Current theoretical approaches to language devote great attention to macro- and micro-variation and show an ever-increasing interest in minority languages. In this respect, few empirical domains are as rich and lively as the Italo-Romance languages, which together with Albanian were the main research domain of Leonardo M. Savoia. The volume covers areas as different as phonology, morphology, syntax and the lexicon. A broad range of Romance languages is considered, as well as Albanian, Greek and Hungarian, shedding new light on many classical topics. The first section focuses on morphosyntax, both in the narrow sense and with regard to its interfaces. The second section focuses on clitics and pronouns. The third section deals with a number of issues in phonology and syntax-phonology interface. The last section turns the reader's attention beyond formal linguistics itself and examines variation in the light of neurosciences, pathology, historical linguistics and political discourse.

• Structuring Variation in Romance Linguistics and Beyond
• Editorial page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Table of contents
• 1. Introduction: Structuring thought, externalizing structure
  • 1. Is phonology different?
  • 2. The unification of morphology and syntax
  • 3. Syntactic parameters: Microvariation and macrocategories
  • 4. Language and its speakers
  • References
  • Leonardo M. Savoia complete bibliography 1974–2017
• Part I. Micro‑ and macro-variation in syntax
• 2. Gender, number and inflectional class in some Northern Italian dialects
  • 1. Introduction: The framework
  • 2. The distribution of the plural ‑‘i’ in North Italian dialects
  • 3. Plural and D field
    • 3.1 The inflection of clitics
  • 4. Some proposals for the analysis
    • 4.1 The nature of -i
    • 4.2 The nominal inflection
  • 5. Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
• 3. Objects and subjects in the left periphery
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. a-Topics
    • 2.1 a-Topics in Italian during development
    • 2.2 a-Topics in a comparative perspective
    • 2.3 a-Topics in a diachronic perspective
    • 2.4 The development of a-marking
    • 2.5 When objects are Topics
  • 3. a-Marking on lexical object Topics, not on lexical subject Topics
    • 3.1 Instances of a-marked subjects
  • 4. Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • References
• 4. Notes on infinitival relatives in Italian
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Nonrestrictive ‘da’ infinitival relatives?
  • 3. Two ‘da’ infinitival relatives in Italian
  • 4. A difference between the ‘da’ + infinitive and the P ‘cui’/art. + ‘qual’‑ infinitive construction
  • 5. Another difference between the ‘da’ + infinitive and the P ‘cui’/art. + ‘qual’‑ infinitive construction
  • 6. Are there subject infinitival relatives in Italian?
  • 7. ‘Da’ infinitival relatives and restructuring
  • Acknowledgments
  • References
• 5. Negation and negative copulas in Bantu
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Copulas and negation
  • 3. Negative inflected forms
  • 4. A Bantu-Romance comparison
    • 4.1 Jespersen’s cycle
    • 4.2 Initial negation
    • 4.3 Medial negation
    • 4.4 Final negation
  • 5. Conclusions
  • References
• 6. On gender and number
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. On the Feature Strength Hypothesis: Number over gender
  • 3. Inflectional noun class morphology
  • 4. Possible explanations for the different status of number and gender in comprehension tasks
  • 5. Concluding remarks
  • References
• 7. Micro‑ and macro-variation
  • 1. Enclisis/proclisis alternations in Romance
  • 2. Realis/irrealis alternations in the typological debate
  • 3. Microvariation and macroparameters
  • References
• 8. Concealed pseudo-clefts? Evidence from a Lombard dialect
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Types of clefts
  • 3. An aside on interrogatives in CN
  • 4. Cleft interrogatives
    • 4.1 who/what interrogatives
    • 4.2 Temporal interrogatives
    • 4.3 Other interrogatives
  • 5. Summary and theoretical implications
  • 6. Conclusions
  • Acknowledgments
  • References
• 9. Negation patterns across dialects
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. The data
    • 2.1 L’Escarène
      • 2.1.1 Single postverbal marker
      • 2.1.2 Single preverbal noun
      • 2.1.3 Preverbal noun and postverbal marker
    • 2.2 Venice
    • 2.3 Zemignana
  • 3. Putting the pieces together: Negation and modality
  • 4. Conclusion
  • References
• 10. A note on left-peripheral maps and interface properties
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Syntactic and interface properties of criterial heads
  • 3. There can be multiple topics, but LP focus is unique: The role of LF interface principles
  • 4. Principles and parameters: A role for PF interface?
