Article published In: Journal of Historical Linguistics
Vol. 12:3 (2022) ► pp.337–380
There sentences in extreme southern Italy
On the rise of a “Greek-style” pattern
Published online: 31 May 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.20044.ang
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.20044.ang
Abstract
Among the morpho-syntactic patterns by which Italo-Romance varieties code there sentences, a
peculiar structure surfaces in extreme southern varieties, particularly in Salento and in southern Calabria: this involves an
invariable 3rd person form of the outcome of habēre as the copula, with no agreement with the postcopular nominal, the
so-called pivot. Even though this pattern is attested in other Romance languages too, it proves, however, to be peculiar, insofar
as it hosts top-ranking definite NPs (especially 1st and 2nd person pronouns), which are generally disallowed within ‘to have’
there sentences in the Romance varieties. In the present paper, we infer that this pattern depends on the
contact with Italo-Greek, which displays similar constructions, with an invariant 3rd sg. form of ‘to have’, the lack of the
proform and the pivot marked as accusative. However, a diachronic investigation reveals that neither the extreme southern
Italo-Romance varieties nor Italo-Greek displayed in their Medieval stage a similar construction, since both of them exhibited the
definiteness effect. Sociolinguistic factors can account for how the two systems influenced each other by ruling out the
definiteness effect from the respective patterns at the end of the interference process.
Article outline
- 1.The ‘to have’ pattern in Salentino and central-southern Calabrese: A calque from Italo-Greek?
- 2.Greek and Latin in southern Italy: The sociolinguistic background
- 3.The split pattern in central and southern Calabria
- 4.The ‘to have’ pattern: The diatopic evidence
- 5.The definiteness effect in Italo-Greek and in extreme southern Italo-Romance varieties: Diachronic evidence
- 6.The transitive-possessive hypothesis
- 7.The loss of the definiteness effect in the Greek-Romance diasystem
- 8.DOM and personal pronouns
- 9.The pivot as predicate hypothesis
- 10.Possessive habēre
- 11.Constraints on objects in possessive structures
- 12.On the definiteness effect in Romance languages: Future prospects for research
- 13.Sociolinguistic shift in the Greek-Romance diasystem
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
References
References (115)
AIS = Jaberg, Karl & Jakob Jud. 1928–1940. Sprach-
und Sachatlas Italiens und der Südschweiz (Atlante linguistico ed etnografico dell’Italia e della Svizzera
meridionale), 81 vols. Zofingen: Ringier.
Aissen, Judith. 2003. Differential
Object Marking: Iconicity vs. Economy. Natural Language and Linguistic
Theory 211.435–483.
Amenta, Luisa. 2004. Costrutti
esistenziali e predicazioni locutive: un confronto tra siciliano e italiano antico. SintAnt. La
sintassi dell’italiano antico ed. by Maurizio Dardano & Gianluca Frenguelli, 17–31. Roma: Aracne.
Assenza, Elvira. 2018. La
differenziazione degli schemi di ausiliazione nei costrutti esistenziali (italo)romanzi: variazione diatopica, mutamenti
diacronici e variabilità sincronica. Atti del XXVIII Congresso Internazionale di Linguistica e
Filologia Romanza ed. by Roberto Antonelli, Martin Glessgen & Paul Videsott, 545–557. Strasbourg: Société de Linguistique Romane / EliPhi Éditions de linguistique et de philologie.
Barbato, Marcello. 2010. La
lingua del ‘Rebellamentu’. Spoglio del codice Spinelli (seconda parte). Bollettino del Centro
di Studi Filologici e Linguistici
Siciliani 221.43–124.
Basile, Angela. 2012. Repertorio
dei testi romanzi in caratteri greci dell’Italia meridionale e della Sicilia (secc.
XIII–XVI). Medioevo Letterario
d’Italia 91.49–88.
Bassaganyas-Bars, Toni. 2015. ‘Have’
and the Link Between Perfects and Existentials in Old Catalan. Proceedings of Sinn und
Bedeutung 191.107–124.
