RoLinC Talk: Roberta D’Alessandro

Roberta D’Alessandro (ILS, UU) will be giving the next Romance Linguistics Circle talk, entitled Honorificity, phi-agreement and an inside-view on pronouns and referentiality. The case of Italian voi and lei. The talk will take place on the 14th of May at 1pm.

Abstract

Honorifics are not as widely present in Romance languages as they are in several Asian languages. However, they are equally relevant when trying to identify the internal structure of pronouns. Italian features two main honorary pronouns: lei and voi: by examining their agreement patterns and syntactic behavior, it will be shown that their rather complex (and non-homogeneous) agreement patterns result from the interaction of an HON feature with other phi-features. It will be shown that HON is related to gender, and that it is not a purely deictic feature. Finally, by examining ongoing changes in the use of honorific pronouns, conclusions will be drawn regarding the directionality of language change and the relevance of phase edges as loci where narrow syntax “communicates” with its interface systems. Honorificity will be shown to be similar to prosody in targeting phase edges and being external to the core pronominal (or verbal, in the case of prosody) structure.

If you wish to attend, please register here