Some Initial Remarks on Non-Prepositional Genitives in the Apulian Variety of San Marco in Lamis

This work aims at an initial description of prepositionless geni - tives in the Romance variety of San Marco in Lamis, spoken in the Southern Italian region of Apulia. The construction will be com- pared with other Romance, Semitic, Albanian, and Iranian varieties whereby the expression of possession is connected to the presence of D elements, or to morphology stemming from them. The paper deals, in particular, with the behaviour of the construction with ele - ments such as definite and indefinite articles, demonstratives, proper names, and with how pre-nominal adjectival modification of geni - tives and post-nominal adjectival modification of heads can only occur in the prepositional kind of the construction. This is also the case with demonstratives preceding heads and genitives in the form raised nominals. It will be seen that genitives are only interpreted as such when they are non-raised, i.e. when they are articled. The pre-genitival article is thus understood to be a pivotal element in the interpretation of the second DP as genitival.