Beaver, David, Itamar Francez & Dmitry Levinson. 2005. Bad
Subject: (Non-)Canonicality and NP Distribution in Existentials. Proceedings of Semantic and
Linguistic Theory XV ed. by Effi Georgala & Jonathan Howell, 19–43. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Bentley, Delia. 2013. Subject
Markedness and Definiteness Effects in Romance
There-Sentences. Language 89:4.675–712.
. 2020. Existential
and Locative Constructions in the Romance Languages. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of
Linguistics. Published online: 30 July
2020.
Bentley, Delia & Francesco M. Ciconte. 2016. Copular
and Existential Constructions. The Oxford Guide to the Romance
Languages ed. by Adam Ledgeway & Martin Maiden, 847–859. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bentley, Delia & Silvio Cruschina. 2016. Existential
Constructions. Manual of Grammatical Interfaces in Romance ed.
by Susann Fisher & Christoph Gabriel, 487–516. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Bentley, Delia, Francesco M. Ciconte & Silvio Cruschina. 2015. Existentials
and Locatives in Romance Dialects of
Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Callou, Dinah & Juanito Avelar. 2012. Preservação
e mudança na história do português brasileiro: de possessivo a
existencial. Matraga 191.224–235.
Chilà, Annamaria. 2017. Il
sincretismo genitivo-dativo nella varietà reggina di S. Luca. L’Italia
Dialettale 781.57–71.
. 2020. Spirito
greco e spirito romanzo: microvariazione del ‘dativo alla greca’ nell’estremo meridione
calabrese. Revue de Linguistique
Romane 841.405–428.
Chilà, Annamaria & Alessandro De Angelis. 2021. Un
paradosso sociolinguistico: il caso Bovesìa. Actes du XXIXe Congrès international de
linguistique et de philologie romanes (Copenhague, 1–6 juillet 2019) ed. by Lene Schøsler & Juhani Härmä, avec
la collaboration de Jan Lindschouw. Vol. II1, 908–921. Strasbourg: EliPhi Éditions de linguistique et de philologie.
Coy, Charlotte. 2016. The
Evolution of Definiteness Effects with French il y a from 1300 to
Today. Definiteness Effects. Bilingual, Typological and Diachronic
Variation ed. by Susann Fischer, Tanja Kupisch & Esther Rinke, 278–299. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.
Creissels, Denis. 2013. Control
and the Evolution of Possessive and Existential Constructions. Argument Structure in
Flux ed. by Elly van Gelderen, Jóhanna Barðdal & Michela Cennamo, 461–476. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
. 2014. Existential
Predication in Typological Perspective. Paper presented at
the workshop Space, Time and Existence: Typological, Cognitive and Philosophical
Viewpoints. 46th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (Split,
Croatia, 18–21 September 2013).
. 2019. Inverse-locational
Predication in Typological Perspective. Italian Journal of
Linguistics 31:2.38–106.
De Angelis, Alessandro. 2010. Due
canti d’amore in grafia greca dal Salento medievale e alcune glosse greco-romanze. Cultura
Neolatina 701.371–413.
. 2013. Strategie
di complementazione frasale nell’estremo Meridione
italiano. Messina: SGB Edizioni.
. 2014. Greek
in Sicily in Late Antiquity. Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and
Linguistics ed. by Georgios K. Giannakis. Vol. II (G–O), 94–101. Leiden & Boston: Brill.
. 2017. Microvariazione,
diacronia e interferenza: due case-studies dall’Italia meridionale
estrema. Archivio Glottologico
Italiano 102:1.40–69.
. 2019. Articolo
espletivo e marcatura differenziale dell’Oggetto nel dialetto reggino di San Luca. L’Italia
Dialettale 801.59–76.
De Angelis, Alessandro & Felicia Logozzo. 2017. Per
gariri oni malatia. Ricette mediche anonime in caratteri greci (Vat. gr. 1538). Edizione, commento linguistico e
glossario. (= Studi e testi, 521.) Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.
Distilo, Rocco. 1985. Per
un’analisi della dinamica dialetto/lingua nel medioevo italiano meridionale. Il recupero
documentario. Linguistica storica e cambiamento linguistico. Atti
del XVI Congresso Internazionale di studi della Società di Linguistica
Italiana (Florence, 7–9 May 1982) ed.
by Luciano Agostiniani, Patrizia Bellucci Maffei & Matilde Paoli, 125–146. Rome: Bulzoni.
