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Full Title: "Distribution and Function of 'Partitive Articles' in Romance (DiFuPaRo): a microvariation analysis"
The project
Co-funded by the URPP Language and Space.
Input from the international workshop Partitivity and Language Contact, co-funded by the URPP Language and Space.
Project leaders: Elisabeth Stark (University of Zurich) in collaboration with Cecilia Poletto (Frankfurt am Main).
Dates: 2018-2021. Subproject A: Extension obtained from the SNSF until 30 June 2022. Subproject B: ended on 31 March 2021.
Background The project investigates the way similar languages all belonging to the Romance family (i.e. languages derived from Latin) can display variable properties. The linguistic research of the last fifty years has proved that not all logical possibilities are always realized across languages, but the existence of some grammatical properties implies the existence of others in the same language so that linguistic properties can group together in clusters. This is true if we compare languages that are genetically unrelated, like for instance French and Chinese, but even more so across languages that are closely related, like French and Italian. Our investigations will not only target standard Italian and French, but also their vernacular varieties spoken in the geographic area comprising France, Northern Italy and part of Switzerland; they will also include minority Romance languages without a standard like Franco-provençal and Ladin. Our project intends to make use of the data already contained in data bases to compare the morphosyntactic properties and track down how characters of the linguistic system cluster together.
In order to do this, we have selected a typical grammatical property that singles out exactly these languages with respect to Spanish, Portuguese etc. in the bigger domain of Romance. This property concerns the existence of so called “partitive articles”, i.e. forms like du/del, ‘of the’, which can as to their etymology be decomposed into the preposition de/di followed by the definite article, to mark an indefinite element. The reason why we selected precisely this phenomenon is that it is actually rather bizarre that a form containing historically a definite article is used to mark an indefinite nominal expression. Furthermore, partitive articles are typologically highly marked, i.e. rather rare in the languages of the world. However, they are yet quite neglected elements in the research literature and there is up to now no systematic study (besides some work concentrating only either on Standard French or on standard Italian), which relates these elements to the respective Romance systems of nominal determination.
Objectives The aim of the project is to (i) compare the morphosyntactic properties of these languages and track down how characters of the linguistic system cluster together, and (ii) determine how and why partitive articles have evolved and spread through a precise geographical domain (France-Northern Italy-part of Switzerland), but not across all Romance. To do so, we will make use of already existing data bases (OFROM: colloquial Swiss French; ALAVAL: Francoprovençal; ASIt: Northern Italian) and gather data of our own, adopting well-established techniques of field work. The pool of data obtained will enable us to find out how variation can be modelled, in particular how morpho-syntactic means encode semantic properties, and the distribution and function of partitive articles in all vernacular varieties under scrutiny.
Context By studying the evolution and the distribution of this phenomenon across languages, we aim at learning more about the way in which the internal mechanisms of languages operate, in particular how morpho-syntactic means encode semantic properties and how much they can vary. Besides the gain in linguistic description and analysis, the overall importance of this project lies also in unravelling and documenting unknown features of partially endangered Romance varieties used in informal contexts only, which are highly relevant to understand issues of language contact in the explanation of the distribution of grammatical features in space (Bickel 2007).
Subproject A: Gallo-Romance
Subproject B: Italo-Romance
Subproject A: Gallo-Romance
Subproject B: Italo-Romance
External partners
4.1 Conference presentations
2023. Tabea Ihsane, David Gerards & Elisabeth Stark. "Présence/absence de marquage en nombre dans les syntagmes nominaux des langues romanes : quel rôle pour le DE en francoprovençal ?" Conference Par-delà la dialectologie : de l'étude de la variation vers la gestion de la complexité. Centre d'études francoprovençales René Willien, Saint-Nicolas (Aosta Valley), Italy. 14 October.
2023. Tabea Ihsane & Elisabeth Stark. "Systems of ‘number marking’ and indefinite determiners in Romance." Deutscher Romanistentag workshop Presence and Absence of Determiners in Romance, University of Leipzig, Germany. 24-27 September.
