Inflectional morphology of the verbal system in the dialect of Francavilla in Sinni

Abstract

This paper explores the inflectional morphology of the verbal system in the dialect of Francavilla in Sinni. Given the collocation of this dialect in the Lausberg area (Lausberg 1939), we will analyze the preservation of some typical archaisms, such as the outcomes of the Latin endings  -S and -T. Nevertheless, the aforementioned archaisms are somehow intertwined with elements which show external influence. As a matter of fact, in Francavilla there are no traces of the Latin third person ending -T, whereas the outcomes of -S co-occur, as far as the -i conjugation is concerned, with the metaphonetic diphtongization – which is not canonically ‘metaphonetic’ (on this topic, see also Del Puente 2014). Besides this, we will deal with some instances of morphological exaptation of former phonetic changes, such as the velar insertions (Fanciullo 1998) of /-k-/ and /-g-/ and the unusual ending in /-lə/ in some paradigm cells of the imperfect. At a more general level, it is worth noticing that the loss of the Latin perfectum produces a correspondence that aligns synthetic verbal forms with imperfective aspect, on the one hand, and analytical verbal forms with perfective aspect, on the other hand. The data which stand out from the dialect of Francavilla may represent an interesting case study of the way phonetic change may affect an entire paradigm. Such important changes could go unseen if we focused only on the archaic aspects of this dialectal area.