Fanciullo, Franco. 1984. Il
siciliano e i dialetti meridionali. Tre millenni di storia linguistica della
Sicilia. Atti del Convegno della Società Italiana di
Glottologia (Palermo, 25–27 March 1983) ed.
by Adriana Quattordio Moreschini, 139–159. Pisa: Giardini.
. 2015b. Romanzo
e greco nel meridione d’Italia in età medievale. Le lingue d’Italia e le altre. Contatti,
sostrati e superstrati nella storia linguistica della Penisola ed. by Lorenzo Filipponio & Christian Seidl, 129–147. Milan: Franco Angeli.
. 2017. Sui
frustuli romanzi “incapsulati” nel greco del breve della chiesa madre di Reggio intorno alla metà dell’XI
secolo. Strutture linguistiche e dati empirici in diacronia e
sincronia ed. by Giovanna Marotta & Francesca Strik Lievers, 15–33. (= Studi
Linguistici Pisani, 8.) Pisa: Pisa University Press.
Filimonova, Elena. 2005. The
Noun Phrase Hierarchy and Relational Marking: Problems and Counterevidence. Linguistic
Typology 91.77–113.
Giannakidou, Anastasia. 2012. The
Landscape of Greek Quantifiers. Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural
Language ed. by Edward L. Keenan & Denis Paperno, 285–346. Dordrecht: Springer.
Guardiano, Cristina & Melita Stavrou. 2014. Greek
and Romance in Southern Italy. History and Contact in Nominal Structures. L’Italia
Dialettale 751.121–147.
. 2019. Adjective-Noun
Combinations in Romance and Greek of Southern Italy. Journal of Greek
Linguistics 191.3–57.
. 2020. Dialect
Syntax Between Persistence and Change. The Case of Greek Demonstratives. L’Italia
Dialettale 811.119–155.
Harris, Alice C. & Lyle Campbell. 1995. Historical
Syntax in Cross-Linguistic
Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heine, Bernd. 2002. On
the Role of Context in Grammaticalization. New Reflections on
Grammaticalization ed. by Ilse Wischer & Gabriele Diewald, 83–101. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Karanastasis, Anastasios. 1997. Grammatica
degli idiomi greci del Sud Italia (Web version translated from Greek
by Iannis Papageorgiadis).
Ledgeway, Adam. 1998. Variation
in the Romance Infinitive. The Case of the Southern Calabrian Inflected
Infinitive. Transactions of the Philological
Society 96:1.1–61.
. 2003. Il
sistema completivo dei dialetti meridionali: la doppia serie di complementatori. Rivista
Italiana di
Dialettologia 271.89–147.
. 2006. The
Dual Complementiser System in Southern Italy: Spirito greco, materia romanza? Rethinking
Languages in Contact: The Case of Italian. Essays in Memory of Joseph Cremona ed.
by Anna Laura Lepschy & Arturo Tosi, 112–126. Oxford: Legenda.
. 2013. Greek
Disguised as Romance? The Case of Southern Italy. Proceedings of the 5th International
Conference on Greek Dialects and Linguistic Theory. Laboratory of Modern Greek Dialects ed.
by Mark Janse, Brian Joseph, Pavlos Pavlou, Angela Ralli & Metin Bagriacik, 184–227. Patras: University of Patras.
. 2016. The
Dialects of Southern Italy. The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages ed.
by Adam Ledgeway & Martin Maiden, 246–269. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ledgeway, Adam, Norma Schifano & Giuseppina Silvestri. 2019. Differential
Object Marking and the Properties of D in the Dialects of the Extreme South of Italy. Glossa: A
Journal of General
Linguistics 4/1:51.1–25.
Leonetti, Manuel. 2004. Specificity
and Object Marking: The Case of Spanish a. Proceedings of the Workshop
“Semantic and Syntactic Aspects of Specificity in Romance Languages” ed. by Klaus von Heusinger & Georg A. Kaiser, 67–101. (= Konstanzer
Arbeitspapiere des Fachbereichs Sprachwissenschaft,
113.) Konstanz: Universität Konstanz.
