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Italian Dialectology at the Interfaces
Edited by Silvio Cruschina, Adam Ledgeway and Eva-Maria Remberger
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 251] 2019
► pp. 79–100

Mixed paradigms in Italo-Romance

A case of morphologization of auxiliary selection?

| Charles University, Prague

This paper advocates a morphological approach to the phenomenon of mixed paradigms attested in a wide range of Italo-Romance varieties (cf. Loporcaro 2001, 2007, 2014; Manzini and Savoia 2005, among others). In these varieties, two auxiliary verbs, habere and esse, alternate within one and the same paradigm. As a result, such mixed paradigms exhibit various patterns which can range from morphosyntactically motivated to apparently unmotivated distributions (‘morphomic’). Starting from the notion of ‘inflectional periphrasis’ (cf., e.g. Brown 2012 et al.), under which auxiliary verb constructions can be accommodated, and from the notion of ‘lexical splits’ (cf. Corbett 2013, 2015, 2016), I describe the attested splits induced by such intraparadigmatic auxiliary alternations. Following Bonami (2015) and Štichauer (2016, 2018), I introduce a typology of such splits and I provide examples from the rich array of Italo-Romance data drawn mainly from Manzini and Savoia (2005). I conclude with a brief discussion of the historical origin of mixed paradigms arguing that the commonly accepted explanation (Bentley and Eythórsson 2001) is in need of further verification.

Keywords: mixed paradigms, Italo-Romance varieties, auxiliary selection, morphologization, morphomes, inflectional periphrasis, lexical splits
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Auxiliary verb constructions as inflectional periphrasis
  • 3.Auxiliary selection in standard Romance languages
  • 4.Mixed paradigms and ‘lexical splits’
    • 4.1Pragmatically motivated splits
    • 4.2Balanced splits
    • 4.3‘Elsewhere’ splits
    • 4.4Morphomic splits
    • 4.5A note on the diachronic origin of mixed paradigms
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 5 February 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.251.04sti
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