Expletive Subject Clitics in Northern Italo-Romance

Abstract

This article examines the syntax of subject clitics in northern Italian dialects. Statistical analysis is performed on a sample of 350 dialects to show that the co-variation between syntactic variables is significant. The variables under examination are the occurrence of subject clitics with non-dislocated subjects (e.g., the wh element who); the occurrence of subject clitics with nonthematic predicates (e.g., weather verbs); and the occurrence of subject clitics with subjects of any person. Syntactic variables are in turn linked to verbal agreement; in the above contexts, clitics are more readily found in dialects with “poor” inflection. Theoretical issues concerning the syntactic representation of subject clitics, null subjects, and doubling are addressed in light of quantitative findings.

Keywords

• syntax
• microvariation
• Italo-Romance
• clitics
• agreement
• null subjects