30.2949, Review: Aghwan; Romanian, Macedo-; Romani, Vlax; Morphology; Syntax: Manzini, Savoia (2018)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-30-2949. Tue Jul 30 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.2949, Review: Aghwan; Romanian, Macedo-; Romani, Vlax; Morphology; Syntax: Manzini, Savoia (2018)

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Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2019 13:18:13
From: Ionuț Geană [igeana at asu.edu]
Subject: The Morphosyntax of Albanian and Aromanian Varieties

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/29/29-4235.html

AUTHOR: M. Rita Manzini
AUTHOR: Leonardo  Savoia
TITLE: The Morphosyntax of Albanian and Aromanian Varieties
SUBTITLE: Case, Agreement, Complementation
SERIES TITLE: Studies in Generative Grammar [SGG]
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2018

REVIEWER: Ionuț Geană, Arizona State University

SUMMARY

M. Rita Manzini and Leonardo Savoia’s “The Morphosyntax of Albanian and
Aromanian Varieties” (Volume 133 of De Gruyter Mouton’s “Studies in Generative
Grammar”) is intended for readers interested in the morphosyntax of these two
varieties or languages, focusing on key notions such as case, agreement and
complementation. The authors’ interest in these languages has to do with the
sparse representation of such varieties in the literature, on the one hand,
and the difficulty of getting  access to such data, on the other. After the
Introduction (Chapter 1), the volume is structured in four larger parts
(Chapters 2 through 12) of approximately equal size, followed by References
and a useful Index. While Chapters 8 and 12 are (essentially) new, all
chapters in this volume are based on previous research carried out and
published by the two authors, and, in their own words, “[i]n no case do they
represent a merely edited version of those works” (p. 21). Before the
Introduction, it would have been useful to have a list of abbreviations,
although the abbreviations used throughout the book are well-known in the
literature (for example, the first heading of the introduction is simply
called EXT, which the reader, based on previous knowledge, can understand as
short for Externalization).

The Introduction to this monograph (Chapter 1) sets its framework and focuses
on such concepts as externalization, agreement, and variation and parameters,
each of which constituting separate subchapters. It builds on
generative/minimalist literature, most notably Chomsky (1995), Chomsky et al.
(2018) a.o. Apart from establishing the key concepts of the monograph, the
Introduction also sets the main directions to be dealt with in each part.
Thus, Part I regards inflectional phenomena in the noun domain (with empirical
focus on Albanian); Part II takes a close look at agreement within the DP and
in adnominal modification; Part III deals with complementation, adopting the
classical view that sentential embedding involves nominalization (following
Rosembaum 1965); and Part IV, devoted to linguistic contact, deals with
sentential case and agreement structures.

Chapter 2 (the first chapter of Part I, “Nominal inflections, person and case
and their syntactic projection”) accounts for case categories in Albanian.
Against the model of Distributional Morphology and the like, the two authors
treat nominal inflections as substantive entries, in an attempt to explain,
among other things, the oblique/plural syncretism in Albanian.

Chapter 3 looks at noun morphology and its interpretation, focusing on the
so-called neuter in Italian and Albanian varieties. According to Manzini and
Savoia, morphology is sensitive to such deeper patterns as the tripartition
between mass singulars, count singulars and count plurals (following Chierchia
1998, 2010, and Borer 2005), and propose the existence of [aggregate], a
syntactico-semantic foundation between mass nouns and plurals, to best
represent syncretism. Interestingly, the two authors bring evidence that such
traditional notions as class, number and case may merge in a single syntactic
node (p. 74). 

Chapter 4 accounts for differential object marking (DOM) and person case
constraint (PCC) in Geg Albanian and Arbëresh (Albanian variety/varieties
spoken in Italy). This chapter’s common theme is the person split of
first/second vs third person, responsible for both DOM (associated with only
nouns and third person pronouns) and PCC. This chapter includes two appendixes
on inverse agreement (where the authors identify a third kind of phenomenon
attested in Algonquian languages, other than DOM and PCC) and clitic doubling.

