Phenomena of Contact and Mixing in the Arbëresh Dialects of San Marzano di San Giuseppe in Salento and Vena di Maida in Calabria

Abstract

In this work, we will investigate hybridization, borrowing, and grammatical reorganization phenomena in the Arbëresh dialects of San Marzano (Apulia) and Vena di Maida (central Calabria). The data from the Arbëresh of S. Benedetto Ullano (northern Calabria) will be useful to provide a comparative frame. Arbëresh is the name of the Albanian varieties spoken in the villages/cities generally formed in the late fifteenth century by communities fleeing from Albania as a consequence of the Ottoman occupation. The long-time contact with neighboring Romance varieties is reflected in the extended mixing phenomena which characterize the lexicon and the morphosyntactic organization of Arbëresh as a heritage language. This is particularly evident in the two dialects that we investigate in this contribution, where relexification and grammatical reorganization phenomena provide us with an interesting testing ground to explain language variation.

1. Introduction

Arbëresh (Italo-Albanian)1 varieties have been spoken in several villages in Abruzzo, Molise, Campania, Apulia, Basilicata, Calabria, and Sicily since the end of the fifteenth century (Savoia 2010, 2015a). Given the wide distribution and fragmentation of this minority, we find very different conditions of use and integrity between the different communities. Of course, the secular contact with neighboring Romance dialects and Italian has affected all communities. However, some varieties show stronger contact effects such as morphosyntactic reorganization processes and other types of mixing phenomena2. The contact phenomena include lexicon, as usual, phonology, and morphosyntax. We will dwell on two varieties, that of Vena di Maida, a village in central Calabria (Manzini and Savoia 2007; Savoia 2008), and the Arbëresh spoken in the South Apulian center of San Marzano (Savoia 1980; Belluscio and Genesin 2015); the latter has been isolated for centuries and is far from the other Italo-Albanian centers of North Apulia and Basilicata. In San Marzano, Arbëresh is still known and spoken by a part of the population and is characterized by some tendencies of certain crucial morphosyntactic patterns towards reduction caused by its coexistence in bilingual speakers with Salento dialects of the area. Its phonology has assumed the typical devoicing of voiced obstruents occurring in neighboring Romance dialects. The morphosyntax of the case and inflection of nouns and the prepositional constructs have been subject to reduction and reorganization processes. As to the variety of Vena, we find a complex situation of contact, which also created a specific Romance dialect used by speakers in alternation with local Arbëresh. Phonological and morphosyntactic overlaps emerge, giving rise to in-depth mixing phenomena3.

We will see that the mechanisms of variation in the last analysis are rooted in the fundamental structures of human language rather than being subject to the external pressure of cultural and communicative necessities, as maintained by current functionalist conceptions. We are obviously aware that the socio-cultural context and the communicative pertinence requirements can drive linguistic variation, selecting what is brought to the attention of the speakers and driving their communicative intentions. Contact, mixing, pidginization/creolization, and other mechanisms, such as ‘setting’ factors (Hymes 1974) and bilingual interaction, define the external conditions of variation. Nevertheless, we note that phenomena of language mixing and borrowing reflect constraints that form the faculty of language. For the sake of clarity, in the discussion that will follow, we adopt the interpretation of linguistic variation and change based on the theoretical framework that Chomsky characterizes as the Biolinguistic Program. More precisely, we assume that variation relies on and is restricted by the basic property of language, as defined by Chomsky (Hauser et al. 2002; Chomsky 2005, 2015, 2020). Referring to the framework defined by Chomsky (2005), the interaction between socio-linguistic and pragmatic factors and language can be traced back to the effect of experience, which modifies the input to which the speaker is exposed, and to the third factor, the cognitive principles limiting language acquisition or learning.

2. Descriptive and Theoretical Aspects of Contact

The preservation of an alloglot language for several centuries in a situation of contact with different morphosyntactic, phonological, and lexical systems involves code-switching and mixing processes and the production of mixed sentences and borrowings (Bakker and Muysken 1994). Needless to say, Arbëresh shows a wide range of lexical bases of Apulian or Calabrian origin, together with cases of syntactic hybridization. According to Thomason (2010), an intense contact situation can also induce changes in grammar components such as phonology, morphological paradigms, and syntax, altering the typological nature of the language. In these cases, convergence may also make the morphosyntactic patterns of the languages in contact more similar, as discussed in Matras (2010).

