A Grammar of Piedmontese: A Minority Language of Northwest Italy (Grammars and Sketches of the World's Languages / Romance Languages)

The first comprehensive and linguistically updated grammar of Piedmontese, a threatened language of northwest Italy. This thorough description covers the phonology, morphology, syntax, pragmatics and typology of koine Piedmontese. ‎Contents ‎Conventions, Glosses and Symbols ‎Maps of Place Names in Piedmont Mentioned in the Grammar ‎Maps, Tables and Figures ‎Chapter 1. The Language and Its History, Classification and Variation ‎1.1. Overview: Language and Speakers ‎1.2. Disentangling Classification and Ideology ‎1.3. The Dialects of Piedmontese: Features and Classification ‎1.4. The Internal Classification of the Piedmontese Varieties ‎1.5. Social Varieties in Old Piedmontese ‎1.6. The Speech of the Piedmontese Jews, Sinti and Waldensians ‎1.7. A Short Linguistic History of Piedmont ‎1.7.1. From the Origins to the 17th Century ‎1.7.2. The 18th Century ‎1.7.3. The 19th Century ‎1.7.4. The Contemporary Age ‎1.8. An Outline of Piedmontese Literature ‎1.8.1. From the Origins to the 17th Century ‎1.8.2. The 18th Century ‎1.8.3. The 19th Century ‎1.8.4. The Contemporary Scene ‎Chapter 2. Phonetics and Phonology ‎2.1. Default Articulation of Phonemes ‎2.2. Loan Phonemes, Borrowing and Adaptation ‎2.3. Previous Accounts of the Phonology of Piedmontese ‎2.4. Phonetic Processes ‎2.4.1. Vowels ‎2.4.2. Approximants ‎2.4.3. Final Devoicing ‎2.4.4. Nasals and the Status of /ŋ/ ‎2.4.5. Sibilants ‎2.5. Positional Restrictions on the Occurrence of Phonemes ‎2.5.1. Consonants ‎2.5.2. Vowels ‎2.6. Syllables ‎2.7. Clusters ‎2.7.1. Sequences of Vocoids ‎2.7.2. Consonant Clusters ‎2.8. Length ‎2.9. Stress ‎2.10. Pitch and Intonation ‎Chapter 3. Writing System and Orthography ‎3.1. Overview ‎3.1.1. Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondences ‎3.1.2. Bigraphemes ‎3.1.3. Allographs ‎3.1.4. Phoneme-Spelling Correspondence ‎3.1.5. Prosthetic ⟨ë⟩ ‎3.1.6. Other Graphic Symbols ‎3.2. History ‎3.2.1. First Attestations and Fluctuations in the Early Modern Period ‎3.2.2. 18th Century Stabilization ‎3.2.3. The ortografia moderna ‎3.3. Evaluation ‎3.3.1. Appropriateness ‎3.3.2. Effectiveness ‎3.3.3. Conclusions ‎Chapter 4. Words, Word Constituents and Word Classes ‎4.1. Roots, Stems, Words, Affixes and Clitics ‎4.1.1. Roots and Stems ‎4.1.2. Words ‎4.1.3. Affixes ‎4.1.4. Clitics ‎4.1.5. Canonical Form of Words and Palindromes ‎4.2. Morphological Mechanisms ‎4.3. Suppletion ‎4.4. Syncretism ‎4.5. Word Classes ‎Chapter 5. Nouns ‎5.1. Overview ‎5.2. Gender ‎5.2.1. Inherent Gender ‎5.2.2. Gender Inflection ‎5.3. Number ‎5.4. Derivational Morphology of Nouns ‎5.4.1. Zero-Derivation ‎5.4.2. Suffixal Derivation ‎5.4.3. Prefixation ‎5.4.4. Compound Nouns ‎Chapter 6. Adjectives ‎6.1. Overview ‎6.2. Semantics of Adjectives ‎6.3. Morphology of Adjectives ‎6.3.1. L-ending Adjectives ‎6.3.2. Allomorphic Variation in the Stem ‎6.3.3. Prenominal Position and Syntactically-Governed Allomorphs ‎6.4. Comparative Constructions ‎6.4.1. Equative and Similative Constructions ‎6.4.2. Superlative and Elative Constructions ‎6.5. Adjectives as Nouns ‎6.6. Derivational Morphology of Adjectives ‎6.6.1. Derivational Suffixes ‎6.6.2. Prefixation ‎Chapter 7. Personal Pronouns ‎7.1. Overview ‎7.2. Independent Personal Pronouns ‎7.2.1. Independent Status ‎7.2.2. The Exclusive Pronouns ‎7.2.3. Third Persons and Deictic Extensions ‎7.2.4. Use of the Independent Pronouns ‎7.2.5. Use of the Independent Pronouns as