Cover not available
Part of
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2017: Selected papers from 'Going Romance' 31, Bucharest
Edited by Alexandru Nicolae and Adina Dragomirescu
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 355] 2021
► pp. 157–170

The downward grammaticalisation of irrealis subordinators in Romanian, Salentino and southern Calabrese

| Ghent University

Romanian să, Salentino cu and southern Calabrese mu/ma/mi are irrealis subordinators, which also replace the infinitive in many of its uses. The present chapter investigates the diachrony of these elements. It is shown that they are all instances of downward grammaticalisation, deriving from high C-elements which move down to Fin0, and in the case of cu and mu, also further down to T- and v-related positions. quomodo is proposed as an etymon for both cu and mu, rather than the traditionally assumed quod and modo (ut). quomodo, originally replacing ut, follows Haspelmath’s (1989) grammaticalisation path for infinitives when developing into cu and mu. The development of si into să is similar: it develops from a conditional complementiser to general irrealis subordinator.

Keywords: complementisers, Romanian, southern Calabrese, Salentino, downward grammaticalisation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Structural position of mu, cu, and să
  • 3.A unified etymology for Salentino cu and southern Calabrese mu
    • 3.1Previous etymologies of cu and mu
    • 3.2Quomodo
    • 3.3The development of quomodo > cu/mu
  • 4.The development of Romanian să
  • 5.Downward grammaticalisation
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 December 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.355.08gro
References
Alboiu, Gabriela & Virginia Motapanyane
2000 The generative approach to Romanian grammar: An overview. In Virginia Motapanyane (ed.), Comparative Studies in Romanian Syntax, 1–48. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Andriani, Luigi, Kim A. Groothuis & Giuseppina Silvestri
2020 Pathways of grammaticalisation in Italo-Romance. (Ed.) Adam N. Ledgeway & Ian G. Roberts. Probus 32(2). 327–366. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bertocci, Davide & Federico Damonte
2007 Distribuzione e morfologia dei congiuntivi in alcune varietà salentine. In Federico Damonte & Jacopo Garzonio (eds.), Studi sui dialetti della Puglia, 3–28. Padua: Unipress.Google Scholar
Bertoni, Giulio
1905 Intorno alle questioni sulla lingua della lirica italiana. Studi Medievali 1. 580–593.Google Scholar
Breban, Tine
2014 What is secondary grammaticalization? Trying to see the wood for the trees in a confusion of interpretations. Folia Linguistica 48(2). 469–502. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brinton, Laurel J. & Elizabeth Closs Traugott
2005 Lexicalization and language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Calabrese, Andrea
1992 The lack of infinitival clauses in Salentino: A synchronic analysis. In Christiane Laeufer & Terrell A. Morgan (eds.), Theoretical analyses in Romance linguistics. Selected papers from the 19th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL XIX). The Ohio State University, 21–23 April 1989, 267–294. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1993 The sentential complementation of Salentino: a study of a language without infinitival clauses. In Adriana Belletti (ed.), Syntactic Theory and the Dialects of Italy, 28–98. Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier.Google Scholar
Chillà, Leonida & Cinzia Citraro
2012 Impopolarità dell’infinito nelle varietà calabresi meridionali estreme: la selezione dei complementatori ei contesti modali. Rivista italiana di linguistica e di dialettologia 14(14). 113–144.Google Scholar
Damonte, Federico
2011 Matching moods: Mood concord between CP and IP in Salentino and southern Calabrian subjunctive complements. In Paola Benincà & Nicola Munaro (eds.), Mapping the left periphery: The cartography of syntactic structures, 228–256. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Angelis, Alessandro
2013 Strategie di complementazione frasale nell’estremo meridione italiano. Messina: SGB Edizioni.Google Scholar
2016 Origini formali e funzionali della particella (m)i, (m), ma nell’area messinese e calabrese centro-meridionale. In Patrizia Del Puente (ed.), Dialetti: per parlare e parlarne. Atti del IV Convegno Internazionale Di Dialettologia. progetto a.l.ba. (Potenza, Castelmezzano, Lagopesole, 6–8 novembre 2014), 75–94. Potenza: Il Segno Arti Grafiche.Google Scholar
2017 Between Greek and Romance: Competing complementation systems in southern Italy. In Piera Molinelli (ed.), Language and Identity in Multilingual Mediterranean Settings, 135–156, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen
1994 The syntax of Romanian. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Frîncu, Constantin
1969 Cu privire la “Uniunea Lingvistică Balcanică”. Înlocuirea infinitivului prin construcţii personale în limba română veche. Anuar de Lingvistică și Istorie Literară 20. 69–116.Google Scholar
Gelderen, Elly van
2009 Renewal in the left periphery: Economy and the complementizer layer. Transactions of the Philological Society 107(2). 131–195. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 The particle how. In Josef Bayer, Roland Hinterhölzl & Andreas Trotzke (eds.), Discourse-oriented syntax, 159–174. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gheorghe, Mihaela
2013 The structure of complex clauses. Subordination. argument clauses. In Gabriela Pană Dindelegan (ed.), The grammar of Romanian, 466–473. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Groothuis, Kim A.
