Morphosyntactic variation: Individual grammar and group grammar in the ‘de-dialectalization’ of Italian

• Massimo Cerruti ^[1]
  1. [1] Università di Torino, Italy
• Localización: Sociolinguistic Studies, ISSN 1750-8649, Vol. 11, Nº. 2-4, 2017 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Sociolinguistic research in Italy), págs. 313-340
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto Completo Ejemplar
• Resumen

  • This paper draws upon the results of recent sociolinguistic studies on regional varieties of Italian and aims to provide a general overview of the differences between and within socially defined groups with respect to the use of regional morphosyntactic features. In this respect, a distinction is made between the following cases: (i) similar sociolects, similar idiolects; (ii) different sociolects, similar idiolects; and (iii) same sociolect, different idiolects. These three cases are discussed against the backdrop of the progressive loss of regional morphosyntactic features of Italian across generations, a process that is referred to here as the ‘de-dialectalization’ of Italian. Various phenomena are considered; among others, the use of personal pronouns conveying a reflexive meaning, the distribution of simple past and compound past, the lack of subject-verb agreement in existential plural constructions, the so-called doubly filled complementizer, and the presence of direct object marking