This item is non-discoverable
Matthias Meyer-Schwarzenberger
Former Member
Last Name
Meyer-Schwarzenberger
First name
Matthias
Phone
+41 71 224 3983
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
- Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Making Democracy Speak : Linguistic Foundations of Social Capital(2013-05-24)In linguistics, northern Italy is widely known for the fact that the dialects spoken in this area, including all regions north of the Appennines as well as part of Tuscany, require overt subject clitics in declarative sentences. This parallels the situation in many European languages, where, unlike the majority of languages worldwide, mandatory subject pronouns have been grammaticalized since about the late Middle Ages. Given this particular distribution and timing, and in the light of recent insights in the field of cognitive linguistics, I suggest that mandatory subject pronominals (together with a number of similar grammar features) reflect and convey modern (Western) concepts of agency, topicality, and transitivity. These, in turn, form the cornerstones of all kinds of advanced competitive and cooperative behaviour in modern societies. Grammar thus seems to represent an important catalyst of social capital. Language structures carry cultural information and play a crucial part in the inter-generational transmission of habits and attitudes. As for Italy, it is natural to assume that the observed differences in dialect syntax have contributed to the well-known persistence of the North-South-divide in social capital endowments over the centuries.Type:presentation