There is a conceptual link between interaction phenomena in multilingual competence and transfer (Verschik 2017). Code-switching and mixing, borrowing, and re-coding of semantic or morphosyntactic properties of a language stem from multilingual minds, as the effect of the intertwining of grammars in the competence of speakers. Contact morphosyntactic reorganization is induced by the transfer processes characterizing bi-/multilingual knowledge: in these communities, a certain number or majority of the speakers have been bilingual for many centuries, thus manifesting the usual outcomes of transfer and language mixing. In all cases, we expect that changing L2 during the acquisition process is not conceptually different from changing L2 during the acquisition process in social or cultural contact contexts (Foote 2009; Thomason 2001, 2010).

In keeping with Cook (2008, 2009), the L2 acquisition has access to basic properties of language, in part leveraging the parameterization fixed in L1, which, therefore, influences L2. However, L2 does not fail to influence L1 in turn, confirming the hypothesis that the speaker has a single overall system (Cook 2009; Thomason 2010). Its semantic-syntactic and phonological representations obey morphological and lexical restrictions, as well as syntactic order imposed by structural parameters and semantic cognitive principles (Baldi 2019, 2022). In other words, parameterization is the result of linguistic and cognitive restrictions mapping syntactic and phonological information onto representations available for interpretive sensory-motor and conceptual-intentional systems, regardless of whether L1 or L2 is the source. We must admit that the basic properties of computation (Chomsky 2015) are recoverable and available to the learner as a part of her/his internal language faculty not only in childhood but also in the subsequent process of language acquisition. Descriptive literature on mixing phenomena supports the conclusion that in mixed languages, the lexical bases of one language normally combine with the inflection system of the other (‘language intertwining’, Bakker and Muysken 1994). The relation between the language which supplies morphology and syntax and the language which supplies the lexical items refers to the distinction between ‘embedded language’ and ‘matrix language’ (Myers-Scotton 2003).

The properties of lexical and functional elements working in the influencing language, the source language, SL, and in the influenced language, the receiving language, RL (Thomason 2010), contribute to designing the syntax and the interpretation of sentences. In conclusion, with regard to the minds of multilingual people, we will identify Italo-Romance dialects as the source language, and the Arbëresh dialects as the receiving language, regardless of their original acquisitional status. In the present case studies, we can reasonably surmise that most of the speakers after the first generation grew up bilingual Arbëresh/Apulian or Calabrian and that their overall linguistic system was subject to a partial reorganization due to transfer from Lx, the Italo-Romance dialect, to Ly, the alloglot variety.

The main effects of contact between Arbëresh and the local Italian dialect include lexical borrowing, morphosyntactic convergence, and attrition phenomena (de Bot and Bülow 2021). As we shall see, borrowing is intertwined with the question of word-internal code-mixing, a point closely connected with attrition in speakers with declining lexical competence and diminishing grammatical capacity in L1 (Schmid 2011; Matras 2000).

Romance Relexification in Arbëresh

Let us first consider the relexification in the San Marzano and Vena dialects. In the literature, the tendency to prefer names is referred to the wider autonomy that nouns have in the discourse (Romaine 2000). On the contrary, verbs combine referentiality with predication, thus performing a complex task at the base of the sentence (Matras 2007). Another generalization concerns the fact that the loan process and the interference would preferably save the nuclear lexicon—nouns denoting body parts, numbers, personal pronouns, conjunctions, etc. (Romaine 2000; Muysken 2000). The acquisition of loanwords seems to reflect implicational generalizations, such as those in (1a) for categories and (1b) for lexical classes.

(1)	a.	Lexical items	> derivational morphology > inflectional morphology > syntax
			(Romaine 2000)
	b.	Nouns > adjectives > verbs > prepositions
			(Muysken 2000; Myers-Scotton 2006; partially Matras 2007).