  • Acknowledgments
  • References
• 11. Italian ‘faire’-infinitives
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Embedding ‘volere’ in Italian ‘faire’-infinitives
  • 3. Want-FIs: Syntactic properties
  • 4. Clitic transitive causee: defective intervention
  • 5. Accusative transitive causee: ECM construction
  • 6. Intermediate cliticisation: Silent OBTAIN
  • 7. Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
• 12. Optional vs obligatory movement in Albanian (pseudo)-raising constructions
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Optional movement
  • 3. Obligatory movement
  • 4. Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
• Part II. Clitics and pronouns from a theoretical perspective
• 13. Clitic stress allomorphy in Sardinian
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Approaches to enclitic stress phenomena
    • 2.1 Phonological analyses
    • 2.2 The ‘weak-pronoun’ analysis
  • 3. Enclitic stress in Sardinian
    • 3.1 General properties of lexical stress
    • 3.2 Enclitic stress patterns
      • 3.2.1 Logudorese
      • 3.2.2 Transitional area
      • 3.2.3 Campidanese
  • 4. Discussion
  • 5. A note on proclitic stress in Sardinian
  • 6. Conclusions
    • Acknowlegments
  • References
• 14. Clitics and vowel epenthesis
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Syncope and epenthesis in Luzzara, Carpi and Rolo
  • 3. Discussion
  • 4. Conclusions
  • Acknowledgments
  • References
• 15. Overabundance in Hungarian accusative pronouns
  • 1. Overabundance
  • 2. Hungarian nominal and pronominal inflection: An overview
  • 3. Overabundance in Hungarian personal pronouns
    • 3.1 Unbalanced overabundance in 1/2/3SG.ACC forms
    • 3.2 Balanced overabundance in 1PL.ACC and 2PL.ACC forms
  • 4. Are there differences in the usage of the two competing forms?
    • 4.1 Emphatic vs. non-emphatic
  • 5. Discussion and concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgments
  • References
• 16. Unstable personal pronouns in Northern Logudorese
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Contact-induced change in gender agreement and noun inflection in Sennorese
  • 3. Contact-induced change in the dialect of Luras
    • 3.1 Convergent gender marking in Lurese
    • 3.2 Change in the personal pronoun system: From common Logudorese to conservative Lurese
    • 3.3 Instability and ongoing change in personal pronouns in the dialect of Luras
  • 4. Personal pronouns in the nearby dialects of Bulzi and Pèrfugas
  • 5. Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • References
• 17. Object clitics for subject clitics in Francoprovençal and Piedmontese
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. More data
  • 3. Analysis
    • 3.1 Cliticisation and incorporation
    • 3.2 Enclisis to the past participle
  • 4. Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
• Part III. Sound pattern and syntactic structure
• 18. Are Sardinian vocatives perfectly regular?
  • Introduction
  • 1. On Vocatives in Sardinian
  • 2. The syntax of Vocatives
  • 3. Conclusion
  • References
• 19. Phonological correlates of syntactic structure
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Cosentino RF: An overview
    • 2.1 RF triggers
    • 2.2 Defining locality
      • 2.2.1 Core configurations: Spec-head, head–head and head-comp
      • 2.2.2 Phases
  • 3. Summary and conclusions
  • References
• 20. Metaphony as magnetism
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Metaphony and the |A| eater
  • 3. Magnetic grammar
  • 4. Metaphony in magnetic grammar
  • 5. Conclusion
  • References
• 21. Some reflections on the syllabification of clusters
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Syllable theory and the syllabification of clusters
    • 2.1 Predictions of current syllable theory
    • 2.2 Diagnostics for syllabification
  • 3. Syllabification of clusters
    • 3.1 Obstruent/sonorant syllabification
    • 3.2 Obstruent cluster syllabification
    • 3.3 Sonorant/obstruent syllabification
    • 3.4 Sonorant cluster syllabification
  • 4. Final remarks
  • References
• Part IV. Language in context
• 22. Diachronic and synchronic lexical interactions in the Italo-Balkan linguistic space
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Attestations of the lemma in the Italic and Balkan linguistic space
  • 3. History and current distribution of the lemma
  • Acknowledgment
  • References
• 23. Lexical-semantic analysis of the political language
  • 1. Aspects and trends
  • 2. The French Revolution language and beyond
  • 3. The totalitarian languages and the discursive styles of leaders and party movements
  • 4. The political language of the two Germanies
  • References
• 24. Dialects and neuroscience
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Investigating the auditory brain: Techniques and methods
  • 3. Dialect in the brain
    • 3.1 Neurophysiology of tonal dialects
    • 3.2 Auditory processing and dialect variation
    • 3.3 Allophonic variation within dialects
  • 4. Discussion and further remarks
  • Acknowledgment
  • References
• 25. Remarks on the vulnerability of grammar
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Language pathologies
  • 3. Language pathologies and memory
  • 4. Morphology in language acquisition
  • 5. Language evolution
  • 6. Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgment
  • References
• 26. Some Celto-Albanian isoglosses and their implications
  • 1. Celto-Albanian isoglosses
  • 2. ‘Bërrakë -a’ ‘bog’
  • 3. ‘Blertë’ ‘greenish; verdant’
  • 4. ‘Brī briri’, Gheg ‘brî brini’ ‘horn’
  • 5. ‘Dritë –a’ ‘light’
  • 6. Conclusions
  • Abbreviations
  • Acknowledgments
  • Literary Works
  • References
• Language index
• Subject index