Riccardo Pulicani

• Pulicani, Riccardo (2026). The right to die: a comparative analysis of end-of-life issues in Scandinavian legal systems. Medicine, Science and the Law. ISSN 0025-8024. 66(3). Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This comparative analysis explores the legal frameworks surrounding end-of-life issues in the Scandinavian countries. Despite their shared legal traditions, all four nations exhibit stringent restrictions on end-of-life practices. This paper highlights the specific legal provisions, limitations, and societal attitudes within each country, demonstrating a significant legislative rigidity that contrasts with the more progressive approaches observed in countries. Notably, while Norway and Denmark maintain a conservative stance lacking substantial public movements advocating for change, Sweden displays elements of dialogue around end-of-life issues, albeit without formal legislation permitting euthanasia. By providing a detailed examination of the current state of laws and ethical considerations in Scandinavian countries, this work underscores the critical divergence between societal desires for autonomy in end-of-life decisions and the legal constraints. The findings suggest the necessity for legislative reflection and potential reform to align legal practices with evolving public sentiment regarding the right to die.

• Callegari, Elena & Pulicani, Riccardo (2020). Topicalized PPs: Movement or External Merge? In Hörnig, Robin; Wietersheim,, Sophie von; Konietzko, Andreas & Featherston, Sam (Ed.), Proceedings of Linguistic Evidence 2020: Linguistic Theory Enriched by Experimental Data. University of Tübingen Press. p. 241–255. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In this paper, we discuss the scope properties of topicalized prepositional phrases in Italian; we are especially interested in determining whether the presence of clitic resumption plays a role in allowing or disallowing a topicalized PP to reconstruct IP-internally. We are also interested in what reconstruction properties tell us about the derivation of topicalized PPs in Italian

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• Pulicani, Riccardo (2020). The effects of focalisation on Italian doubly quantified sentences. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  It is an established fact in the literature that information structural properties can influence the resolution of scope ambiguities (Anderson, 2004, Krifka, 2008; Neeleman & Van de Koot, 2016, a.o). There is general consensus on the fact that topicality generally boost a wide scope interpretation of the quantified phrases (Ioup, 1975, Sæbø, 1997, Endriss, 2009). However, the effects of focus are much more debated. Some authors believe that focalisation leads to a wide scope interpretation (Williams, 1988; Krifka, 2004), others believe that it leads to narrow scope interpretation (Diesing, 1992; Surany&Turi, 2017). Additionally, ErteshickTShir(1997) believes that only contrastiveness plays a role. This study experimentally investigates the effects of different types of foci on doubly quantified sentences in Italian.

• Callegari, Elena & Pulicani, Riccardo (2020). The optionality of clitic resumption for scope in topicalized PPs. Full text in Research Archive
• Pulicani, Riccardo (2018). Aspects of Italian quantification: an experimental study. Full text in Research Archive
• Pulicani, Riccardo (2017). Le inversioni di portata nelle frasi doppiamente quantificate in Italiano. Full text in Research Archive
• Pulicani, Riccardo (2017). Inverse scope in Italian. Full text in Research Archive
• Pulicani, Riccardo (2020). Quantification and Information Structure in Italian. University of Oslo (UiO). Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This thesis is concerned with the effects of Information Structure (IS) on doubly quantified sentences in Italian. When two quantifier phrases (QPs) interact in the same sentence, this can lead to ambiguity and to two different interpretations of the sentence.Many factors influence the availability of inverse scope: syntactic aspects, semantic features of the interacting quantifiers, language specific factors, and also Information Structure. The results of this work suggest that, first of all, there is a strong difference in the availability of inverse scope between sentences where the QPs are in a subject- object configuration and sentences where the QPs are in a direct object- indirect object configuration. This different behaviour has been traced to the role played by the subject position, seen as a criterial position in the sense of Rizzi (2005 et seq.). Secondly, the results suggests that focalisation blocks an inverse scope interpretation, favouring a narrow scope reading of the QP under focus. Thirdly, topicalisation generally facilitates inverse scope readings. However, different types of topics affect inverse scope availability differently, depending on their capability of structuring the dynamics of the discourse.

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