[Lexicog] Particularity of Neapolitan grammar - origin?

[maxwell]

Sabine Cretella wrote:
> I was just checking the new Neapolitan lemmas we have around and
> there is one particularity that makes it different from Italian.
> 
> Example: your mother in Italian is "tua madre" and in Neapolitan
> "mammate"
> 
> So the possessive is directly connected to the noun.

There are really two issues here:

(1) Why the possessive marker precedes the possessed noun in standard 
Italian, but follows it in Neapolitan.

(2) Why the possessive is written "solid" with the possessed noun in 
Neapolitan.

I don't know anything about (1).  But as for (2), it's not clear to me 
at least what the significance of writing the possessive marker without 
a space is.  This could just be a matter of orthographic tradition (of 
course, I'm not sure that Neapolitan _has_ an orthographic tradition).

In Spanish, pronominal object markers come before a finite verb, and are 
written separated by a space--but come after a non-finite or imperative 
verb, and are written without a space.  I'm not sure that there's any 
linguistic significance to the space vs. non-space distinction; they're 
usually analyzed as clitics (not affixes) in both cases.

    Mike Maxwell



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