23 Word classes in Ladin

This chapter discusses word classes in Ladin, a Romance regional language spoken in the Italian Dolomites. First, I give a general overview of its properties, highlighting the cases in which they differ from what we find in other Romance languages. Then, I illustrate in detail some cases that are particularly interesting because they either show a blurring of the traditional distinctions, or they represent cases in which the same element can belong to different word classes. This usually happens when an element that belongs to a single class develops a further meaning, which is typically expressed by a different class. The cases discussed comprise the numeral one, the demonstrative chël ‘that’ used as article and as introducer of relative clauses, prepositional phrases used as adjectives, the use of personal pronouns as nouns, clitic pronouns, the ‘Verb + Locative’ construction, modal particles, and additive particles.