Delokutivität, Possessive und die italienischen Verwandtschaftsbezeichnungen

Abstract

This contribution is about a hitherto unexplained phenomenon of Italian syntax, i.e. the lack of a determiner in nominal expressions of a certain type that contain a possessive and a kinship noun as its scope, despite the fact that possessives normally require a determiner. So, my car is la mia macchina in Italian, whereas my son translates as mio figlio. It is argued that a plausible solution to this puzzle can be given by using Benveniste's notion of delocutivity. Therefore, the first part of the article presents the concept of delocutivity, mainly drawing on French examples. The main purpose of this introductory part is to show that the class of delocutive expressions is not restricted to verbs.