A mme e tte: An Associative Plural of the First Person Pronoun in Abruzzese

Abstract

In Abruzzese, the structure a mme e X is used to convey the notion that the speaker and someone closely related to them act jointly. The order of conjuncts is fixed: the first one is always a first person pronoun, while the second one, usually a second person pronoun, strictly denotes a close acquaintance of the speaker. The present article argues that this construction is an associative plural of the first person pronoun, something that has not been previously identified in Romance. On top of providing new empirical data, the evidence presented here bears on whether there is a formal difference between associative plural pronouns and regular plural pronouns, a question that has been debated in the literature for quite some time.

Keywords

• Abruzzese. Associative plural pronouns. First-person pronouns. Italo-Romance morpho-syntax. Typology of pronouns