2020 Reflexes of finiteness in Romance. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Cambridge.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin
1989 From purposive to infinitive – A universal path of grammaticization. Folia Linguistica Historica 23. 287–310. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Herman, József
1963 La formation du système roman des conjonctions de subordination. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.Google Scholar
Hill, Virginia
2013 The emergence of the Romanian subjunctive. The Linguistic Review 30(4). 1–37. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hill, Virginia & Gabriela Alboiu
2016 Verb movement and clause structure in old Romanian. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hofmann, Johann Baptist & Anton Szantyr
1972 Lateinische Syntax und Stilistik: Mit dem Allgemeinen Teil der lateinischen Grammatik. Volume 2. Munich: Beck.Google Scholar
Hooper, Joan B. & Sandra A. Thompson
1973 On the applicability of root transformations. Linguistic Inquiry 4(4). 465–497.Google Scholar
Jordan, Maria
2009 Loss of infinitival complementation in Romanian diachronic syntax. Doctoral dissertation, University of Florida.Google Scholar
Joseph, Brian D.
1983 The synchrony and diachrony of the Balkan infinitive: A study in areal, general, and historical linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2005 Moving through the left periphery: The dual complementiser system in the dialects of southern Italy. Transactions of the Philological Society 103(3). 339–396. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 From Latin to Romance: Morphosyntactic typology and change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 Greek disguised as Romance? The case of southern Italy. In Mark Janse, Brian D. Joseph, Angela Ralli & Metin Bagriacik (eds.), MGDLT5. Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Modern Greek Dialects and Linguistic Theory, 184–227. Patras: Laboratory of Greek dialects, University of Patras.Google Scholar
2015 Reconstructing complementiser-drop in the dialects of the Salento: A syntactic or phonological phenomenon?. In Theresa Biberauer & George Walkden (eds.), Syntax over time: Lexical, morphological, and information-structural interactions, 146–162. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016a Clausal complementation. In Adam Ledgeway & Martin Maiden (eds.), The Oxford guide to the Romance languages, 1013–1028. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016b The dialects of southern Italy. In Adam Ledgeway & Martin Maiden (eds.), The Oxford guide to the Romance languages, 246–269. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leone, Alfonso
1995 Profilo di sintassi siciliana. Materiali e ricerche dell’atlante linguistico della Sicilia 3. Palermo: Centro di Studi filologici e linguistici siciliani.Google Scholar
Loporcaro, Michele
1997 Puglia and Salento. In Martin Maiden & Mair Parry (eds.), The dialects of Italy, 338–348. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mancarella, Giovan Battista
(ed.) 1998 Salento: monografia regionale della ‘Carta dei dialetti italiani’. Lecce: Del Grifo.Google Scholar
Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm
1899 Grammatik Der Romanischen Sprachen, Volume 3. Syntax. Leipzig: Reisland.Google Scholar
Munaro, Nicola
2016 Il raddoppiamento del complementatore nelle varietà italo-romanze in prospettiva diacronica. In Jacopo Garzonio & Silvia Rossi (eds.), Quaderni Di Lavoro ASIt 19. 89–104.Google Scholar
Nedelcu, Isabela Mihaela, Adina Dragomirescu, Dana Niculescu & Gabriela Pană Dindelegan
2016 Non-finite verb forms and non-finite constructions. In Gabriela Pană Dindelegan (ed.), The syntax of old Romanian, 232–287. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nicolae, Alexandru
2015 Ordinea constituenților în limba română: o perspectivă diacronică. Structura propozitiei și deplasarea verbului. Bucharest: Editura Universității din București.Google Scholar
2016 The syntactic configurations of Romanian modal verbs: Modals and phases. Paper presented at MIT LingLunch, Cambridge, MA, May 12.