2023. Tabea Ihsane, David Paul Gerards & Elisabeth Stark. "Accounting for presence/absence of overt number morphology in Romance nominals." DGfS workshop Divide and Count: on the (Morpho-)Syntax and Semantics of Division, Plurality and Countability, University of Cologne, Germany. 9 March.
2022. Elisabeth Stark & David Paul Gerards. Invited speakers. "Non-maximal definites in Romance (focus on Francoprovençal)." Research Colloquium: Latest developments in syntax, semantics and pragmatics, Universität Stuttgart, Germany. 29 November.
2022. Tabea Ihsane, Olivier Winistörfer & Elisabeth Stark. "Francoprovençal: what a spatial analysis of ‘partitive articles’ reveals on number marking on nominals." PARTE international conference Methods for approaching variation: partitives and beyond, Károli Gáspár Reformed University, Budapest, Hungry. 16 September.
2022. Tabea Ihsane. "The Partitive Database. Tutorial." PARTE international conference Methods for approaching variation: partitives and beyond, Károli Gáspár Reformed University, Budapest, Hungry. 15 September.
2022. Delia Strebel, Tabea Ihsane & Elisabeth Stark. "Variation dans la détermination nominale en français oral : Fautes ou témoins de contact ?" AFLS Conference 2022, Le français au contact des cultures, University of Exeter, UK. 18 July.
2022. Francesco Pinzin & Cecilia Poletto. "How to make do with what you have got: priming effects in dialectal data, the view from indefinite Partitives." Workshop 'Partitive Articles' in Francoprovençal and in the Northern Italian Dialects: DiFuPaRo closing workshop, University of Zurich, Switzerland. 24 June.
2022. Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin, Tabea Ihsane & David Paul Gerards. "On the rescuing of des-indefinites." Workshop 'Partitive Articles' in Francoprovençal and in the Northern Italian Dialects: DiFuPaRo closing workshop, University of Zurich, Switzerland. 24 June.
2022. Tania Paciaroni, Tabea Ihsane & Elisabeth Stark. "Francoprovençal nominal morphology: a Network Morphology account." Workshop 'Partitive Articles' in Francoprovençal and in the Northern Italian Dialects: DiFuPaRo closing workshop, University of Zurich, Switzerland. 24 June.
2022. Tabea Ihsane, Olivier Winistörfer & Elisabeth Stark. "Francoprovençal: what a spatial analysis of ‘partitive articles’ reveals on number marking on nominals." Workshop 'Partitive Articles' in Francoprovençal and in the Northern Italian Dialects: DiFuPaRo closing workshop, University of Zurich, Switzerland. 24 June.
2022. David Paul Gerards, Tabea Ihsane & Elisabeth Stark. "Is invariable DE an allomorph of the partitive article? The insight from Francoprovençal." Workshop 'Partitive Articles' in Francoprovençal and in the Northern Italian Dialects: DiFuPaRo closing workshop, University of Zurich, Switzerland. 24 June.
2022. Tania Paciaroni. Invited speaker. "A Network Morphology account of Francoprovençal nominal morphology." Oberseminar Romanistische Linguistik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. 22 June.
2022. Delia Strebel, Tabea Ihsane & Elisabeth Stark. "The distribution of partitive articles in quantity expressions and negative sentences with pas ‘not’ in colloquial Swiss French and neighboring Francoprovençal varieties." VI Wedisyn Meeting - Westmost Europe Dialect Syntax, University of Zurich, Switzerland. 3 June.
2022. Tabea Ihsane, Olivier Winistörfer & Elisabeth Stark. Invited speakers. "The spatial distribution of partitive articles and invariable DE in Francoprovençal." PARTE (Partitivity in European Languages) online talks, 27 May.
2022. Tabea Ihsane. "On the status of preverbal indefinite subjects in Romance languages: what Francoprovençal reveals." LSRL, University of Wisconsin-madison, USA, online. 21 April.
2021. Elisabeth Stark & David Paul Gerards. Invited speakers. "Non-maximal definite articles in Romance." Going Romance Partitivity Workshop, ACLC and University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, online. 1 December.