Politeness Markers ‎7.3. Subject Clitic Personal Pronouns ‎7.4. Non-subject Personal Pronouns: Object and Indirect Object ‎7.5. Interrogative Subject Clitics ‎7.6. Reflexive, Reciprocal and Impersonal Personal Pronouns ‎7.7. Attributive Pronoun ‎7.8. Lexicalized Verb-Clitic Constructions ‎7.9. Post-Tonic Vowel Dropping ‎7.10. Sequences of Clitics ‎Chapter 8. Grounding and Deixis ‎8.1. Overview ‎8.2. Determiners and Classifiers ‎8.2.1. Semantics of the Determiners ‎8.2.2. Semantics of the Classifiers ‎8.2.3. Morphonology of the Determiners and the Classifiers ‎8.3. Deixis ‎8.3.1. Spatial Frame of Reference ‎8.3.2. The Deictics: An Overview ‎8.3.3. Spatial Deixis ‎8.3.4. The Demonstrative System: Deixis in Grounding ‎8.3.5. Adnominal Demonstratives ‎8.3.6. Pronominal Demonstratives ‎8.3.7. Intersubjective Use and Other Uses of the Demonstratives ‎8.4. Possessives ‎Chapter 9. Quantifiers ‎9.1. Numerals ‎9.1.1. Cardinals ‎9.1.2. Ordinals ‎9.1.3. Numerals-Derived Nouns ‎9.1.4. A Note on Finger-Counting ‎9.2. Generic Quantifiers ‎9.3. Negative Quantifiers ‎9.4. Interrogative Quantifiers ‎9.5. Quantificational Nouns ‎Chapter 10. Verbs ‎10.1. Semantic Overview ‎10.1.1. Labiles and Inherent Reflexives ‎10.2. Morphological Overview ‎10.2.1. Morphological Classes: Previous Studies ‎10.2.2. The First Verbal Class ‎10.2.3. The Second Verbal Class ‎10.2.4. Irregular Verbs ‎10.2.5. The Paradigms ‎10.2.6. Compound Paradigms: An Overview ‎10.3. Affixes, Allomorphy and Syncretism ‎10.4. Historical and Comparative Notes ‎10.4.1. First Person Singular ‎10.4.2. Second Person Singular ‎10.4.3. Third Person Singular ‎10.4.4. First Person Plural ‎10.4.5. Second Person Plural ‎10.4.6. Third Person Plural ‎10.4.7. Beyond Piedmontese ‎10.5. Moods and Tenses ‎10.5.1. Main ‎10.5.2. The Subjunctive ‎10.5.3. The Dubitative ‎10.5.4. The Conditional ‎10.5.5. The Imperative ‎10.5.6. The Infinitive ‎10.5.7. The Gerund ‎10.5.8. The Participle ‎10.6. Use of the Auxiliaries ‎10.6.1. Past: Active ‎10.6.2. Past: Reflexive ‎10.6.3. Passive ‎10.7. Verbal Derivation ‎Chapter 11. Verbal Periphrases and Modalities ‎11.1. Valency-Increasing Operation, 1: Causative ‎11.2. Valency-Increasing Operation, 2: Permissive ‎11.3. Valency-Increasing Operation, 3: Middle ‎11.4. Modal Verbs ‎11.5. Progressive and Continuous ‎11.6. Imminential ‎11.7. Inchoative ‎11.8. Durative ‎11.9. Terminative ‎11.10. Immediative ‎11.11. Iterative ‎Chapter 12. Adverbs ‎12.1. Overview ‎12.1.1. Terminology and Prototypicality ‎12.2. Predicate Adverbs ‎12.2.1. Manner Adverbs ‎12.2.2. Phasal and Aspectual Adverbs ‎12.2.3. Intensity Adverbs ‎12.3. Degree Adverbs and Focalizers ‎12.4. Sentence Adverbs ‎12.4.1. Setting and Directional Adverbials ‎12.4.2. Other Sentence Adverbs ‎12.5. Linking Adverbs ‎12.6. Adverb Formation Rules and Productivity ‎Chapter 13. Prepositions and Prepositional Phrases ‎13.1. The Expression of Location and Movement in Verbs ‎13.2. Basic Prepositions ‎13.2.1. Adessive a ‎13.2.2. Inessive an ‎13.2.3. Ablative da ‎13.2.4. Benefactive për ‎13.2.5. Comitative con ‎13.2.6. Combinations of Prepositions ‎13.3. Non-basic Prepositions ‎13.3.1. Superessive su ‎13.3.2. Interessive (an)tra ‎13.4. Prepositional Use of Adverbs ‎13.5. Attributive Phrases and Binominal Constructions ‎13.5.1. The Attributive in the Expression of Origin ‎13.5.2. The Attributive in Temporal Expressions ‎13.5.3. The Attributive as a Marker of Possession ‎13.5.4. The Attributive of Inherent Relationship ‎13.5.5. The Attributive in the Expression of Material ‎13.5.6. The Attributive in