Paoli, Sandra
2003. COMP and the left-periphery: Comparative evidence from Romance. University of Manchester. PhD thesis.
Rivero, Maria Luisa
1994 Clause structure and V-movement in the languages of the Balkans. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 12(1). 63–120. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi
1997 The fine structure of the left periphery. In Liliane Haegeman (ed.), Elements of grammar. Handbook on generative syntax, 281–337. Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2001 On the position “Int (errogative)” in the left periphery of the clause. In Guglielmo Cinque & Giampaolo Salvi (eds.), Current studies in Italian syntax. Essays offered to Lorenzo Renzi, 287–296. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Roberts, Ian G. & Anna Roussou
2002 The Extended Projection Principle as a condition on the tense dependency. In Peter Svenonius (ed.), Subjects, Expletives, and the EPP, 125–155. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2003 Syntactic change: A minimalist approach to grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rohlfs, Gerhard
1969 Grammatica storica della lingua italiana e dei suoi dialetti. Volume 3: Sintassi e formazione delle parole. Turin: Einaudi.Google Scholar
Sandfeld, Kristian
1930 Linguistique balkanique: Problèmes et résultats. 31. Paris: Klincksieck.Google Scholar
Sgrilli, Paola
1984 Il “Libro di Sidrac” salentino. Edizione, spoglio linguistico e lessico. Pisa: Pacini.Google Scholar
Sorrento, Luigi
1951 Sintassi romanza: Ricerche e prospettive. (2nd edn.) Varese-Milan: Istituto Editoriale Cisalpino.Google Scholar
Squillaci, Maria-Olimpia
2016 When Greek meets Romance: A morphosyntactic analysis of language contact in Aspromonte. Doctoral dissertation, University of Cambridge.Google Scholar
Stan, Camelia
2007 Notă gramaticală: “conjuncţia” ca(…)să. Studii și cercetări lingvistice 58(2). 451–458.Google Scholar
Stowell, Tim
1982 The tense of infinitives. Linguistic Inquiry 13(3). 561–570.Google Scholar
Taylor, Cameron
2014 Aspects of clause structure in Nicoterese. A descriptive account. Doctoral dissertation, University of Cambridge.Google Scholar
Todorović, Neda & Susi Wurmbrand
2016 Finiteness across domains. In Teodora Radeva-Bork & Peter Kosta (eds.), Selected proceedings from formal description of Slavic languages. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
2020 Finiteness across domains. In Teodora Radeva-Bork & Peter Kosta (eds.), Current Developments in Slavic Linguistics. Twenty Years After, 47–66. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Vincent, Nigel
1988 Latin. In Martin Harris & Nigel Vincent (eds.), The Romance languages, 26–78. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Willis, David
2007 Specifier-to-head reanalyses in the complementizer domain: Evidence from Welsh. Transactions of the Philological Society 105(3). 432–480. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zafiu, Rodica
2013 Mood, tense, and aspect. In Gabriela Pană Dindelegan (ed.), The grammar of Romanian, 24–64. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zafiu, Rodica, Alexandru Nicolae, Dana Niculescu, Gabriela Pană Dindelegan, Irina Nicula Paraschiv, Adina Dragomirescu & Andra Vasilescu
2016 The verb and its arguments: The root clause. In Gabriela Pană Dindelegan (ed.), The syntax of old Romanian, 14–231. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Groothuis, Kim A.
2022. On the Relation between Finiteness and Clause Size: Evidence from Romanian and Southern Italo‐Romance Irrealis Clauses*. Transactions of the Philological Society 120:1 ► pp. 32 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 march 2024. 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.