2021. Elisabeth Stark. "Distribution and function of ‘indefinite (non-definite) definite’ articles in Francoprovençal." NEREUS X International Workshop, University of Freiburg, Germany. 22 October.
2021. Tabea Ihsane. "The L2 acquisition of the French pronoun en by L1 speakers of German." From syntactic structures to society-driven language change. Workshop on the occasion of Thom Westveer’s PhD defence, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. 6 October.
2021. David Paul Gerards (University of Leipzig) & Tabea Ihsane (University of Zurich). "Investigating Indefinite Definites: Empirical Approaches." IDARoE – Indefinite definite articles in Romance and English, online. 16 July.
2021. Tabea Ihsane. Invited speaker. "The role of L1 in the L2 acquisition of the French pronoun en by L1 speakers of German and L1 speakers of Dutch." Online AICED 22, University of Bucharest, Romania. 3 June.
2021. Francesco Pinzin & Cecilia Poletto. Invited speakers. "Partitive Articles vs. Bare Nouns in Northern Italy, a morphological parameter." PARTE online conference cycle. 30 April.
2020. Jan Davatz & Elisabeth Stark. "Definite articles vs. partitive articles: Distribution and function of indefinite definite articles in Francoprovençal." Workshop Variation in the Expression of Partitivity and Partitive Expressions. 14th International Conference of General Linguistics (CILG2020). University of Sevilla, Spain. Postponed to June 2021. Cancelled.
2020. Tabea Ihsane. "Partitive articles in preverbal subjects: contrasting French and Aosta Valley Francoprovençal." Workshop Variation in the Expression of Partitivity and Partitive Expressions. 14th International Conference of General Linguistics (CILG2020). University of Sevilla, Spain. Postponed to June 2021. Cancelled.
2020. Tabea Ihsane & Jan Davatz. "Preverbal subjects with a partitive article in French and their Francoprovençal counterparts." Symposium Subjects in Romance. University of Stockholm (Sweden). Cancelled.
2020. Francesco Pinzin & Cecilia Poletto. "Partitive Articles vs. Bare Nouns in Northern Italy, a morphological parameter.” Going Romance 34. 25 November.
2020. Tabea Ihsane. "Fieldwork in Evolène: preliminary results of the Grammaticality Judgement Test." Online DiFuPaRo workshop, UZH. 11 June.
2020. Francesco Pinzin & Cecilia Poletto. "Indefinite objects and number marking on the noun, the case from Northern Italian Dialects." Online DiFuPaRo workshop, UZH. 11 June.
2020. Jan Davatz & Elisabeth Stark. "Presentation of ongoing work." Online DiFuPaRo workshop, UZH. 11 June.
2020. Francesco Pinzin & Cecilia Poletto. "Indefinite objects and number marking on the noun, the case from Northern Italian Dialects." Nanolab, Masaryk University of Brno, online, 5 June.
2020. Jan Davatz & Tabea Ihsane. "Francoprovençal at the Crossroads." Project Presentations URPP Language and Space, Language and Space in Switzerland. 5 March.
2019. Jan Davatz. “Francoprovençal (B): Galloromance varieties without mass vs. plural distinction?” Poster at the workshop NaP2019: Number and plurality: cross-linguistic variation in the nominal domain. University of Göttigen (Germany). 11 December.
2019. Jan Davatz & Elisabeth Stark. "Unexpected partitives in Francoprovençal." Workshop Around Partitive Articles (Workshop of the DiFuPaRo Project), University Frankfurt am Main, Germany. 5 November.
2019. Francesco Pinzin & Cecilia Poletto. "The distribution of Partitives Articles and related phenomena in Northern Italy." Workshop Around Partitive Articles (Workshop of the DiFuPaRo Project), University Frankfurt am Main, Germany. 5 November.
2019. Tabea Ihsane. "The status of preverbal subjects in French and Francoprovençal." Workshop Around Partitive Articles (Workshop of the DiFuPaRo Project), University Frankfurt am Main, Germany. 5 November.
