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Space in Diachrony
Edited by Silvia Luraghi, Tatiana Nikitina and Chiara Zanchi
[Studies in Language Companion Series 188] 2017
► pp. 281–304

Asymmetries in path encoding in Sicilian

A diachronic overview

| University of Palermo, Italy
| University of Palermo, Italy
This paper proposes a description of the encoding of path within the system of the spatial relations in present-day Sicilian, with a retrospective glance to the diachronic developments of that system. Two features characterize the spatial relations in present-day Sicilian: (a) consistent with a cross-linguistic tendency, the relation between source and direction is asymmetric, as the latter receives a richer and more fine-grained expression; moreover, direction may conflate into locative expression; (b) in contrast with a cross-linguistic tendency, which predicts a lower degree of autonomy for path, this role has a dedicated preposition and makes use of a non-prepositional strategy, namely a reduplicative construction expressing the spatial extension through which the event is brought about. The diachronic development of present-day system has been reconstructed by means of the scrutiny of corpus data from 14th to 19th centuries. This analysis has shown a substantial consistency in the encoding of spatial relations over time, although a certain degree of variation of the linguistic means expressing them.
Keywords: Sicilian, spatial relations, Path, Location, Direction, Source
Article outline
  • 1.Spatial relation in Sicilian: Preliminary remarks
  • 2.Source vs. Direction (and Location)
    • 2.1Source
    • 2.2Location and direction
      • 2.2.1Diachronic perspectives
  • 3.Path
    • 3.1The preposition (p)pi ‘through’
    • 3.2The locative preposition nn(i) ‘in, inside’
    • 3.3Nominal reduplication
    • 3.4Diachronic perspectives
  • 4.Spatial relation in Sicilian: A systematization
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Primary sources
  • References
Published online: 14 August 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.188.10bru
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