However, a prolonged bilingualism, as in the case of Arbëresh speakers, gave rise to an extensive relexification from Romance, in which, however, the preference for the nominal borrowings as opposed to the verbal ones does not appear. The borrowing of grammatical elements is in turn frequent, also including formatives such as inflections, which are generally immune from being borrowed.

The samples in (2a), (2b), (3a), and (3b) have only an illustrative role, presenting two small subsets of Romance borrowings in the San Marzano and Vena dialects, which include nouns in (a) and verbs in (b)4.

(2)	a.	martjeʎ-i	‘hammer-msg.Def’
		mandil-a	‘apron-fsg.Def’
		vitr-i	‘glass-msg.Def’
		fjerr-i	‘iron-msg.Def’
		dəʃətunn-i	‘thumb-msg.DFef’
		vaŋgarjeʎʎ-i	‘chin- msg.Def’
		vaɲɲunn-i/vaɲɲunn-ja	‘boy-msg.Def/-fsg.Def’
		kattiv-ɛ	‘widow-pl.Def’
		tʃuttʃ-i	‘donkey-msg.Def’
		rəndəneʎʎ-a	‘swallow-fsgDef’
		krab-a	‘goat-fsg.Def’
		vak-a	‘cow-fsg.Def’
	b.	sart-ɔ-ɲ	‘I jump’
		jump-TV-1SG
		tsap-ɔ-ɲ	‘I hoe’
		hoe-TV-1SG
		punt-ɔ-ɣ-əmə	‘I button myself’
		button-TV-MP-1SG
		pəndz-ɔ-ɲ	‘I think’
		think-TV-1SG
		mmaddʒin-ɔ-ɲ	‘I imagine’
		imagine-TV-1SG
			San Marzano

(3)	a.	haddal-ɛ	‘apron-fsg’
		martɛʎ-i	‘hammer-msg.Def’
		lɛndzol-i	‘sheet-msg.Def’
		hɔrˈmikul-a	‘ant-fsg.Def’
		buh-a	‘toad-msg.DFef’
		aɲɛʎ-i	‘lamb-msg.Def’
		kaprɛt-i	‘kid- msg.Def’
	b.	pɛndz-a-ɲa	‘I think’
		think-TV-1SG
		prɛɣ-a-ɲa	‘I pray’
		pray-TV-1SG
		sɛt-a-hɐ-mɐ	‘I sit down’
		sit-TV-MP-1SG
		hum-a-ɲa	‘I smoke’
		smoke-TV-1SG
		ripɛtts-a-ɲa	‘I darn’
		darn-TV-1SG
		kamin-a-ɲa	‘I go away’
		go-TV-1SG
		ntʃiɲ-a-ɲa	‘I begin’
		begin-TV-1SG
		krið-i-ɲa	‘I believe’
		believe-TV-1SG
		kapiʃ-i-ɲa	‘I understand’
		understand-TV-1SG
		lɛj-i-ɲa	‘I read’
		read-TV-1SG
		rispund-i-ɲa	‘I answer’
		answer-TV-1SG
		frij-i-ɲa	‘I fry’
		fry-TV-1SG
		ʃund-i-ɲa	‘I untie’
		untie-TV-1SG
			Vena

Let us dwell on these data. As generally attested (MacSwan 2021), the loans incorporated in the Arbëresh system show the regular morphology, i.e., the gender, plural, case, and definiteness morphology in nouns and the tense and agreement morphology in verbs (Savoia 2008, 2010), as in (4) for nouns and in (5) for verbs. The properties of selection and subcategorization of verbs give rise to the syntactic organization of the sentence.

