The expression of indefiniteness and optionality in the Neapolitan dialect

Abstract

The goal of this project is to give an overview of the issue concerning the variation in the use of indefinite determiners between informal Italian and the Neapolitan dialect. There are different possibilities available in modern Italian to express indefiniteness but just four of are relevant for this work: the zero determiner, the definite article as an indefinite determiner, the indefinite bare di and the di+article. Another topic examined in this work is the way indefinite determiners behave with the quantitative clitic ne. In doing so I will refer in particular to the qualitative and quantitative methodology presented in the works of Cardinaletti, A. & G. Giusti (2015b; 2018). The paper is divided into fou chapters and each of them will focus on a specific field. Chapter 1 gives general information about the research topic and the expectations. Chapter 2, “The Neapolitan dialect” offers a geographical, social, historical overview of the Italo-Romance variety group spoken in the province of Naples, displaying some significant phonological, morphological, and syntactic features that are relevant for the ongoing research. Furthermore, it outlines the most crucial problem in dealing with this dialect, such as the question of the Neapolitan orthography. To conclude we cover the principal features of CLLD . Chapter 3, “The research” focuses on the description of the research, outlining the methods (participants, stimuli, procedure, and data analysis) and presenting the differences between the mentioned Cardinaletti and Giusti questionnaire and the one used in this work. Chapter 4, “The results” displays the results of the research, achieved by statistical tests to be able to produce conclusions on the data, to give a syntactic analysis and a vision of the behaviour of the indefinite determiners in the languages taken into consideration. This chapter ends with a section summarizing the results and answering the research questions.