Recent Morphology Explorations in Romance Languages

Dear Colleagues

Morphological structure is a specialized property of human language often studied for its apparent autonomy and its idiosyncrasies, notwithstanding its crucial role in the externalization of syntactic structures. In fact, many descriptive approaches substantially based on the word and paradigm pattern (Blevins 2006; Maiden 2011), while highlighting relevant aspects of morphology, fail to capture what we think is its fundamental trait, i.e., the mapping of interpretive and structural properties of the sentence onto morphemes. An interesting hypothesis is that morphology is based on the same compositional mechanisms underlying syntax, able to combine roots with affixes endowed with an interpretive import (Halle and Marantz 1993, Kramer 2014, Manzini et al. 2020, Savoia et al. 2020).

Romance languages represent a privileged field of inquiry for morphology, both because of their wide and intricate morphological variation and because of their inflectional and derivational richness in the nominal and verbal domains. This Special Issue will provide both new and updated analyses of Romance morphology and interesting elements for understanding the nature of morphological tools. The constraints on inflectional and derivational exponents, the asymmetric distribution of gender and number inflections in DPs and other syntactic contexts, syncretism, mesoclisis, and differential marking phenomena can shed light on the role of semantic primitives at the basis of the relation between morphology and syntax.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400–600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the guest editor or to the Languages editorial office (languages@mdpi.com) by the deadline of 31 July 2021. Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors to ensure proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

Tentative completion schedule:

• Abstract submission deadline: 31 July 2021
• Notification of abstract acceptance: 20 September 2021
• Full manuscript deadline: 31 January 2022

References

Blevins, James. 2006. Word-based morphology. Journal of Linguistics, 42: 531-573.

Halle, Morris and Alec Marantz. 1993. Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection. In The view from Building 20, edited by Ken Hale and Samuel J. Keyser. Cambridge, Mass. The MIT Press, pp. 111-176.

Kramer, Ruth. 2015. The Morphosyntax of Gender. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Maiden, Martin 2011, Allomorphy, autonomous morphology and phonological conditioning in the history of the Daco-Romance present and subjunctive. Transactions of the Philological Society 109:59-91.

Manzini, M. Rita, Leonardo M. Savoia and Benedetta Baldi. 2020. Microvariation and macrocategories: Differential Plural Marking and Phase theory. L’Italia Dialettale, 82: 189-212.

Savoia, Leonardo M., Benedetta Baldi and M. Rita Manzini. 2020. Micro-Variation in Nominal Plural in North-Lombard and Neighbouring Rhaeto-Romance Varieties. A Phasal Treatment In Exploring Variation in Linguistic Patterns, edited by Karolina Drabikowska and Anna Prażmowska. Lubnlin: Wydawnictwo KUL, pp. 13-38

Prof. Leonardo M. Savoia
Guest Editor

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