Full Description
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.
Contents
Conventions, Glosses and Symbols
Maps of Place Names in Piedmont Mentioned in the Grammar
List of Maps, Tables and Figures
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
1.8 An Outline of the Piedmontese Literature
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
2.5 Positional Restrictions on the Occurrence of Phonemes
2.6 Syllables
2.7 Clusters
2.8 Length
2.9 Stress
2.10 Pitch and Intonation
3 Writing System and Orthography
3.1 Overview
3.2 History
3.3 Evaluation
4 Words, Word Constituents and Word Classes
4.1 Roots, Stems, Words, Affixes and Clitics
4.2 Morphological Mechanisms
4.3 Suppletion
4.4 Syncretism
4.5 Word Classes
5 Nouns
5.1 Overview
5.2 Gender
5.3 Number
5.4 Derivational Morphology of Nouns
6 Adjectives
6.1 Overview
6.2 Semantics of Adjectives
6.3 Morphology of Adjectives
6.4 Comparative Constructions
6.5 Adjectives as Nouns
6.6 Derivational Morphology of Adjectives
7 Personal Pronouns
7.1 Overview
7.2 Independent Personal Pronouns
7.3 Subject 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
8 Grounding and Deixis
8.1 Overview
8.2 Determiners and Classifiers
8.3 Deixis
8.4 Possessives
9 Quantifiers
9.1 Numerals
9.2 Generic Quantifiers
9.3 Negative Quantifiers
9.4 Interrogative Quantifiers
9.5 Quantificational Quantifiers
10 Verbs
10.1 Semantic Overview
10.2 Morphological Overview
10.3 Affixes, Allomorphy and Syncretism
10.4 Historical and Comparative Notes
10.5 Moods and Tenses
10.6 Use of the Auxiliaries
10.7 Verbal Derivation
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
12 Adverbs
12.1 Overview
12.2 Predicate Adverbs
12.3 Degree Adverbs and Focalizers
12.4 Sentence Adverbs
12.5 Linking Adverbs
12.6 Adverb Formation Rules and Productivity
13 Prepositions and Prepositional Phrases
13.1 The Expression of Location and Movement
13.2 Basic Prepositions
13.3 Non-basic Prepositions
13.4 Prepositional Use of Adverbs
13.5 Attributive Phrases and Binominal Constructions
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
15 Clauses
15.1 Non-verbal Predication
15.2 Declarative Clauses
15.3 Introducing the Ubiquitous che
15.4 "Bare" che in Non-verbal Predication
15.5 Relative Clauses
15.6 Imperative Clauses
15.7 Exhortative Clauses
15.8 Mirative and Exclamative Clauses
15.9 Questions
15.10 The Expression of Atmospheric Events
16 Linkage
16.1 Coordination
16.2 Subordination
17 Negation
17.1 Overview
17.2 Sentence Negators
17.3 Negation with Scope over Smaller Units
17.4 Other Negative Items
17.5 Negative Concord
17.6 Holophrastic Negation
18 Pragmatics and Discourse
18.1 Information Structure and Sentence Word Order
18.2 Hanging Topics and Clefts
18.3 Discourse Markers
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
20 Use, Contact and Care: Codeswitching, Endangerment, Enrichment and Standardization
20.1 Language Ideology through Language Use
20.2 The Long Road toward Resurgence
20.3 Envoi
Appendix: Text
References
Index
