The grammaticalization of do-support in the northern Italian Camuno dialect

Thesis

The Camuno dialect is almost unique among the Romance languages in employing a support verb, fa ‘do’, in an interrogative construction strongly reminiscent of English do-support. In the community in which it was originally described (Monno, Upper Val Camonica: Benincà & Poletto, 1998/2004) it is essentially obligatory. However, FS is also found further south in the Middle Val Camonica where it co-occurs with the normal Lombard interrogative that inverts verb and subject clitic (SCI).

This research tested fa-support (FS) use in Middle Valley dialects according to the type of support verb, with an elicitation experiment. The probability of FS use varied according to supported verb semantics. It was highest with activity verbs lexicalizing the manner in their root, lower with verbs lexicalizing result, and lowest with stative verbs. The manner > result > stative pattern also represents the pathway of generalization of FS, and different communities can be arranged along it according to their degree of grammaticalization of the construction.

When FS is optional and co-occurs with SCI in a dialect, the FS question has the pragmatic properties of an indirect question: it refers to an event slightly anterior to the utterance time about which the speaker has already some presupposed notion and is seeking the opinion of the addressee. The embedded proposition can only contain specific references and any wh-item must refer to an entity (person, place, manner) that already exists in the mind of the speaker. Furthermore, the grammatical subject must be referential and not impersonal. It therefore seems to have a biclausal structure with fa ‘do’ as a main and lexical verb in a separate clause. In contrast the direct, SCI question is an ‘open’ question, without strong preconceptions of the answer, and where the wh-item is non-specific.

Authors: Swinburne, N

• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: verb raising parameter; do-support; presupposition; grammaticalization; special question; specificity; northern Italian dialect; 'do'-support; wh-insitu; wh insitu; embedded question; grammaticalisation
• Subjects: Lexical semantics; Grammaticalization; Syntax; Gallo-Italian dialects