(4)	a.	kammə	parə	vaɲɲunnə-ni
		have.1sg	seen	boy-Acc.Def
		‘I have seen the boy’
	a’.	vaɲɲunn-i	kwa	siɟɟ-urə
		boy-Def	have.MP	wake up-PP
		‘the boy woke up’
San Marzano
	b.	brɛst-a		stip-in		i		ri
		buy.Past-1sg		the.sideboard-Acc.Def		msg.Def		new
		‘I bought the new sideboard’
	b.’	hinɛʃtrə-tə	janə	tə	zbil-ur-a
		window-pl	be.3pl	pl	open-PP-pl
		‘the windows are open’
									Vena

(5)	a.	kammə		pənts-urə	ði-ðə
		have.1sg		think-PP	you-obl
		‘I have thought of you’
San Marzano
	b.	u	ntʃiɲ-a-v-a		t	ɛ		lɛj-iɲ
		I	begin-TV-past-1sg		Prt	it		read-1sg
		‘I began to read it’
Vena

If we now come to the adjectival borrowings, we note that they are generally characterized by an inflection -u, in most varieties invariable, as in (6a) for San Marzano, or, possibly, inflected in the plural, where the ending –a is variably inserted, as illustrated in (6b) for Vena5. We can think that -u is nothing but the masculine singular inflection of the Romance nominal system, here generalized as the inflection of this subset of adjectives. Other solutions may emerge, as in the case of the form kontɛnti ‘content, glad’ for San Marzano and kontɛnt for Vena in (6c), where the exponent –i of the plural is generalized.

(6)	a.	iʃt/jannə	jɛrt-u
		(s)he is/they are	tall-Infl
			vaʃ-u
			short-Infl
			fridd-u
			cold-Infl
		‘(s)he/it is/they are tall/short/cold’
		ɲə gruɛ	vaʃʃ-u
		a woman	short-Infl
		‘a short woman’
San Marzano
	b.	ɐʃt/jan	aut-u	(/aut-a)
		(s)he is/they are	tall-Infl	/tall-pl
			vaʃ-u	(/vaʃ-a)
			short-Infl	/short-pl
			kruð-u	(/kruð-a)
			raw-Infl	/raw-pl
		‘(s)he/it is/they are tall/short/raw’
Vena
	c.	iʃt	kuntɛnt-i
		is	content-Infl
		‘(s)he is content’
San Marzano
		ɐʃt	kuntɛnt
		is	content
		‘(s)he is content’
Vena

Moreover, these adjectives lack the pre-posed article, the linker6, regularly occurring in DP and in copular sentences with native adjectives (Turano 2002; Savoia 2008; Manzini and Savoia 2018), as in (7a,b,c,d). We will indicate the linker with its agreement features, pl, sg, m, f, Def.

(7)	a.	diaʎ-i	i	maθ
		boy-msg.def	msg	big
		‘the big boy’
	b.	ɐʃt	ɛ	mað-ɛ
		is	fsg	big-fsg
		‘she is big’
Vena
	c.	iʃt		ɛ	ssaðə
		is		fsg	thin
		‘she is thin’
	d.		iʃt	i	mirə
			is	msg	good
		‘he is good’
San Marzano

If the lexical elements fix the morphosyntactic content relevant to the C-I system in a language, borrowability (Matras 2007) should depend on this capability. The literature on language acquisition has highlighted that the word–world relation favors the words that refer to concrete things or events, perceptible and identifiable in the experience stream (Gleitman et al. 2005). We can wonder whether this basic level of conceptual organization causes a stronger resistance in the corresponding subpart of the vocabulary in each of the known languages by the speakers or whether it favors hybridization and borrowing. A purely observational answer is that perceptible and identifiable things or events favor borrowing, as shown by the loan words in (2) and (3) and generally by the data available on these varieties. In other words, this cognitive restriction seems to work in the second language learning, favoring the words connected to the concrete and current cultural experience. Other types of splits observed in the literature on language disorders and acquisition concern the different cognitive status of nouns and verbs (Luzzati and Chierchia 2002; Caramazza 1997). Caramazza and Shelton (1998) bear experimental evidence supporting the hypothesis that the animate/inanimate distinction is basic in the organization of the conceptual space. These authors relate this categorial split to an evolutionary pressure that has fixed a specialized cognitive tool.

