@article{3aec5b26571345dbb5b76fea8195d8aa,
title = "When the indefinite article implies uniqueness: A case study from old Italian",
abstract = "The article investigates some diachronic aspects of the morpho-syntactic marking of indefiniteness, by focusing on a case study from Old Italian on the use of the indefinite article with a possessive and a kinship term implying a unique referent, as in una sua madre, literally '*a his/her mother', that is, 'a mother of his/ hers'. Using a corpus-based analysis of Old Italian texts, I will show how the function of the indefinite article in this kind of noun phrase may be accounted for if the notion of discourse prominence is taken into account. I further suggest that this quite peculiar use presupposes the same semantic-pragmatic reasons which determine the distribution of uno as a non-obligatory marker of indefiniteness, and its alternation with zero.",
keywords = "Discourse prominence, Inalienable possession, Indefiniteness, Specificity, Topicality",
author = "Maria Napoli",
note = "Funding Information: 1.The research which led to this article was financially supported by the Italian Ministry of Research and Education within the project Contact and Change in the History of Mediterranean Languages (PRIN 2008, Research Unit of the Universit{\`a} per Stranieri di Siena). I presented an earlier version of this article at the University of Oslo, as an invited speaker at the Workshop on Definiteness (18–19 Nov. 2010) and at the 44th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (Universidad de la Rioja, Logro{\~n}o, 8–11 Sept. 2011). I am grateful to both audiences for questions and observations, and in particular to Atle Gr{\o}nn and Dag Haug, the organizers of the Workshop in Oslo. I am greatly indebted to the Editor and to two anonymous Referees of Folia Linguistica for valuable comments and constructive criticism. Philip Baldi, Silvia Luraghi, Andrea Sans{\`o} and Mario Squartini read a draft of this article and provided insightful remarks: special thanks are due to them. I would also like to thank Marina Benedetti, Giovanna Frosini, Klaus von Heusinger, Romano Lazzeroni, Alessandro Lenci, Giovanna Marotta, Giampaolo Salvi, Arnim von Stechow and Olga Tribulato for useful suggestions on a previous version of this work.",
year = "2013",
month = apr,
doi = "10.1515/flin.2013.008",
language = "English",
volume = "47",
pages = "183--236",
journal = "Folia Linguistica",
issn = "0165-4004",
publisher = "De Gruyter Mouton",
number = "1",
}