Quantifiers in Italian

Crisma, Paola

doi:10.1007/978-94-007-2681-9_9

Paola Crisma³

Part of the book series: Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy ((SLAP,volume 90))

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5 Citations

Abstract

After presenting some basic about Italian this chapter outlines the quantification patterns it expresses. It illustrates various semantic types of quantifiers, such as generalized existential, generalized universal, proportional, definite and partitive which are defined in the Quantifier Questionnaire in Chapter 1. It partitions the expression of the semantic types into morpho-syntactic classes: Adverbial type quantifiers and Nominal (or Determiner) type quantifiers. For the various semantic and morpho-syntactic types of quantifiers it also distinguishes syntactically simple and syntactically complex quantifiers, as well as issues of distributivity and scope interaction, classifiers and measure expressions, and existential constructions. The chapter describes structural properties of determiners and quantified noun phrases in Italian, both in terms of internal structure (morphological or syntactic) and distribution.

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Notes

1.
Grammatical gender tends to match natural gender with animate nouns and is unpredictable with inanimate nouns. Masculine is the default gender, therefore throughout this work I will use the masculine as the default citation form.
2.
I will consider quantifiers simplex/monomorphemic if the root is monomorphemic, abstracting away from the presence/absence of overt agreement markers.
3.
In glosses, I will only indicate the morphological components relevant to the point being made in the example.
4.
The translation always represents the intended meaning, both for grammatical and ungrammatical sentences, even if in some cases also the English translation is an ungrammatical sentence.
5.
For a definition of definite, see Heim (1982).
6.
Derived from the Latin distal demonstrative ille.
7.
There is an allomorph l(o)/gli which is selected before vowels, some consonants and [s]+consonant.
8.
The singular la is normally reduced to l’ before vowels, plural le is never reduced.
9.
Also a continuation of ille.
10.
Some varieties have a third demonstrative, codesto, which is used for objects and individuals close to the hearer rather than the speaker.
11.
Unless they are modified, see Chierchia (1998), Longobardi (2001), Delfitto (2002).
12.
However Italian, like English, admits bare singular count nouns when they are coordinated and receive a definite interpretation, see Heycock and Zamparelli (2003), Roodenburg (2004).
13.
Here I will only cursorily describe personal proper names, leaving geographical names, names of ships, institutions, etc. out of the picture.
14.
Abstracting away from gender-marking: Paolo (masc.) vs. Paola (fem.).
15.
With the exceptions of a few auspicious names, for example Libero ‘free’, Serena ‘serene’, Vittoria ‘victory’.
16.
‘Ergative si’, found in certain unaccusative constructions, see Burzio (1986, pp. 38–39).
17.
But see Section 9.6.
18.
On this, see in particular Nespor (1988), Crisma (1991, 1996), Bernstein (1993, 2001), Cinque (1994), Zamparelli (1995).
19.
See Giorgi (1988).
20.
Used also as reflexive in the 1st and 2nd person. For the 3rd person, both singular and plural, the reflexive clitic is si, which has other uses, see Burzio (1986).
21.
The numeral one and the indefinite article (cf. (4-b)) are not segmentally distinct, both being the continuation of the Lat. numeral ūnu(m).
22.
From spoken Latin *alicūnu(m), from aliquis ūnus ‘one whoever’.
23.
Invariant: it does not agree in gender and number. It derives from quale che (sia), literally ‘which that may be’, originally meaning whatever. The original meaning is preserved when qualche is preceded by the indefinite article:
(i)
Bisogna
trovare
una
qualche
soluzione

need-impers
find
a
some
solution

‘One/We must find some solution, no matter what’

For some more details on qualche, see Zamparelli (2007).
24.
Singular alcuno is a negative polarity item, see (17-b) and Section 9.16.
25.
Note the plural meaning of the morphologically singular Qualche pinguino.
26.
The sentence is fine with a taxonomic reading, like English Some glues have fallen on the desk.
27.
The ‘partitive article’ is etymologically derived from the preposition di+Def.Art., but is not definite at all. At the earliest stages of Italian (13th C), constructions of the form di+Def.Art.+N were indeed interpreted as partitives with a presupposed non-empty restrictor, while the equivalent of the modern ‘partitive article’ was realized as di+N, without the definite article. The modern construction, however, is already attested in the Divina Commedia (earliest years of the 14th C). See Rohlfs (1968, pp. 115–117) for details.
28.
The examples in (13) might be slightly misleading for they can give the wrong impression that ‘bare’ nouns and nouns preceded by the ‘partitive article’ are equivalent. Actually, they have quite different distributional and scope-taking properties, discussed in Sections 9.17 and 9.18.
29.
This sentence is ungrammatical if the intended reading for scarafaggio is count, but it may become acceptable to the extent that one can force a mass interpretation (‘cockroach-like material’).
30.
See Longobardi (2001).
31.
From Lat. ne ipse ūnus, roughly ‘not even one’.
32.
Nessuno is also found in interrogatives, and it is in this case the equivalent of English any:
(i)
Hai
ricevuto
nessuna
richiesta
in
merito?

have-2sg
received
no
request
in
respect

‘Have you received any request with respect to this?’

