Single Italian consonants become pronounced as double (long) consonants (‘geminates’) if they follow: a stressed vowel some short unstressed words The Italian name for this process is raddoppiamento syntattico (‘syntactic (re)doubling’), or sometimes rafforzamento fonosyntactico (‘phonosyntactic stregntening’). ‘Syntactic’ refers to the fact that the doubling crosses word boundaries, unlike in word-internal geminate consonants as in [gattto] ‘cat’…… Continue reading ‘Syntactic doubling’ of Italian consonants
Tag: C-command
Antecedents of reflexives and pronouns
Theories about ‘binding’ try to explain when a noun phrase must, may or must not refer to the same item as an earlier noun phrase in the same sentence (an antecedent). Binding theories typically identify 3 types of noun phrases: anaphors, such as herself in example 1 below. An anaphora must have an antecedent in…… Continue reading Antecedents of reflexives and pronouns
C-command
Linguists often refer to a relation called c-command. Some types of syntactic operation are often analysed as being possible only if one item c-commands another item. Examples of such operations include relations between quantifiers (such as all and some) and the items they qualify. What is c-command? C-command is a relation between some of the…… Continue reading C-command