Diachrony and Dialects: Grammatical Change in the Dialects of Italy (Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics)

This book examines diachronic change and diversity in the morphosyntax of Romance varieties spoken in Italy. These varieties offer an especially fertile terrain for research into language change, because of both the richness of dialectal variation and the length of the period of textual attestation. While attention in the past has been focussed on the variation found in phonology, morphology, and vocabulary, this volume examines variation in morphosyntactic structures, covering a range of topics designed to exploit and explore the interaction of the geographical and historical dimensions of change. The opening chapter sets the scene for specialist and non-specialist readers alike, and establishes the conceptual and empirical background. There follow a series of case studies investigating the morphosyntax of verbal and (pro)nominal constructions and the organization of the clause. Data are drawn from the full range of Romance dialects spoken within the borders of modern Italy, ranging from Sicily and Sardinia through to Piedmont and Friuli. Some of the studies narrow the focus to a particular construction within a particular dialect; others broaden out to compare different patterns of evolution within different dialects. There is also diversity in the theoretical frameworks adopted by the various contributors. The book aims to take stock of both the current state of the field and the fruits of recent research, and to set out new results and new questions to help move forward the frontiers of that research. It will be a valuable resource not only for those specializing in the study of Italo-Romance varieties, but also for other Romanists and for those interested in exploring and understanding the mechanisms of morphosyntactic change more generally. Cover Diachrony and Dialects: Grammatical Change in the Dialects of Italy Copyright Dedication Contents Series preface Preface For Mair Parry List of abbreviations Notes on contributors 1: Similarity and diversity in the evolution of Italo-Romance morphosyntax 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Dialects 1.3 Diachrony 1.4 Sources of data 1.5 History and theory: analysis and synthesis in the verbal system 1.5.1 Typology 1.5.2 Compositionality 1.5.3 Paradigmaticity 1.6 The chapters Part I: Verbal Structures 2: The development of the southern subjunctive: Morphological loss and syntactic gain 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Morphological marking of the indicative/subjunctive opposition in the south 2.2.1 The subjunctive 2.2.2 Dual complementizer systems 2.2.3 Summary of findings 2.3 Syntactic marking of the indicative/subjunctive opposition in the south 2.3.1 Verb movement 2.3.2 Dual complementizer systems 2.4 Summary and conclusions 3: Perfective auxiliation in Italo-Romance: The complementarity of historical and modern cross-dialectal evidence 3.1 Introduction 3.2 The basics: perfective auxiliation and the unaccusative hypothesis 3.3 Diachrony: intersections between modern dialect comparison and historical data 3.3.1 Old Florentine 3.3.2 Old Romanesco 3.4 Bringing the historical and modern cross-dialectal evidence together 3.4.1 Perfective auxiliation in Agnonese 3.4.2 Perfective auxiliation in Picernese 3.5 Conclusion 4: Passive and impersonal reflexives in the Italian dialects: Synchronic and diachronic aspects 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Passive and impersonal reflexives in Standard Italian 4.2.1 Passive(/impersonal) and impersonal si 4.2.2 Impersonal of reflexive patterns 4.2.3 Impersonal reflexive: interpretation of the morpheme si 4.2.4 Some controversial issues 4.3 Passive and impersonal reflexives in the Italian dialects 4.3.1 Passive vs impersonal reflexives 4.3.2 Grammatical domains 4.3.3 Nature of the subject 4.3.4 Tense/aspect constraints 4.3.5 Impersonal si/se with a pronominal object 4.3.6 Interpretation of impersonal si 4.3.7 Interim summary 4.4 Some diachronic data 4.4.1 Old Venetian 4.4.2 Old Lombard 4.4.3 Old Florentine 4.4.4 Old Neapolitan 4.4.5 Old Logudorese Sardinian 4.4.6 Interim summary 4.5 Converging constraints on impersonal 4.6 Some unsolved issues: the status of the reflexive morphemes si and ci 4.6.1 One or two si’s? 4.6.2 Impersonal ci 4.7 Conclusions 5: On the personal infinitive in Sicilian 5.1 Introduction 5.2 The personal infinitive in early Sicilian 5.3 The personal infinitive in modern Sicilian 5.4 Conclusion 6: Glimpsing the future: Some rare anomalies in the history of the Italo-Romance and Gallo-Romance future and conditional stem, and what they suggest about paradigm structure 6.1 The facts 6.2 Semantic or phonological causation? 