Nominalizations ‎13.5.7. The Attributive in Quantification ‎13.5.8. The Attributive as a Grounder ‎13.5.9. The Attributive in the Expression of Categorization ‎13.5.10. The Attributive in the Expressive Elative ‎13.5.11. Sequences of Attributive Phrases ‎13.5.12. Syntactic Properties of Binominal Constructions ‎Chapter 14. Phrases ‎14.1. The Structure of the Noun Phrase ‎14.2. Grounding and Ordering of Phrases ‎14.3. Adjectival Phrases ‎14.4. Temporal Phrases and Telling the Time ‎Chapter 15. Clauses ‎15.1. Non-verbal Predication ‎15.1.1. Bare (Elliptical) Non-verbal Predication ‎15.1.2. Non-verbal Predication with a Copula ‎15.2. Declarative Clauses ‎15.3. Introducing the Ubiquitous che ‎15.4. Bare che in Non-verbal Predication ‎15.4.1. Exclamative che ‎15.4.2. Quantificational che ëd ‎15.5. Relative Clauses ‎15.6. Imperative Clauses ‎15.7. Exhortative Clauses ‎15.8. Mirative and Exclamative Clauses ‎15.9. Questions ‎15.9.1. Polar Questions ‎15.9.2. Tag Questions ‎15.9.3. Negative Questions ‎15.9.4. Constituent Questions ‎15.10. The Expression of Atmospheric Events ‎Chapter 16. Linkage ‎16.1. Coordination ‎16.1.1. Conjunction ‎16.1.2. Disjunction ‎16.1.3. Contrast ‎16.1.4. Correlatives ‎16.2. Subordination ‎16.2.1. Untensed Subordination ‎16.2.2. Subordination with che and Use of Tenses ‎16.2.3. Subject and Object Clauses ‎16.2.4. Temporal Clauses ‎16.2.5. Clauses Expression Location and Movement ‎16.2.6. Phrases and Clauses Expressing Similarity ‎16.2.7. Causal and Final Phrases and Clauses ‎16.2.8. Concessive Phrases and Clauses ‎16.2.9. Conditional Clauses ‎Chapter 17. Negation ‎17.1. Overview ‎17.2. Sentence Negators ‎17.2.1. Other Sentence-Negating Constructions ‎17.2.2. Other Intensifying Negators ‎17.3. Negation with Scope over Smaller Units ‎17.4. Other Negative Items ‎17.5. Negative Concord ‎17.6. Holophrastic Negation ‎Chapter 18. Pragmatics and Discourse ‎18.1. Information Structure and Sentence Word Order ‎18.2. Hanging Topics and Clefts ‎18.3. Discourse Markers ‎Chapter 19. Piedmontese in a Typological Perspective ‎19.1. Genealogy and Overview ‎19.2. Phonology ‎19.3. Morphosyntax ‎19.4. Lexical Typology ‎19.5. Piedmontese, Standard Average European, and Other Romance Languages ‎Chapter 20. Use, Contact, and Care: Endangerment, Loss, Enrichment and Standardization ‎20.1. Language Ideology through Language Use ‎20.1.1. Codeswitching and Borrowing ‎20.1.2. Language Attrition ‎20.1.3. Codeswitched Piedmontese ‎20.1.4. Piedmontese in Other Languages ‎20.1.5. Language Attrition in a Written Dialect ‎20.1.6. Piedmontese in the World Wide Web ‎20.2. The Long Road toward Resurgence ‎20.2.1. The Orthography: A Resource and a Problem ‎20.2.2. Ausbauization: Between Tradition, Enrichment, and Standardization ‎20.2.3. Phraseology, Ausbau and Language Policy ‎20.3. Envoi ‎Appendix. Text ‎References ‎Index of Subjects ‎Index of Languages, Varieties and Language Groups ‎Index of Towns, Villages, and Geographical Terms in Piedmont Cerea, madamin, andoma bin? Less than a century ago, this was one of the most frequent greetings heard in Piedmont, a region in northwest Italy. Today, however, Piedmontese is severely endangered. This volume presents the first widely accessible and comprehensive grammatical description of the contemporary koine, covering its phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, pragmatics and typology, and drawing examples from both oral and written sources. Data on the history of the language and the local dialects and notes on revitalization efforts are also included.