The animate/inanimate category would include the sensorial distinction that separates meanings on the basis of the perceptive (visual) or functional nature of their definitory properties. Other categories discussed in Luzzatti et al. (2002) with regard to noun–verb dissociation phenomena are the imageability of a referent and the frequency of the words in the denomination tasks. Matras (2007) takes into consideration the semantic properties of the event such as the sensitivity to the number of arguments, the contrast between transitive and intransitive verbs, and modal properties. The research on linguistic disorders suggests that primitives such as imageability, animacy, argument structure, and frequency are in turn relevant in influencing naming capacity. The authors highlight that such categories belong to the cognitive system that organizes our lexical knowledge, thus also affecting acquisition processes that create mixed or secondary languages.

The distribution shown by the loanwords in the Arbëresh lexicon in (2)–(3) bears witness to different degrees of access to the borrowing and code-mixing, whereby the majority of the loanwords denote artifacts or animals. These terms involve properties such as imageability and use frequency, implying socio-cultural and pragmatic factors. As for verbal borrowings, perceptibility seems to be a relevant component. Nevertheless, the verbs for ‘think’ are generally borrowed, suggesting a crucial role in the discourse. Adjectival borrowings include both individual-level properties denoting spatial properties, such as aut-u, and stage-level properties, such as kundɛnd/kuntɛnti. The distribution of adjectives over spatial and dimensional attributes and inherent but perceptible properties recalls the distribution of verbal borrowings.

3. Bilingual Competence

Code-mixing and other processes of variation raise the question of the place of variation and its significance for language theory. According to Chomsky (2000, p. 119), “the human language faculty and the (I-)languages that are manifestations of it qualify as natural objects”. This approach—that “regards the language faculty as an ‘organ of the body’ ”—has been labeled the “biolinguistic perspective” (cf. Hauser et al. 2002; Chomsky 2005). In the internalist (i.e., biologically, individually grounded) perspective that we adopt, a variation in situations of contact between two or more dialects (linguistic communities) is in fact not qualitatively different from variation within the same community, or even within the productions of a single speaker. Again, according to Chomsky, “There is a reason to believe that the computational component is invariant, virtually... language variation appears to reside in the lexicon” (Chomsky 2000, p. 120). Suppose then that the lexicon is the locus of linguistic variation—in the presence of a uniform, invariant, computational component, and of an invariant repertory of interface primitives, both phonological and conceptual. We take this to mean that there is a universal conceptual space to be lexicalized, and variation results from different partitions of that space. Our idea is that the so-called functional space is part of the conceptual space defined by the lexicon, and there is no separated functional lexicon that varies along the axis of overt vs. covert realization.

The phenomena of code-switching and code-mixing show different degrees of regularity depending on the interaction between the languages involved. A classic approach of mixing phenomena is based on the idea that there are structural constraints on the mixed phrases. Poplack (1980), with regard to the code-switching of Spanish-English in a Puerto Rican community in New York, concludes that code-mixing is structurally restricted by the equivalence constraint in (8a), excluding (9a), and the free morpheme constraint in (8b), which excludes (9b) (Poplack 1980, pp. 585–86).

(8)	a.	The equivalence constraint:
		Code-switches will tend to occur at points in discourse where the juxtaposition of L1 and L2 elements does not violate a syntactic rule of either language, i.e., at points around which the surface structures of two languages map onto each other.
	b.	The free morpheme constraint:
		Codes may be switched after any constituent in discourse provided that constituent is not a bound morpheme.

(9)	a.	*told le, le told	cf.	(Yo)	le	dije
				I		told	him
	b.	*eat-iendo’

In reality, it is far from clear that (8a) is generally valid. The literature on word-internal mixing (cf. Bokamba 1988; Muysken 2000, a.o.) argues against the free morpheme constraint on the basis of examples such as those provided by Albanian-inflected Romance nouns and verbs listed in Section 1. Nevertheless, (8b) is taken up again by MacSwan (2010, 2021), although in a minimalist approach. MacSwan (2021), in keeping with Chomsky (1995 and ff.), assumes that the syntactic structure is built on the basis of ‘the abstract properties encoded in each lexical item’:

A bilingual grammar has the special challenge of representing potentially conflicting requirements in a single system. For instance, a Farsi-English bilingual will use Farsi OV word order with a Farsi verb, even if the object is English, and English VO word order with an English verb, even if the object is Farsi. Despite these contradictory requirements for Farsi and English, bilinguals expertly navigate the two systems, never deviating from these patterns. To capture these facts, the architecture of a bilingual grammar must have the capacity to represent linguistic diversity in a way that captures the structure of each language separately and in interaction.

