The morphosyntactic structure of number in Italian and Albanian

I adopt the view that there are two number positions, including a lower Class position also hosting gender and a higher Num position. Italian -a plurals and Albanian neuters are associated with a cluster of properties often thought to characterize low plurals: application to a restricted set of lexi...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autor: Manzini, M. Rita|||0000-0002-5288-4210
Tipo de documento: artigo
Data de publicação:2020
País:España
Recursos:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositório:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglês
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:235022
Acesso em linha:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/235022
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.5565/rev/catjl.319
Access Level:Acceso aberto
Palavra-chave:Number
Plural
Mass
Gender
Neuter
Agreement
Nombre
Massa
Gènere
Neutre
Concordança
Descrição
Resumo:I adopt the view that there are two number positions, including a lower Class position also hosting gender and a higher Num position. Italian -a plurals and Albanian neuters are associated with a cluster of properties often thought to characterize low plurals: application to a restricted set of lexical bases, meaning idiosyncrasies, association with (feminine) gender and agreement in the singular with the finite verb. Current analyses associate count Ns (both singular and plural) with a specialized node while treating mass Ns as default. I argue that mass Ns are associated with a specialized feature [aggr] (Albanian neuter) - and that a divisibility feature [part] for plural can attach to both count and mass bases (Italian -a). The properties of low number depend on the properties of the Class position, including the fact that it is low enough to select gender and also to combine with a different Num, yielding mixed agreement.