Search

This paper addresses the issue of rafforzamento fonosintattico (RF), phonosyntactic doubling, typical of a wide range of Italo-Romance dialects, and its relation to the phenomenon of mixed paradigms, also attested in a number of Italian varieties. After a discussion of the basic properties of RF, the article introduces mixed paradigms and proceeds to show how RF is used morphologically to signal important morphosyntactic contrasts, such as the difference between the 2nd and 3rd persons singular where a homonymous outcome of habes/habet > a is found. The paper thus intends to put forward another case of morphologization on the basis of the interesting — and endangered — phenomenon of mixed paradigms.

The aim of this paper is twofold: firstly it provides a detailed overview of the canonical approach to inflection (following Corbett 2007; 2009; 2015); secondly it attempts to analyze, within this approach, a typologically interesting phenomenon of mixed perfective auxiliation systems attested in a wide array of Italo-Romance dialects. First, the paper introduces the key notions of Canonical Typology (cf. Bond 2019) applied to inflectional morphology, along with a proposed working Czech terminology of basic terms such as requirements of form etc. Second, the paper proceeds to show that mixed systems, where two auxiliary verbs (corresponding to the derivatives of the Latin verbs habere/ esse) alternate within one and the same paradigm, representing a further way in which periphrastic exponence “splits” the inflectional realization of a lexeme. These systems thus constitute yet another interesting non-canonical inflectional phenomenon worth exploring from the perspective of Canonical Typology