2019. Tabea Ihsane. Invited speaker. "Arguments with a so-called 'partitive article': The subject-object asymmetry in the light of Francoprovençal data." Workshop The syntax and semantics of internal arguments, University of Bucharest, Romania. 24 October.
2019. Jan Davatz & Elisabeth Stark. "Rumänisch niște zwischen nicht-spezifischen und spezifischen Lesearten." Romanistentag XXXVI, University of Kassel, Germany. 30 September.
2019. Jan Davatz, Tabea Ihsane, Francesco Pinzin, Cecilia Poletto & Elisabeth Stark. "DiFuPaRo Database: Opening the frontend." PARTE workshop. Partitive case, pronouns and determiners: diachrony and variation. University of Pavia, Italy. 3 September.
2019. Petra Sleeman, Leonie Cornips, Tabea Ihsane & Giuliana Giusti. "(Micro-) variation in the distribution of the partitive pronoun in Romance and Germanic." PARTE workshop. Partitive case, pronouns and determiners: diachrony and variation. University of Pavia, Italy. 2 September.
2019. Jan Davatz & Elisabeth Stark. "Unexpected partitive articles in Francoprovençal." PARTE workshop. Partitive case, pronouns and determiners: diachrony and variation. University of Pavia, Italy. 2 September.
2019. Francesco Pinzin & Cecilia Poletto. "Oh, partitive article, where art thou? Partitive Articles and indefinite quantities in Northern Italian Dialects." PARTE workshop. Partitive case, pronouns and determiners: diachrony and variation. University of Pavia, Italy. 2 September.
2019. Elisabeth Stark. "Partitivausdrücke und Romanische Dialektologie reloaded: Eindrücke aus dem Frankoprovenzalischen." LMU München in honour of Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Wolf-Dieter Stempel's 90th birthday, Germany. 8 July.
2019. Jan Davatz & Elisabeth Stark. "niște en roumain – quantifieur ou déterminant ?" CILPR 2019, University of Copenhaguen, Denmark. 2 July.
2019. Francesco Pinzin & Cecilia Poletto. “Partitive Articles in French, Italian (and Northern Italian dialects).” Seminari di ricerca in linguistica, University of Venice. 9 March.
2019. Francesco Pinzin & Cecilia Poletto. “Partitive Articles in French, Italian (and Northern Italian dialects).” Seminari di ricerca in linguistica, University of Padova. 5 March.
2019. Giuliana Giusti, Elvira Glaser, Tabea Ihsane, Petra Sleeman, Thomas Strobel. "Features and contexts of partitive pronouns: a cross-linguistic comparison." PARTE workshop. Partitivity in European Languages. University of Zurich, Switzerland. 26 January. https://www.spur.uzh.ch/en/research/synode/networks.html
2019. Francesco Pinzin & Cecilia Poletto. "Partitive Articles in French, Italian (and Northern Italian Dialects)." PARTE workshop. University of Zurich, Switzerland. 26 January. https://www.spur.uzh.ch/en/research/synode/networks.html
2018. Francesco Pinzin & Cecilia Poletto. "Partitive articles in French, Italian and Northern Italian dialects.” Romanistik Colloquium, University of Frankfurt, Germany. 20 November.
2018. Elisabeth Stark, with David Gerards. "Why partitive articles in Romance languages? A comparative morphological account." NEREUS IX, Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany. 9 November.
2018. Elisabeth Stark, with Larissa Binder. "Differential Object Marking in French: Myth or reality?" Differential object marking in Romance - towards microvariation, Paris, INaLCO. 9 November.
2018. Elisabeth Stark. Invited speaker. "Pourquoi des 'articles partitifs' dans les langues romanes ? Approche morphologique comparative." Colloque de recherche en linguistique. University of Lille, France. 26 October.
2018. Tabea Ihsane & Elisabeth Stark. "Presenting DiFuPaRo: Distribution and Function of ‘Partitive articles’ in Romance: A microvariation analysis.” Days of Swiss Linguistics 2018. University of Bern, Switzerland. 12 October.
2018. Tabea Ihsane. "Preverbal subjects with a partitive article: The case of Francoprovençal in the Aosta Valley." Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE 2018), Workshop Preverbal Indefinite Subjects. University of Tallinn, Estonia. 29 August.
