is not learned anymore by
younger speakers, who are taught standard Greek (at school by Greek teachers); the language is maintained as
a symbol of cultural heritage and for the transmission of folkloristic memories.
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