Longa, Víctor M., Guillermo Lorenzo & Gemma Rigau. 1998. Subject
Clitics and Clitic Recycling: Locative Sentences in Some Iberian Romance Languages. Journal of
Linguistics 34:1.125–164.
Longobardi, Giuseppe. 1994. Reference
and Proper Names: A Theory of N-movement in Syntax and Logical Form. Linguistic
Inquiry 25:4.609–665.
Longobardi, Giuseppe & Cristina Guardiano. 2009. Evidence
for Syntax as a Signal of Historical
Relatedness. Lingua 119:11.1679–1706.
Machairas, Chron. O,
V = Dawkins, Richard M., ed. 1932. Leontios Makhairas: Recital
Concerning the Sweet Land of Cyprus Entitled ‘Chronicle’, Edited with a Translation and
Notes. 21 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
. 2016. Scripto
sopra Theseu re. Il commento salentino al «Teseida» di Boccaccio (Ugento/Nardò, ante
1487). Vol. II1. Berlin: De Gruyter.
. 2019. Salento
linguistico medievale e moderno: una rassegna di studi (2000–2019). La Lingua
Italiana 151.149–170.
Mancarella, Giovan Battista. 1998. Salento. Monografia regionale
della “Carta dei dialetti Italiani”. Lecce: Edizioni del Grifo.
Manzini, Maria Rita & Leonardo M. Savoia. 2005. I
dialetti italiani e romanci. Morfosintassi
generativa. Vol. I1. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso.
. 2005. I
dialetti italiani e romanci. Morfosintassi
generativa. Vol. III1. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso.
Martino, Paolo. 1980. L’isola
grecanica dell’Aspromonte. Aspetti sociolinguistici. I dialetti e le lingue delle minoranze di
fronte all’italiano. Atti dell’XI Congresso Internazionale di studi della Società di Linguistica
Italiana (Cagliari, 27–30 May 1977) ed.
by Federico Albano Leoni, 305–341. Rome: Bulzoni.
. 2009. L’affaire
Bovesía: un singolare irredentismo. Alloglossie e comunità alloglotte nell’Italia
contemporanea: teorie, applicazioni e descrizioni, prospettive. Atti del XLI Congresso
Internazionale di studi della Società di Linguistica
Italiana (Pescara, 27–29 September
2007) ed. by Carlo Consani, 251–275. Rome: Bulzoni.
McNally, Louise. 2016. Existential
Sentences Cross-Linguistically: Variations in Form and Meaning. Annal Review of
Linguistics 21.211–231.
Milroy, James & Lesley Milroy. 1982. Sociolinguistic
Variation and Linguistic Change in Belfast. Great Britain: Social Science Research Council.
Morosi, Giuseppe. 1870. Studi
sui dialetti greci della Terra
d’Otranto. Lecce: Tipografia editrice salentina.
Næss, Åshild. 2004. What
Markedness Marks: The Markedness Problem with Direct
Objects. Lingua 1141.1186–1212.
Pagliaro, Antonino. 1948. Formula
di confessione siciliana in caratteri greci. Cultura
Neolatina 81.223–235. (Later
in Pagliaro, Antonino. 1953. Saggi
di critica
semantica, 283–299. Messina: G. D’Anna.)
. 1950. Confessione
ritmica calabrese. Cultura
Neolatina 101.27–48. (Later
in Pagliaro, Antonino. 1961. Saggi
di critica semantica, 301–330. 2nd
ed. Messina: G. D’Anna.)
Parlangèli, Oronzo. 1960. La
«Predica salentina» in caratteri greci. Storia linguistica e storia politica nell’Italia
meridionale, 143–173. Florence: Le Monnier.
. 1965. Formula
confessionale salentina. Omagiu lui Alexandru
Rosetti, 663–666. Bucarest: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România.
. 1965. Correnti
e strati di romanità in Sicilia. Bollettino del Centro di Studi Filologici e Linguistici
Siciliani 91.74–105.
. 1968. Grammatica
storica della lingua italiana e dei suoi
dialetti. Vol. II1. Morfologia. Turin: Einaudi.
. 1969. Grammatica
storica della lingua italiana e dei suoi
dialetti. Vol. III1. Sintassi e formazione delle
parole. Turin: Einaudi.
