Silent Instruments : Syntax, Semantics, and Acquisition of the Instrumental Role in Italian.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Suozzi, Alice.

Series:

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today Series

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today Series ; v.293

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Italian language.

Language acquisition.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (233 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam/Philadelphia : John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2026.

Summary:

This book offers the first systematic investigation of the instrumental role across syntax, semantics, and language acquisition. Focusing primarily on Italian within a comparative perspective, the book addresses a long-standing puzzle: why Instruments can be syntactically omitted even when they remain semantically present.

Contents:

Intro

Dedication

Epigraph

Table of contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1 Instruments

1.1 Defining Instruments

1.1.1 Instrumentality

1.1.2 Instrumental subroles

1.2 Defining Instruments

1.2.1 The clitic pronoun "ci"

1.3 Between semantics and syntax

1.3.1 Semantic classes that can enter instrumental syntactic structures

1.3.2 Syntactic optionality of Instruments and its implications

1.4 Summary of the chapter

Chapter 2 On the argument status of Instruments

2.1 The argument/adjunct distinction

2.1.1 Traditional accounts

2.1.2 The argument-adjunct continuum and the existence of more (than two) classes

2.2 Instruments in Italian

2.2.1 Semantic criteria

I. Semantic obligatoriness

II. Co-occurrence with a restricted range of verbal heads

III. Dependence on the verbal head for interpretation

2.2.2 Syntactic diagnostics

I. Iterativity test

II. The anti-reconstruction effect

III. Ordering test

IV. Pro-form replacement

V. Cliticization

2.3 The status of Instruments in Italian

2.4 Psycholinguistic evidence

2.5 Summary of the chapter

Chapter 3 Accounting for Instrument syntactic optionality in Italian

3.1 Setting the scene

3.1.1 Why are null objects omitted and how are they recovered

3.1.2 Pustejovsky's tripartition of arguments

shadow arguments

default arguments

true arguments

co-compositionality

3.2 Accounting for Instrument omission in Italian

shadow instruments

default instruments

open instruments

[+I] and [±I] default- and open-verbs

semantic recoverability and syntactic realization

3.3 "The top 10 Instruments…"

3.3.1 Research hypothesis

3.3.2 Materials

3.3.3 Participants

3.3.4 Response coding

3.3.5 Results

Number of inst-lexical items

Within-participant analysis.

Across-participants analysis

semantic similarity

3.4 The corpus analysis

3.4.1 Research hypothesis

3.4.2 Selection of corpora and procedure

3.4.3 Results

Frequencies of occurrence

Type of verbs Instruments tend to co-occur with

3.5 semantic recoverability and syntactic realization: Discussion of the results

3.6 Summary of the chapter

Chapter 4 The acquisition of Instruments in Italian

4.1 On the acquisition of argument structure

4.2 The acquisition of Instruments

4.2.1 Corpus analysis

4.3 The acquisition of Instruments in Italian

4.4 Testing our hypothesis

4.4.1 Materials

4.4.2 Participants and procedure

4.4.3 Response coding

4.4.4 Results

Peabody

TEPI Semantics

4.4.4.3 TEPI (Syntax)

4.4.5 Discussion

4.5 Summary of the chapter

Chapter 5 Refining our proposal

5.1 The role of linguistic context in increasing the semantic recoverability of Instruments

5.1.1 shadow-, default- and open-verbs

5.1.1.1 shadow-verbs and shadow instruments

5.1.1.2 default-verbs and default instruments

5.1.1.3 open-verbs and open instruments

5.1.1.4 Solving the puzzle

5.2 The classification of Instruments revised

5.3 Summary of the chapter

Conclusions

References

Appendixes

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Part of the metadata in this record was created by AI, based on the text of the resource.

ISBN:

90-272-4385-9

9789027243850

OCLC:

1583183288