MacSwan (2021, pp. 98–99)

The conclusion is that the new items added to the linguistic knowledge of a bilingual ‘take on’ the language-particular features. In bilinguals, different lexicons coexist, with different idiosyncrasies and syntactic properties, whereby “Code-switching is formally the union of two (lexically-encoded) grammars, where the numeration may draw elements from the union of two (or more) lexicons” (MacSwan 2005, p. 5). As to the constraint against the internal code-mixing, MacSwan, of course, is aware of well-known evidence against constraints such as (8b) and pursues a constraint-free approach. However, he concludes that this type of mixing is blocked by the fact that the interpretive PF components of the involved languages have different rules, and, therefore, we cannot expect code-mixing phenomena within a word (the PF Disjunction Theorem; MacSwan 2021, p. 100). In his terms, the hybrid forms that we have considered are loan words.

However, as we will discuss in the following sections, the ‘intertwining’ between Arbëresh and Romance lexical material also involves inflectional devices, for example, the inflection of the perfect—not just lexical bases. Moreover, mixing includes phonological properties, such as, for instance, the [h] outcome for *f in the native Albanian lexicon of Vena. Similarly, the shared vowel and consonant patterns in San Marzano’s and Vena’s Romance lexicon are compatible with the hypothesis that borrowing, specifically in contact contexts, involves a mechanism of code-mixing between shared grammars.

3.1. The Morphological Approach

In the treatment of bilingualism-dependent phenomena, obviously, a crucial role is played by the theoretical approach. A current morphological model such as Distributed Morphology identifies morphology with an autonomous component, in which sub-word elements (affixes and clitics) are seen as ‘dissociated morphemes’. They convey a type of information ‘separated from the original locus of that information in the phrase marker’ (Embick and Noyer 2001, p. 557) and involve post-syntactic rules of linear adjacency (local dislocation) (Embick and Noyer 2001). Thus, agreement and case morphemes are not represented in syntax, but they are added post-syntactically ‘during Morphology’ by the Late insertion mechanism. The undesirable result of this model is that there may be morphological elements devoid of any syntactic and interpretive import (Embick 2010). In other words, morphological rules may have the effect of modifying or deleting φ-features relevant to syntax, contributing to obscuring syntax. In this, Late Insertion has the role of deus ex machina, with ad hoc and distortive effects7.

We pursue a different approach to morphology, whereby morphology is part of the syntactic computation and there is no specialized component for the morphological structure of words (Manzini and Savoia 2017a, 2017b, 2011a; Savoia et al. 2018, 2019; Manzini et al. 2020a, 2020b)-a direction that is now also being pursued by other authors, such as Collins and Kayne (2021). The lexical elements, including morphemes, are fully interpretable and contribute to realizing the syntactic structure. This excludes late insertion and other adjustments provided by Distributed Morphology, such as impoverishment, fusion, and fission of φ-features, i.e., the ad hoc manipulation of terminal nodes. Finally, agreement, the property traditionally triggering head-raising, is understood as the result of the Minimal Search of (bundles of) features able to identify the same referent.

The formation of complex words is due to the Merge operation that takes roots and affixes, i.e., sub-word elements, and combines them, in the same way as other lexical or syntactic objects. This procedure includes the ‘head raising’, which is the classic movement of the head, i.e., the mechanism by which verbal (and nominal) heads are joined to affixes and positioned in the cartographic structure. In the more recent production of Chomsky, ‘head raising’ is seen as a problematic case insofar as it does not entail semantic effects, and, structurally, it is counter-cyclic (Chomsky 2020, p. 55). Along these lines, Chomsky (2021, p. 30 and 36 ff.) speaks of the illegitimate nature of head movement by observing that V-to-T raising is unjustified because ‘interpretation is the same whether a verb raises to INFL or stays in-situ’. He assumes that the Merge operation can create the combination of morphemes in complex words:

The first step in a derivation must select two items from the lexicon, presumably a root R and a categorizer CT, forming {CT, R}, which undergoes amalgamation under externalization, possibly inducing ordering effects […]. With head-movement eliminated, v need no longer be at the edge of the vP phase, but can be within the domains of PIC and Transfer, which can be unified. EA is interpreted at the next phase.

