From sounds to structures : beyond the veil of Maya / edited by Pietro Cerrone, Roberto Petrosino, Harry van der Hulst

The term ‘Maya’, in Indian traditions, refers to our sensory perception of the world and, as such, to a superficial reality (or ‘un–reality’) that we must look beyond to find the inner reality of things. Applied to the study of language, we perceive sounds, a superficial reality, and then we seek structures, the underlying reality in what we call phonology, morphology, and syntax. This volume starts with an introduction by the editors, which shows how the various papers contained in the volume reflect the spectrum of research interests of Andrea Calabrese, as well as his influence on the work of colleagues and his students. Contributors, united in their search for the abstract structures that underlie the appearances of languages include linguists such as Adriana Belletti, Paola Benincà, Jonathan Bobaljik, Gugliemo Cinque, David Embick, Mirko Grimaldi, Harry van der Hulst, Michael Kenstowicz, Maria Rita Manzini, Andrew Nevins, Elizabeth Pyatt, Luigi Rizzi, Leonardo Savoia, Laura Vanelli, Bert Vaux, Susi Wurmbrand, as well as a few junior researchers including Mariachiara Berizzi, Giuliano Bocci, Stefano Canalis, Silvio Cruschina, Irina Monich, Beata Moskal, Diego Pescarini, Joseph Perry, Roberto Petrosino, and Kobey Schwayder. Preface Contents Part I: Issues in Phonology The status of Italian glides in the syllable The phonology and phonetics of laryngeal stop contrasts in Assamese The phonetics-phonology relationship in the neurobiology of language Metaphony with unary elements Many sons of Aodh: Tracing multiple outcomes of the Scottish and Irish clan name MacAoidh/Ó hAodha Part II: Issues in Morpho-Phonology Disharmony and decay: Itelmen vowel harmony in the 20th century Deriving morphophonological (mis)applications Distribution of falling tones in Mabaan Vedic Sanskrit accentuation and readjustment rules Allomorphy of Italian determiners at the morphology-phonology interface Part III: Issues in the Morpho-Syntax Diachronic and synchronic aspects in the expression of temporal distance in the past: A process of grammaticalization in Italian compared with other Romance languages and English N inflections and their interpretation: Neuter -o and plural -a in Italian varieties Copying and resolution in South Slavic and South Bantu Conjunct Agreement Subject and impersonal clitics in northern Italian dialects Markedness as a condition on feature sharing Part IV: Issues in Syntax On a-marking of object topics in the Italian left periphery Postverbal subjects and nuclear pitch accent in Italian wh-questions On the Merge position of additive and associative plurals Subjects, topics and the interpretation of pro Index The structure of this chapter is as follows. We first illustrate the phenomenon of subject inversion in Italian wh-questions (§ 2). In Section 3, we present the results of a syntactic experiment on the distribution of subjects in the embed-ded clause of wh-questions. Our analysis is presented in Section 4, where we directly relate the syntactic and prosodic peculiarities of Italian wh-questions to the successive cyclic nature and to the intermediate positions of wh-movement. We show that while subject inversion is a phenomenon that involves the edge of the C-phrase, the assignment of NPA additionally involves the vP-edge. We then attempt to capture the observed patterns and to provide further support to our analysis by comparing direct and indirect wh-questions with respect to both subject inversion and their prosodic properties (§ 5). A summary and some final remarks close the chapter. "The term 'Maya' refers to our sensory perception of the world and to a superficial reality that we must look beyond to find the inner reality of things. Applied to the study of language, we perceive sounds, a superficial reality, and then we seek structures, the underlying reality in what we call phonology, morphology, and syntax. The papers collected in this volume reflect the research interests and influence of Andrea Calabrese"-- Provided by publisher