6.3 An accidental association? 6.4 The mechanism of the change 7: Person endings in the old Italian verb system 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Verb endings in old Italian 7.2.1 Simple endings: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd persons singular 7.2.2 The complex ending of the third person plural 7.3 Concluding remarks Part II: (Pro)nominal Structures 8: The evolution of Italo-Romance clitic clusters: Prosodic restructuring and morphological opacity 8.1 Introduction 8.2 The emergence of the mirror order 8.3 Separability 8.4 Allomorphy 8.5 Suppletion 8.6 Root incorporation 8.7 Italian 8.8 Conclusions 9: Subject clitics and macroparameters 9.1 Introduction 9.2 Microand macroparametric variation 9.2.1 In favour of microparameters 9.2.2 In favour of macroparameters 9.2.3 Conclusion 9.3 Macroparameters and markedness 9.4 Parametric hierarchies 9.4.1 Word order 9.4.2 The null-argument hierarchy 9.5 Northern Italian subject clitics and the null-argument hierarchy 9.6 The difference between subjects and objects 9.7 Conclusion 10: Sicilian 1st and 2nd person oblique tonic pronouns: A historical and comparative examination 10.1 Conservation and innovation in Romance pronominal systems 10.2 1sg and 2sg oblique tonic pronouns in early and modern Sicilian: Romance equivalents and etymological hypotheses 10.3 Textual evidence from early literary Sicilian 10.4 Textual data, areal data, and diachronic developments 10.5 Conclusions 11: Patterns of variation and diachronic change in Piedmontese object clitic syntax 11.1 Introduction 11.2 Piedmontese object clitic syntax 11.2.1 The diachronic change in Piedmontese object clitic syntax 11.2.2 Synchronic variability in Piedmontese object clitic syntax 11.3 Relatable facts in Fassano and Spanish 11.3.1 The case of Fassano infinitive+OCL structures 11.3.2 Evidence of an OCL hierarchy: variation in Spanish dialect OCL syntax 11.4 Diachronic change in Piedmontese object clitic syntax revisited: the Functional Hierarchy Hypothesis 11.4.1 OCL ordering in Piedmontese 11.4.2 The structure of the compound tense in Romance and post-participial OCL placement in modern Piedmontese 11.4.3 Diachronic change in Piedmontese OCL syntax and the case of se 11.5 Conclusions 12: Gender assignment and pluralization in Italian and the Veneto 12.1 Recent work on the theme 12.2 Pluralization, gender assignment, and shift in the Veneto (Neo-Venetian) 12.3 Conclusion 13: Kind-defining relative clauses in the diachrony of Italian 13.1 Introduction 13.1.1 Relative clauses in Italian 13.1.2 Relatives with resumptive clitics in modern colloquial Italian 13.1.3 Early Italian relatives with resumptive clitics 13.2 Kind-defining relatives 13.2.1 Kind-defining contact relatives in English 13.2.2 Kind-defining headless relatives in Italian 13.3 Properties of post-copular kind-defining relatives 13.4 Deriving the properties of kind-defining relatives 13.5 Postand pre-copular position (canonical and inverse predication) 13.6 Raising and matching derivations of kind-defining relatives 13.7 Post-copular relatives and agreement 13.8 Conclusions and speculations 14: Synchronic and diachronic clues on the internal structure of ‘where’ in Italo-Romance 14.1 Introduction 14.2 Theoretical background 14.3 The formatives of ‘where’ in northern Italian dialects 14.4 Matching the structure of locative PPs 14.5 Ubiquitous ‘where’: relative, interrogative, and prepositional forms 14.5.1 Relative vs interrogative clauses 14.5.2 Dove inside locative expressions 14.5.3 Other usages 14.6 Concluding remarks References Index OXFORD STUDIES IN DIACHRONIC AND HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS This Volume Examines Diachronic Change And Diversity In The Morphosyntax Of Romance Varieties Spoken In Italy. These Varieties Offer An Especially Fertile Terrain For Research Into Language Change, Because Of Both The Richness Of Dialectal Variation And The Length Of The Period Of Textual Attestation. Edited By Paola Beninca, Adam Ledgeway [and] Nigel Vincent. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 301-332) And Index. This book examines morphosyntactic variation in the Romance varieties spoken in Italy from both a regional and historical perspective. It examines a range of phenomena, backed up by extensive empirical data, and will be a valuable resource not only for specialists in Italo-Romance but also for researchers in morphosyntactic change more generally