The expression of indefiniteness and optionality in the dialect of Piacenza

Abstract

This work aims at studying the availability of indefinite determiners and optionality in the choice of competing forms in a specific linguistic context, namely the dialect spoken in the province of Piacenza. For this purpose, two researches were carried out. The first one is designed to verify which indefinite determiners are available in Piacentino and how they behave in relevant syntactic contexts, in interaction with some relevant traits individuated by Cardinaletti and Giusti (2018). The second one aims at studying the clitic resumption od indefinite DPs in Clitic Left Dislocation (CLLD) in Piacentino. The results show that in this dialect there is a broader availability of indefinites (with respect to Italian) and optionality in the choice of competing forms. In detail, the partitive determiner is generally available in all contexts. It can take narrow scope in CLLD constructions, and it can be resumed by the quantitative clitic "ne" (this option is preferred over the cliticization with the Accusative/Nominative clitic).