See also Rizzi (1982, chap. 4), Longobardi (1988).
33.
See in particular Tovena (2001, 2003).
34.
See footnote 33.
35.
Invariant.
36.
From Lat. adjective tāntu(m) ‘so great’. It is also used to build comparative D-quantifiers, see Section 9.7.
37.
From spoken Lat. *pariculu(m), diminutive of adj. pār ‘equal’.
38.
From Old French trop, in turn a borrowing from Franconian.
39.
From 14th C Italian: a bastanza, ‘in sufficient quantity’. It is invariant.
40.
From Lat. māgis ‘more, in a higher degree’. For Italian più ‘more’, see Section 9.16.
41.
The sentence is fine if there is a presupposed set of occasions in which Claudia might have visited Tashkent, so that nessuna volta means ‘on none of those occasions’.
42.
As with nessuna volta, the sentence is fine if it means: ‘on which of those occasions?’.
43.
From Lat. tāle(m) ‘such’, hence literally, ‘such time’. However, already in Dante (early 14th C) talvolta has the modern meaning of ‘sometimes’.
44.
From Lat. tōtus ‘whole’, not the meaning it has in Italian.
45.
Lat. omnis ‘all, every’.
46.
From Lat. quisque ūnus ‘each one’.
47.
Together with the synonym ambedue, which has the same syntactic properties, but is much less common.
48.
Invariant.
49.
Agreeing in gender.
50.
Mezzo is never used with a di-phrase: (il/un) mezzo *di/?*del molo … .
51.
From Lat. spissu(m) ‘thick, dense’. Spesso survives as an adjective in modern Italian, preserving the original meaning it had in Latin.
52.
Neanche and nemmeno, like all n-words, require the presence of the negative marker non if they occur in post-verbal position.
53.
See discussion in Zanuttini (1991, pp. 116–117). There is however an interesting exception, abstract nouns:
(i)
Non
hai
proprio
alcun
rispetto

NEG
have-2sg
precisely
any
respect

‘You don’t have any respect at all’

Note that these nouns are the only mass nouns allowed with nessun(o) (see (15)), discussed in Tovena (2001, 2003).
54.
An intonation break at this point rescues these sentences, for in this case esattamente and the like function as sentential adverbs and not as modifiers of the QNP.
55.
When combined with the superlative suffix, diversi loses its quantificational meaning, and simply means ‘very different’. In this case it is normally found in post-nominal position.

56.

With respect to this phenomenon, there is a lot of individual variation. Some speakers firmly reject molta poca N, molte poche N, etc., while others accept them. A search on Google for some strings of the form molto/a poca N and molto/e poche N yielded the following results:

	Invariant molto	Agreeing molta/e
poca gente ‘few people’	494	331
poca fiducia ‘little trust’	162	200
poca importanza ‘little importance’	679	106
poche persone ‘few people’	282	586
poche donne ‘few women’	131	70

57.
Considered vulgar, but extremely common.
58.
Colloquial. It is only acceptable if definite: *Un grosso di spettatori …
59.
For a detailed discussion of conjunctions of QNPs with mixed monotonicity in Italian, see Delfitto (1986) and Acquaviva (1997).
60.
The restrictor is most often plural, and only examples with a plural restrictor will be presented here. Note however that if the quantifier heading the construction can combine with mass nouns, the restrictor can be headed by a singular mass noun.
61.
In this case they normally occupy the leftmost position.
62.
See Crisma (1991), Zamparelli (1995).
63.
Which extends to proportional mezzo:
(i)
a.
Prendi
la
mia
mezza
torta

take
the
my
half
cake

‘Take my half cake’

b.
??Prendi
mezza
mia
torta

c.
*Prendi
mia
mezza
torta
64.
This tanto/i is morphologically identical to the value judgement Q presented in Section 9.2.1.3, but the interpretation here is not that of a large quantity.
65.
But see (15) and (16).
66.
For discussion, see Moro (1997), Pinto (1997), Leonetti (2008).
67.
The comma in these examples indicates a marked intonation break.
68.
See (67).