Part II “L[in]k[e]rs, possessors and agreement in the DP” focuses on a
restricted set of environments, namely adjectives and genitives/possessives as
adnominal modifiers. Chapter 5 looks at linkers (categorized as determiners,
as they also appear as demonstratives/articles) in Aromanian in comparison
with Albanian. Given its systematic bilingualism, Aromanian (in the varieties
studied hereunder) displays alignment phenomena (Gumperz and Wilson 1971) with
Albanian. In some instances, Aromanian is different from both Albanian (with
which it is in contact) and Romanian (its closest relative), for example in
the agreements of the linker with the genitive.

Chapter 6 starts with briefly comparing the Aromanian data from the previous
chapter against data from standard Romanian, with focus on the person split
and agreeing possessives. Just like the other chapters, the authors stress the
minimalist principle of projection of syntax from the lexicon, as the data
scrutinized in this chapter clearly demonstrate that the syntactic structure
of a noun is projected by its morphological organization. Oblique case is
treated as a lexicalization of the part-whole or possessee-possessor relation.
Aromanian (alongside Romanian and Albanian) possessive structures are to be
interpreted as lexical DPs in third person and as specialized possessive forms
in first and second person (whose complex internal structure include an
initial linker, the first/second person proper noun and an inflectional
element).

Chapter 7 continues the analysis of oblique case, with focus on Punjabi. From
this point of view, this chapter is different from the other ones, as it does
not treat strict phenomena related to either Albanian or Aromanian (as per the
title of the monograph). Nevertheless, the authors admit to “a detour into
Eastern Indo-European” (p. 178) languages as Indo-Aryan Punjabi (treating the
ergative as a specialized oblique) or Kurdish (the all-purpose oblique, namely
the genitive/dative). This theoretical chapter refines the information from
the previous chapters and proves useful in describing the non-finite
complementation in Chapter 10.

Chapter 8 opens Part III “Complementation: Particles, Complementizers,
Prepositions”. Building on the analysis of linkers in Chapter 5, the authors
deem the Albanian subjunctive particle ‘tə’ and the homophonous plural and
oblique linker to be the same lexical entry (hence, Albanian subjunctives are
headed not by a mood particle or complementizer, but by a linker – a D
category). The analysis is extended to infinitival languages (e.g., Italian),
so both Albanian and Italian license free variables in EPP position: in
Italian – the absence of agreement properties on infinitival inflection; in
Albanian – the use of the ‘tə’ linker (as a specialized morphological
element).

Chapter 9 outlines the finite complementation (which in Romance, as well as in
other Indo-European languages, involves a relativization strategy, based on
the homophony of ‘that’-type complementizers and the ‘wh’ pronouns) in the
Aromanian varieties spoken in Albania. The framework theory of this part (Part
III of this monograph) is the proposal that relative pronouns
(complementizers) introduce finite sentences in Romance and other languages,
given that relativization is a strategy to nominalize sentences. Investigating
the microvariation patterns in the distribution of the subjunctive particles
(interpreted by the two authors as linkers), the conclusion is that such
microvariation does not favour the refinement of functional hierarchies. 

Chapter 10 deals with non-finite complementation in Aromanian and Albanian.
Unlike standard Romanian, Aromanian has kept a so-called long infinitive (with
the pan-Romance ‘-re’ inflection) – which embeds all classical situations of
raising and control as in other Romance, on the one hand. The authors take a
look at the prepositional introducers for such non-finite forms, incorporating
them into the Agree Avoidance strategies postulated in the previous chapter.
Albanian, on the other hand, has a so-called ‘paskajore’ infinitive, preceded
by an element homophonous with the instrumental preposition ‘mɛ’ (‘with’),
both of which are interpreted as the same lexical entry. It is to be noted
that such morphological infinitives are not necessarily in complementary
distribution with the subjunctive (or the other way around). The supine is
also accounted for, namely the use of specialized participle form introduced
by various prepositions. At this point of the analysis, Chapter 7 is very
relevant, as the ‘paskajore’/supine are best characterized “as stative,
property-like forms of the verbs” (p. 295).

Finally, Part IV of this monograph looks at linguistic contact. Both Arbëresh
and Aromanian are minority languages spoken in contact with genealogically
unrelated languages (Italian and Albanian, in this book). Chapter 11 accounts
for specific phenomena such as borrowings, code-mixing and convergence in the
contact of Italo-Albanian (Arbëresh) with Italo-Romance (Calabrian, Lucanian).
Separate sections are dedicated to the treatment of lexicon, complementation,
VP and DP structure, and phonology. In line with the general idea of this
volume, the two authors put forth the idea of unifying morphology and syntax,
putting together borrowings and code-mixing, as supported by their analysis.