(Chomsky 2021, p. 36)

The amalgamation gives rise to complex forms such as [INFL [v, Root]], subject to externalization. Now, the external argument is interpreted in the phase of T by the inflected form of the verb, and v is not involved in the procedure. In keeping with this approach, we conceptualize categorizers such as v, n, as the bundles of φ-features that characterize the functional content of words entering into the agreement operations (Manzini 2021; Baldi and Savoia 2021). Based on this approach, the syntax is projected directly from lexical items, including lexical bases and inflectional material.

Morphology substantially involves the combination of morphemic heads with roots. In the minimalist model we apply, the agreement is accounted for as the morphological manifestation of the identity between referential feature sets corresponding to the arguments of the sentence. If words are formed by combining the uncategorized lexical root with morphological elements, we must conclude that inflectional morphemes select for the contexts, the root and its immediately attached morpheme (cf. Marantz 2001, 2007), to which they merge8.

3.2. Code-Mixing

In keeping with this conceptualization of morphological objects, let us consider first the question of code-mixing within words. We compare the realization of the same nominal base, in (10a), in the Romance dialect of Vena, and in (10a’) for the indefinite and (10c) for the definite alternant in Arbëresh; the same verbal base is compared in (10b) in the Romance dialect of Vena, and, in (10b’), in Arbëresh.

(10)	a.	hɔrmikul-a/hɔrmikul-i	b.	krij-u/krið-i/krið-ɛ/krið-i-mu
		ant-fsg/-pl		believe-1sg/2sg/3sg/1pl
		‘ant/ants’		‘I believe, you believe/(s)he believes/ we believe
	a’.	hɔrmikul/hɔrmikul-a	b’.	krið-i-ɲa/ krið-i-n
		ant/-pl		believe-1sg/2sg/3sg
		‘ant/ants’		‘I believe/you believe/(s)he believes’
	c.	hɔrmikul-a/hɔrmikul -ətə
		ant-fsg.Def/ant-pl.Def
		‘the ant/the ants’
Vena di Maida

A possible hypothesis is that the bilingual grammar of the speakers includes a single root, able to combine with the inflectional exponents of Arbëresh or the Romance dialect, as in (11a) for the noun and (11b) for verbs. Here, φ indicates the bundle of φ-features that characterize the plural form hormikul-a/i ‘ants’ or the third-person form krið-in/ɛ ‘(s)he believes’. The distribution of the inflectional exponents depends on two different morphological systems based on different lexical entries, as in (11a’)O and (11b’) and obeys two types of selection constraints in correspondence to the different syntactic contexts, as in (11a”) and (11b”).

(11)	a.	[ φ [R hɔrmikul ] aArb/iCal ]		b.	[φ [R krið ] inArb/ɛCal ]
	a’.	Arbëresh	a = pl	b’.	Arbëresh	in = sg
		Romance	i = pl		Romance	ɛ = 3sg
	a”.	a/i ←→ R] __			b”. in/ɛ ←→ R] ___Vena

By hypothesis, in bilingual grammars, the lexical bases which are identical both in the Romance dialect and Arbëresh can be recorded once in the grammar of the speaker. The specific morphosyntactic devices separate the two languages, as suggested in (11). This proposal is supported by the fact that in borrowed verbs, the thematic vowel, i.e., the vocalic element inserted between the root and the inflection, coincides with that of the corresponding Romance form. In fact, in the Arbëresh of Vena, the verbal borrowings are based on the thematic stem root+TV, whereby, for instance, hum-a-ɲa ‘I smoke’ has the TV -a- as Calabrian hum-a-mu ‘we smoke’, and krið-i-ɲa ‘I believe’ has -i- like the Calabrian verb krið-i-mu ‘we believe’. Unlike Vena, San Marzano’s Arbëresh uses the TV -ɔ- for the verbal loans, such as in pəndz-ɔ-ɲ ‘I think’.