69.

Though qualche does not normally combine with mass nouns, as shown in (12-c), qualcosa can be used for a mass:

(i)	a.	Ora ti		spalmo	qualcosa	su quella ferita
		now to you spread-1sg something on that					bruise
		‘I’ll spread something on that bruise of yours’
	b.	C’	è qualcosa		in quella bottiglia
		there is something in that			bottle

70.
Entrambi patterns with tutto/i.
71.
As for examples as in (113), it is not even clear that something is being elided.
72.
For a proposal in this sense, see Cardinaletti and Giusti (1991), Chierchia (1997). On the pronominalization with ne of the elided noun, see Rizzi (1982).
73.
See Burzio (1986, pp. 42–53).
74.
The form existed in old Italian (13–14th c. The label ‘Italian’ in this case is an abstraction, for various regional varieties are attested; the variety in the example is Tuscan):
(i)
Quandunque l’
una d’ este chiavi falla (Dante, Purg. IX 121)

whenever
the one of these keys fails

‘Whenever one of these keys fails’
75.
There are in fact two distinct qualsiasi/qualunque: a quantifier corresponding to whichever (universal), and a pre- or post-nominal modifier cooccurring with indefinite determiners, roughly equivalent to a N whatsoever (existential). For details, see Chierchia (2006).
76.
See also Acquaviva (1997, pp. 224–226).
77.
There is individual variation here, for example Zanuttini (1991) accepts:
(i)
Pochi capiscono
alcunché
di logica

few
understand
anything
of logic

‘Few people understand anything about logic’ (Zanuttini 1991, p. 116)

but I find this sentence quite odd.
78.
Used also as a modifier of Qs (see Section 9.5.1) and to form comparative Qs (see Section 9.7).
79.
Which is also an Existential A-quantifier, see Section 9.2.2.
80.
Adverbial ancora is otherwise interpreted as ‘again, still, some more’.
81.
A substitute for un cazzo ‘a dick’, considered quite offensive.
82.
Examples with transitive, intransitive and unaccusative verbs.
83.
With unaccusative (and some intransitive) verbs, indefinite QNPs in pre-V subject position receive an interpretation that is indistinguishable from that of their partitive counterparts: thus Qualche bambino in (127-c) actually means ‘Some of the children’.
84.
Possessors could be considered as belonging in the previous group, for they are expressed by prepositional phrases introduced by the preposition di, unless they are pronominal.
85.
See Section 9.9.
86.
Recall that there is no possessive construction comparable to the s-genitive in English.
87.
See Zamparelli (2007) for discussion.
88.
This pattern is analogous to the one observed with numeral and possessives discussed in Section 9.6, and can probably be accounted for along the same lines.
89.
See Nespor (1988, p. 433) and Crisma (1991, p. 108).

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Acknowledgements

I began this contribution when I was visiting UCLA on a Fulbright Research Grant, and I am particularly indebted to Ed Keenan and Donka Minkova for making my stay stimulating and fruitful. I also thank the Fulbright Commission and its staff in Rome, as well as the Department of English and the Department of Linguistics at UCLA. I also wish to thank the various linguists and non-linguists I pestered asking for their judgements on the most difficult examples, and the anonymous reviewer who provided several useful suggestions.

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Università di Trieste, Trieste, Italy
Paola Crisma

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, Dept. of Linguistics, UCLA, Hilgard Avenue 405, Los Angeles, 90095-1543, California, USA
Edward L. Keenan
, Dept. of Linguistics, UCLA, Hilgard Avenue 405, Los Angeles, 90095-1543, California, USA
Denis Paperno

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Crisma, P. (2012). Quantifiers in Italian. In: Keenan, E., Paperno, D. (eds) Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 90. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2681-9_9

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2681-9_9
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Policies and ethics

(i)	Bisogna	trovare	una	qualche	soluzione
	need-impers	find	a	some	solution
	‘One/We must find some solution, no matter what’

(i)	Hai	ricevuto	nessuna	richiesta	in	merito?
	have-2sg	received	no	request	in	respect
	‘Have you received any request with respect to this?’

(i)	Non	hai	proprio	alcun	rispetto
	NEG	have-2sg	precisely	any	respect
	‘You don’t have any respect at all’

(i)	a.	Prendi	la	mia	mezza	torta
		take	the	my	half	cake
		‘Take my half cake’
	b.	??Prendi	mezza		mia	torta
	c.	*Prendi	mia		mezza	torta