2018. Francesco Pinzin & Cecilia Poletto. "DiFuPaRo, distribution and function of partitive articles in Romance, a microvariation analysis.” PARTE workshop, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. 26 May.
2018. Cornips, Leonie & Cecilia Poletto. “Field methods for formal linguistics: some notes.” PARTE workshop, Amsterdam. 25 May.
2018. Elisabeth Stark. Invited speaker. "L'expression de la réciprocité dans trois langues romanes." Workshop Les formes réfléchies du verbe : construction et polyvalence, University of Fribourg, Switzerland. 17 May.
4.2 Publications
2023. Davatz, J./T. Ihsane/E. Stark. Enquêtes dialectologiques à Evolène : les articles dits 'partitifs' et leurs équivalents. In D. Aquino-Weber, S. Cotelli Kureth, A. Kristol, A. Reusser-Elzingre, and Maguelone Sauzet (eds.), "Coum’on étèila que kòoule… Come una stella cadente… Comme une étoile filante…". Mélanges à la mémoire de Federica Diémoz. Neuchâtel, Switzerland: Librairie Droz, 65-85. ISBN 978-2-600-06444-6.
Accepted. Davatz, J./E. Stark. Romanian niște between non-specific and specific interpretations. In : Rosemeyer et al. (ed.), Romance Indefinites: From Semantics to Pragmatics. Language Science Press.
2023. Ihsane, T., O. Winistörfer/E. Stark. Francoprovençal: a spatial analysis of ‘partitive articles’ and potential correlates in Swiss and Italian varieties. Isogloss 9(1)/4: 1-30 10.5565/rev/isogloss.257
2022. Gerards D. P./E. Stark. Non-Maximal Definites in Romance. Isogloss. Open Journal of Romance Linguistics 8(5)/5, 1-32. https://revistes.uab.cat/isogloss/article/view/v8-n5-gerards-stark
2022. Ihsane, T./ Davatz, J./Pinzin, F./Stark, E. Guide to the DiFuPaRo database. https://difuparo.linguistik.uzh.ch
2022. Pinzin F./C. Poletto. An indefinite maze: on the distribution of partitives and bare nouns in the Northern Italian dialects. Isogloss 8(2)/20: 1-23.
2022. Pinzin F./C. Poletto. Articoli partitivi e sintagmi nominali indefiniti: distribuzione comparativa nelle lingue dell'Italia del nord. Rivista Italiana di Dialettologia 45(1): 1-54.
2022. Pinzin F./C. Poletto (Eds.). Partitive Articles and indefiniteness, micro and macrovariation. Studia Linguistica 76(1) (Special Issue).
2021. Stark, E./J. Davatz. Unexpected Partitive Articles in Francoprovençal. Studia Linguistica 76(1) (Special issue edited by Pinzin F./C. Poletto). Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1111/stul.12186
2021. Pinzin F./C. Poletto. Indefinite objects in micro-variation. A cross-linguistic analysis of the distribution of Partitives Articles, Bare Nominals and definite determiners in Northern Italy. Studia Linguistica 76(1) (Special issue edited by Pinzin F./C. Poletto). Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1111/stul.12187
2021. Ihsane, T. Preverbal subjects with a partitive article: a comparison between Aosta Valley Francoprovençal and French. Studia Linguistica 76(1) (Special Issue edited by Pinzin F./C. Poletto). Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1111/stul.12180
2021. Davatz, J./E. Stark. Niște en roumain – quantifieur ou déterminant ? (PDF, 919 KB). In : Lene Schøsler et al. (Hrsg), Actes XXIXe Congrès International de Linguistique et de Philologie Romane de Copenhague, 1er-6 juillet 2019. Strasbourg.
