Events

Upcoming events

  • Mon
    20
    Apr
    2026
    3:00 pmRoom 3.30 (Camelot), Blandijn

    The presentation explores the syntactic development of the ablative gerund in Late Latin. Adopting a functional-typological perspective, it investigates the construction’s degree of nominality and sententiality. The analysis is based on a corpus of 12 texts dating from the 3rd to the 6th century AD and focuses on two main issues: the relationship between prepositional and non-prepositional ablative gerunds in Late Latin, and the level of internal syntactic complexity of the non-prepositional ablative gerunds. The comparison between prepositional and non-prepositional ablative gerunds offers evidence for a low degree of nominality of the ablative gerund in Late Latin. At the same time, the analysis of internal syntactic complexity shows a high level of sententiality. Although the ongoing development is evident, the presence of prepositional ablative gerunds, still displaying a noun-like behavior, indicates that the syntactic development is still in progress and not yet concluded.

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Past events

Event Information:

  • Tue
    09
    Dec
    2025

    Gina Saviano (Ghent University) – "Mapping the Regional Linguistic Space between Italian and Dialect: A Computational Analysis of Phonetic Features in Neapolitan"

    11:00 amBlandijn, Faculteitszaal

    Abstract

    “Continuum con addensamenti”, ‘continuum with agglomerations’: this is how Berruto once described the Italian linguistic repertoire. Much has been discussed about the extremes of this continuum; however, little do we know about those intermediate “agglomerations”. How many are there? How are they organized? Do they share features? To address these questions, we adopt a phonetic perspective and borrow a technique typically used in commercial profiling. Examining established Neapolitan phonetic features alongside new prosodic parameters, we identify possible speaker profiles and features agglomerations, shedding a new light on the intermediate varieties of the Italian standard-dialect continuum. In this talk, I will discuss preliminary studies and findings, applying this innovative methodology to offer new insights into the nature of the concept of variety.

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