Chapter 12, the last one in this volume, looks at the Arbëresh variety of
Ginestra, focusing on causatives, case, passivization and agreement. Causative
constructions in this variety show linguistic variation and change due to
contact. As contact favours the alignment of the morphosyntactic devices (of
an Albanian variety with an Italo-Romance variety, in this particular case),
case and passivization patterns are aligned, with sometimes surprising
outcomes that are not to be found in either input languages (for example, the
agreement pattern characterizing the variety of Ginestra is based on the
person split first/second vs third, which neither Albanian nor Italo-Romance
has).  

EVALUATION

The volume briefly reviewed here is a state-of-the-art, theoretically sound
well-written monograph. It treats two varieties that are little discussed in
the literature, namely Albanian (including the dialects spoken in Southern
Italy) and the Aromanian spoken in Southern Albania. Such terms as ‘language’,
‘dialect’, or ‘variety’ are used with a very broad meaning, to which I very
much agree, as the focus is (and should be) on data. Due to its wide range of
analyses from a minimalist/generative perspective, this book is very useful
not only to Romance and Balkan linguists, but also to specialists in
theoretical linguistics. As a matter of fact, a great deal of pages are
dedicated to scrutinizing theoretical aspects of the syntactic analysis in
general and one chapter goes beyond the Romance/Balkan linguistics, dealing
with Eastern Indo-European. This monograph is highly valuable to the
linguistic community and serves as a model of what can be done with minority
languages, in general, and with Eastern Romance, in particular (unfortunately,
Eastern Romance is highly understudied (with the exception of standard
Romanian) from a formal perspective, and this monograph can stand as a very
good example for linguists specializing in this field).

This volume is graphically exceptional, being easy to read and follow, despite
some typos (for example, “one can defined an opposition” instead of “one can
define an opposition” on p. 20, “only of we accept” instead of “only if we
accept” on p. 32) or misaligned/missing glosses (for instance, example ‘6b’ on
p. 133 or example ‘9a’ on p. 135). Although each chapter ends with a generous
section dedicated to conclusions, some general conclusions to the entire book
would have been appropriate. The bibliography is up to date and is well cited
across the volume. The index is also very helpful, and it also stands as an
informal list of abbreviations (should one not be aware of all the
abbreviations used throughout the monograph). Another suggestion would be to
have numbered subchapters and subsections in a continuous manner, instead of
restarting from one in each chapter (although I do agree that continuously
numbering the examples would have become too hard to follow, due to the huge
amount of rightfully used data throughout the volume).

While the book is separated into four major (thematic) parts, the twelve
chapters can both be read as a continuous analysis (and the two authors make
references to the other chapters), and be understood as independent studies.
The connections between the chapters are easy to follow, with the apparent
exception of Chapter 7, which looks ‘exotic’, but does make a point to the
theoretical analysis from the following chapters, especially Chapter 10.

The title (and subtitle) to this monograph is self-explanatory, although it is
not to be understood in a very traditional manner. More precisely, it is not a
mere grammar of the Albanian and Aromanian varieties discussed therein, but
rather a theoretical account on case, agreement and complementation based on
the morphosyntax of the two varieties. Therefore, although the title might
suggest it fits into a rather small subset of linguistics, it has in fact a
much broader coverage in theoretical linguistics.

To sum up, M. Rita Manzini and Leonardo Savoia’s “The Morphosyntax of Albanian
and Aromanian Varieties” is a state-of-the-art monograph, serving also as a
trendsetter in the analysis of contact languages (accounting for such issues
as morphosyntax, lexicon, bilingualism), in general, and Eastern Romance, in
particular. It goes without saying, based on all of the above, that this
volume is intended for specialists in theoretical linguistics (with various
subfields) working in a generative/minimalist framework.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Dr. Ionuț Geană is a Romanian lecturer at Arizona State University and also a
researcher of the Department of Dialectology at the Romanian Academy's
Institute of Linguistics in Bucharest. His research interests include the
morphosyntax of Eastern Romance (with focus on Istro-Romanian and Romanian
varieties), Romanian phonetics and phonology and teaching Romanian as a
foreign language.





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