Abstract
In this paper, we deal with some important differences between Romance verb particle constructions and Germanic ones. Despite claims to the contrary (Iacobini & Masini, Morphology 16: 155-188, 2007), we argue that Romance languages (Italian included) consistently obey the Talmian generalization that non-directional manner verbs do not coappear with non-adjunct paths in Romance. We relate this generalization to the important restriction that those verbs that enter into verb-particle constructions in Romance encode or involve Path (e.g., It. Gianni è entrato dentro lit. 'Gianni entered inside'; Gianni è corso via 'Gianni ran away'; Gianni ha lavato via la macchia 'Gianni washed the stain away'); crucially, unlike Germanic, Romance does not allow verb-particle constructions where the verb encodes or involves pure manner (John danced away; John worked his debts off). We use Haugen's (Lingua 119: 242-262, 2009) syntactic distinction between Incorporation and Conflation to draw some relevant syntactic differences between Romance and Germanic verb-particle constructions: those ones formed via Incorporation are possible in Romance, while those ones formed via Conflation/Compounding are only possible in Germanic. ©Walter de Gruyter.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 241-269 |
| Journal | Probus |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Sep 2010 |