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Article published In:
Latin influence on the syntax of the languages of Europe
Edited by Bert Cornillie and Bridget Drinka
[Belgian Journal of Linguistics 33] 2019
► pp. 11–42

On the notion of linguistic influence in syntax

Evidence from medieval Italo-Romance texts

| Università di Napoli “Federico II”

This paper tackles the topic of Latin influence on Italo-Romance syntax by addressing the question how to combine the analysis of structural data with socio-historical reflections. It views the genre and discourse tradition of a given medieval text as governing the extent to which Latin is used as a model in this text. The paper proposes a methodology which incorporates consideration of the historical, cultural, and sociolinguistic context of language change, focusing on evidence from the development of present participles in Italo-Romance. The main conclusion is that, rather than talking about the general influence of Latin syntax on Italian, we should be examining the influence of particular Latin models on the syntax of different texts written in Italo-Romance varieties in a given historical period.

Keywords: medieval Italo-romance syntax, Latin syntax, language contact, syntactic influence, Latin influence
Article outline
  • 1.Main aims and structure of the paper
  • 2.Language contact and the syntax of medieval Romance languages
    • 2.1Latin and the syntax of the Romance languages: Methodological premises and general remarks
    • 2.2Latin and Romance in contact: On linguistic influence and grammatical borrowing
    • 2.3Latin and the development of the syntax of the (written varieties of the) Romance languages in the Middle Ages: Theoretical assumptions
  • 3.Aspects of the use of the present participle with verbal functions in Italo-Romance texts written in the Middle Ages
    • 3.1Present participles in Italo-Romance varieties: A brief research-article
    • 3.2Present participles governed by perception predicates in Latin and Italo-Romance texts
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 March 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.00021.gre
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