A semantically rich ‘do’‐support verb in the Camuno dialect of northern Italy

Journal article

In the Camuno dialect of northern Italy, ‘do’-support may be used to form the interrogative. In some varieties, this is optional, and it co-exists with the alternative interrogative method of using the main verb alone. Through an elicitation experiment, participants produced their preferred version of a question based on a certain main verb with given context. The likelihood that ‘do’-support was used varied according to the supported verb's semantics and the context pragmatics, specifically: (a) the degree to which the verb denotes activity (directly or indirectly); and (b) the role of the subject as an effector, or ‘do’-er of that activity. Unlike for ‘do’-support in English, a purely syntactic function does not seem relevant for Camuno ‘do’. The study shows that: (1) even if, syntactically, the support verb resembles an auxiliary, it may have full lexical content; and (2) that there exists a credible grammaticalisation pathway from a lexical ‘do’ verb to a semantically bleached, contentless ‘do’, seemingly motivated by a social preference for the ‘do’-support construction and a desire to simplify the interrogative system.

Authors: Swinburne, N

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Wiley
• Journal: Transactions of the Philological Society More from this journal
• Volume: 122
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 168-189
• Publication date: 2024-02-21
• Acceptance date: 2024-01-19
• DOI: 10.1111/1467-968x.12288
• EISSN: 1467-968X
• ISSN: 0079-1636
• Language: English
• Keywords: grammaticalization; lexical semantics; auxiliary verb; do-support; Italian dialects; grammaticalisation