Description
Book SynopsisCerea, 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.
Table of ContentsConventions, 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