. 1972b. Nuovi
scavi linguistici nella antica Magna
Grecia. Palermo: Istituto Siciliano di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici.
. 1984. La
Sicilia nei secoli. Profilo storico, etnico e linguistico (Translated by Salvatore Trovato). Palermo: Sellerio.
Rossi Taibbi, Giuseppe & Girolamo Caracausi. 1959. Testi
neogreci di Calabria. Palermo: Istituto Siciliano di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici.
Schifano, Norma & Giuseppina Silvestri. 2017. Nuove
indagini linguistiche sulla varietà greca del Salento. L’Italia
Dialettale 781.279–312.
Silverstein, Michael. 1976. Hierarchy
of Features and Ergativity. Grammatical Categories in Australian
Languages ed. by Robert Dixon, 112–171. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.
Sornicola, Rosanna. 2012. Il
plurilinguismo e la storia sociale e linguistica dell’Italia meridionale. Atti del XLV
Congresso Internazionale di studi della Società di Linguistica Italiana ed.
by Tullio Telmon, Gianmario Raimondi & Luisa Revelli. Vol. I1, 55–99. Rome: Bulzoni.
Sorrenti, Elisa. 2015. Existential Sentences and Definiteness Effects in Southern Calabrese. Ph.D.
thesis. Hamburg: University of Hamburg.
Stussi, Alfredo. 1965. Antichi
testi salentini in volgare. Studi di Filologia
Italiana 231.191–224. (Later
in Stussi, Alfredo. 1982. Studi
e documenti di storia della lingua e dei dialetti
italiani, 155–181. Bologna: Il Mulino.)
Thomason, Sarah Grey. 2014. Contact-Induced Language
Change and Typological Congruence. Congruence in Contact-Induced Language Change. Language
Families, Typological Resemblances and Perceived Similarity ed. by Juliene Besters-Dilger, Cynthia Dermarkar, Stephan Pfänder & Achim Rabus, 201–218. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Thomason, Sarah Grey & Terrence Kaufmann. 1988. Language
Contact, Creolization and Genetic
Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Tommasi, Salvatore. 1998. Fiabe
e racconti della Grecìa salentina dai quaderni (1883–1912) di Vito Domenico
Palumbo. Vol. I1. Testi in
griko. Galatina (Lecce): Ghetonìa.
Tribulato, Olga. 2012. Siculi
Bilingues? Latin in the Inscriptions of Early Roman Sicily. Language and Linguistic Contact in
Ancient Sicily ed. by Olga Tribulato, 291–325. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Trinchera, Francesco. 1865. Syllabus
Graecarum
Membranarum. Napoli: Cattaneo (anastatic
reprint, 1978. Bologna: Forni).
Trumper, John. 2003. The
Misunderstood Double Marking of Indirect Objects and New Infinitives Strategies in Unexpected Places: A Brief Study of Romance
Variation. The Syntax of Italian Dialects ed.
by Christina Tortora, 229–249. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tsopanakis, Agapetos G. 1955. Eine dorische Dialektzone im
Neugriechischen. Byzantinische
Zeitschrift 481.49–72.
Urgese, Tommaso. 2008. Il
dialetto di Latiano. Lessico, fraseologia,
etimologie. Mesagne: Locopress Industria Grafica.
Van Valin, Robert D. & Randy J. LaPolla. 1997. Syntax:
Structure, Meaning, and Function. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Varvaro, Alberto. 1981. Lingua
e storia in Sicilia (Dalle guerre puniche alla conquista
normanna). Palermo: Sellerio.
Von Heusinger, Klaus & Georg A. Kaiser. 2007. Differential
Object Marking and the Lexical Semantics of Verbs in Spanish. Proceedings of the Workshop
“Definiteness, Specificity and Animacy in Ibero-Romance Languages” ed. by Georg A. Kaiser & Manuel Leonetti, 83–109. Universität Konstanz: Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft.
Zappalà, Valentina. 2015. I costrutti esistenziali in siciliano nord-orientale: analisi tipologica delle varietà messinesi di Castanea e
Cesarò. Master’s Degree
thesis. Pavia: University of Pavia.
Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