2020. Garzonio J./C. Poletto. Partitive Objects in Negative Contexts in Northern Italian Dialects. Linguistics 58.3: 621-650. Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2020-0079
2020. Gerards D./E. Stark. Why ‘Partitive Articles’ do not Exist in (Old) Spanish. In T. Ihsane (ed.), Disentangling Bare Nouns and Nominals Introduced by a Partitive Article, 105-139. Syntax and Semantics Series. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill (publié en ligne en 2020; copyright 2021). Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004437500_005
2020. Ihsane T. (Ed.). Disentangling Bare Nouns and Nominals Introduced by a Partitive Article. Syntax and Semantics Series. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill (publié en ligne en 2020; copyright 2021). Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004437500
2020. Ihsane T. Telicity, specificity, and complements with a plural “partitive article” in French. In T. Ihsane (ed.), Disentangling Bare Nouns and Nominals Introduced by a Partitive Article, 227-261. Syntax and Semantics Series. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill (publié en ligne en 2020; copyright 2021). Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004437500_008
2020. Ihsane T. Introduction. In T. Ihsane (ed.), Disentangling Bare Nouns and Nominals Introduced by a Partitive Article, 1-16. Syntax and Semantics Series. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill (publié en ligne en 2020; copyright 2021). Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004437500_002
2020. Ihsane T./E. Stark. (Eds.) Shades of Partitivity: Formal and areal properties. Special issue in Linguistics, volume 58, issue 3. https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/ling/58/3/html
2020. Ihsane T./E. Stark. Introduction: Shades of Paritivity: Formal and areal properties. In IhsaneT./E.Stark (eds.), Shades of Partitivity: Formal and areal properties. Linguistics 58.3: 605-619. Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2020-0078
2020. Sleeman P./T. Ihsane. Convergence and divergence in the expression of partitivity in French, Dutch, and German. Linguistics 58.3: 767-804. Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2020-0090
2020. Stark E./D. Gerards. Partitive Articles in Aosta Valley Francoprovençal–Old Questions and New Data. In T. Ihsane (ed.), Disentangling Bare Nouns and Nominals Introduced by a Partitive Article, 301-334. Syntax and Semantics Series. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill (publié en ligne en 2020; copyright 2021). Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004437500_010
2018. Garzonio, J./C. Poletto. "Exploiting microvariation: How to make the best of your incomplete data." Glossa 3(1): 1-21.
2018. Poletto, C. "L’etimologia come finestra sulla sintassi: evidenza empirica dai dialetti italiani." Repenser la variation linguistique. Glessgen et alii (eds.). Strasbourg: Éditions de linguistique et de philologie, 107.121
4.3 Conference/workshop organisation
2022. Tabea Ihsane & Elisabeth Stark. 'Partitive Articles' in Francoprovençal and in the Northern Italian Dialects: DiFuPaRo closing workshop. University of Zurich, Switzerland. 24 June.
2021. Petra Sleeman & Tabea Ihsane. Partitivity Workshop (PDF, 12 KB) at Going Romance. University of Amsterdam and VU Amsterdam, the Netherlands. 1 December.
2021. Tabea Ihsane. Workshop on Pseudo-partitivity. University of Zurich, Switzerland, online. 2 July. Invited: Pavel Caha and Natascha Pomino.
2020. Tabea Ihsane. Online DiFuPaRo workshop. Invited: Peter Ranacher, UZH. 11 June.
2020. Urtzi Etxeberria, Tabea Ihsane, Ilja Seržant, Petra Sleeman, Anne Tamm. Workshop Variation in the Expression of Partitivity and Partitive Expressions. 14th International Conference of General Linguistics (CILG2020). University of Sevilla, Spain. Cancelled.
2019. Francesco Pinzin & Cecilia Poletto. Workshop Around Partitive Articles (Workshop of the DiFuPaRo Project), University Frankfurt am Main, Germany. 5 November.
2019. Tabea Ihsane, Elisabeth Stark, Elvira Glaser & Petra Sleeman. PARTE workshop. Partitivity in European Languages. University of Zurich, Switzerland. 26 January.
4.4 Database
2018-2022. The DiFuPaRo database. Jonathan Schaber, Johannes Graën, Jan Davatz, Tabea Ihsane, Francesco Pinzin, Cecilia Poletto & Elisabeth Stark. University of Zurich.
https://difuparo.linguistik.uzh.ch
