Past participle agreement in Abruzzese: split auxiliary selection and the null-subject parameter

• Published in: Natural language and linguistic theory Vol. 28; no. 1; pp. 41 - 72
• Main Authors: D'Alessandro, Roberta, Roberts, Ian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer 01.02.2010; Springer Netherlands; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Agreement; Alignment; Auxiliary Verbs; Descriptive studies and applied theories; Dialects; Germanic languages; Heredity; Intransitive verbs; Language; Language typology; Linguistics; Minimalist Program; Natural Language Processing (NLP); Participles; Person; Philosophy of Language; Pronouns; Regional dialects; Roberts, Ian; Romance Languages; Social Sciences; Syntactics; Syntax; Theoretical linguistics; Theory; Transitive verbs; Verbs; New York; Participles; Agreement; Split-ergativity; Italo-Romance; Person; Auxiliaries; Auxiliary; Null subject; Generative syntax; Dialect; Grammatical agreement; Minimalist program; Split ergativity; Past participle
• ISSN: 0167-806X; 1573-0859
• DOI: 10.1007/s11049-009-9085-1

In this paper, we present an analysis of the "person-driven" auxiliaryselection system of one variety of the Upper Southern Italo-Romance dialect Abruzzese, along with an account of the pattern of past participle agreement in this variety, which differs somewhat from what is found in more familiar Romance languages. Our account relies on the technical mechanisms of agreement as outlined in Chomsky (1995, 2001), in particular a variant of Chomsky's (2008) proposal regarding feature inheritance by non-phase heads of features belonging to phase heads, combined with Gallego's (2006) notion of phase-sliding. We also utilise some aspects of Miiller's (2004) analysis of ergativity, and propose an account of a typological generalisation regarding the absence of person-driven auxiliary selection first put forward in Kayne (2000: 127) in the Germanic languages. To the extent that the analyses proposed successfully apply the mechanisms put forward in the recent versions of the minimalist program, the postulation of these mechanisms is supported by our analysis with evidence from a new empirical domain. We also offer some general speculations regarding auxiliary selection in general.