Matrix complementizers in Italo-Romance

Abstract

Abstract Based on uncharted evidence from Italo-Romance, we describe and discuss three types of matrix clauses, i.e. jussives, concessives and optatives, which reveal a certain degree of consistency but also display different patterns of microvariation. We show how such clauses may be introduced by complementizers, whose insertion is strictly dependent on the utterance of speech-act material at the outset of the sentence. The variation in the overt realization of the complementizers and the utterance of initial interjections convey different pragmatic information. We finally interpret the morpho-syntactic behaviour of jussive, concessive and optative matrix clauses through the interplay of three semantico-syntactic variables, i.e. beyond-Force, Mood and Modality.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 20 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.