Michela Cennamo
Split Intransitivity and Auxiliary Selection In Italo-Romance: Variation and Lexical-Aspectual Constraints In Synchrony and Diachrony
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Michela Cennamo
Michela Cennamo
Michela Cennamo is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Naples Federico II. Her main research interests include (i) voice, transitivity and argument structure, (ii)synchronic and diachronic aspects of the lexicon-syntax interface,(iii)grammaticalization, with special focus on Latin and Romance.
She has worked extensively on auxiliary selection and split intransitivity in Italo-Romance, the diachronic relationship between auxiliaries and light verbs, the rise of periphrastic passives and the reanalysis of the reflexive as a voice marker in Romance. She has also investigated diachronic aspects of the lexicon-syntax interface, with reference to the interplay between the root and event structure template of verbs in determining changes in anticausativization strategies in Latin and early Italo-Romance, and has explored the parameters involved in alignment changes in the transition from Latin to Romance.
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Michela Cennamo
Split Intransitivity and Auxiliary Selection In Italo-Romance: Variation and Lexical-Aspectual Constraints In Synchrony and Diachrony
In this talk I shall discuss the system of auxiliary selection and split intransitivity in some (northern and southern) Italian varieties, and I shall compare the patterns of invariance and variation emerging from the synchronic analysis of the distribution of HAVE and BE with intransitive verbs in the perfect and the pluperfect in today’s dialects, with the (ir)regularities appearing from the investigation of analogous data from 14th and 15th century texts.
The contemporary varieties examined show considerable fluctuation in auxiliary selection, with HAVE being the main auxiliary, and BE having a restricted range of occurrences, confined to some verb classes and some grammatical persons (Ledgeway 2000, 2019; Manzini & Savoia 2005; Bentley 2006; Cennamo 2008, 2010; Miola 2017). Variable auxiliary selection characterizes also some early vernaculars, clearly revealing a change in progress in Old Neapolitan, leading to the gradual spread of HAVE as a perfective auxiliary, to the detriment of BE, and the ensuing elimination of the original distinction between two subclasses of intransitives marked through auxiliary selection (respectively BE with unaccusatives and HAVE with unergatives) (Cennamo 2008, 2010).
I will show that, although auxiliary distribution does not clearly identify two subclasses of intransitives in the varieties investigated, corresponding to the well-known distinction of unergatives-class SA verbs/unaccusatives-class SO verbs, either synchronically or diachronically, the variation is nevertheless structured, neatly accountable within the gradient model of split intransitivity put forward by Sorace (2000, 2004, 2011), and sensitive to the interplay of a number of aspectual and thematic parameters, instantiated by Sorace’s Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy (ASH).
More specifically, I will argue that a gradient approach to split intransitivity not only accounts in a principled manner for the synchronic and diachronic alternations in auxiliary selection observable in the varieties investigated, but also offers an explanation for the striking convergence between their synchronic distribution and the diachronic path of development.