3.3. Phonological Phenomena

Before we give up this data, let us consider how the forms of the source language, i.e., the Romance dialect, are phonologically connected to the corresponding forms of receiving language, i.e., Arbëresh. The point is relevant with regard to the relationship between the two lexical entries, that is, if the forms are in a loan relationship or in a code-mixing relationship. Venot languages, i.e., Arbëresh and the Romance dialect known by speakers, share crucial properties. The low-mid stressed vowels system [ɛ ɔ] contrasts with the system of neighboring Calabrian dialects, where metaphony creates a diphthongized alternant before –i/u. As shown below, (12a) compares the borrowings in Arbëresh, (12b), the outcomes of the Romance dialect of Vena, and (12c) the forms of the contact Calabrian dialect of Iacurso.

(12)	a.	martɛʎ-i	‘the hammer’
		‘hammer-msg.Def’
		aɲɛʎ-i	‘the lamb’
		‘lamb-msg.Def’
		lɛndzɔl-i	‘the sheet’
		sheet-msg.Def
Arbëresh (from contact)
	b.	martɛʎʎ-u/martɛʎʎ-i
		‘hammer-msg/mpl’
		aɲɛʎ-u
		‘lamb-msg’
		lɛntsɔl-u/lɛntsɔl-a
		‘sheet-msg/fpl’
Romance dialect of Vena
	c.	martiɐʐ-u/martɛʐ-a
		‘hammer-msg/fpl’
		aɲiaʐ-u
		‘lamb-msg’
		lɛntsuɐl-u/lɛntsɔl-a
		‘sheet-msg/fpl’
Romance dialect of Iacurso

The data in (11a,b) also show that Arbëresh and the Romance dialect present the outcome [ʎ]/[ʎʎ] instead of the retroflex of near dialects, realized as [ʐ] in Iacurso in (13c). Finally, all varieties considered share the outcome [h] after the original *f, as exemplified in (13a,b,c).

(13)	a.	hɔrmikul-a	‘the ant’
		ant-fsg.Def
		hadalic-i	‘the apron’
		apron-msg.Def
		buh-a	‘the toad’
		toad-fsg.Def
		huma-ɲa	‘I smoke’
		smoke-1sg
Arbëresh (from contact)
	b.	haddal-ɛ	‘apron’
		apron-msg
		hormikul-a	‘ant’
		ant-fsg
		hum-u	‘I smoke’
		smoke-1sg
Romance dialect of Vena
	c.	himmin-i	‘women’
		woman-pl
		huɐk-u	‘fire’
		fire-msg
		hormikul-a		‘ant’
		ant-fsg
		haddal-ɛʐ-a	‘apron’
		apron-Eval-fsg
Romance dialect of Iacurso

Arbëresh applies this phonological change to its original lexicon as well, as in the cases in (14).

(14)	i	hɔrtə	‘strong’	(from the original Albanian i fortë)
	msg.Def strong’
	cah-a		‘the neck’	(from the original Albanian cafa)
	neck-fsg.Def

If we now move to the Arbëresh of San Marzano, we find a comparable situation, where the phonology of Arbëresh and that of the contact Southern-Apulian dialects share important features (for a detailed analysis of the phonology of San Marzano Arbëresh, cf. Belluscio and Genesin 2015). In particular, laryngeal properties of obstruents are affected by a process whereby the original voiced and voiceless consonants converge into partially voiceless outcomes, along a continuum between voicelessness and [-stiff] folds realization, i.e., weakly voiced segments, as suggested in (15) (cf. Savoia 1980, 2015b). This process favors partially voiced results in the intervocalic position, with the consequence that in these dialects the alternant with the voiceless obstruent tends to be the basic form, possibly realized also in the initial position. It is interesting to note that this type of pronunciation in the Abëresh of San Marzano was already documented in the traditional texts collected by Bonaparte (1884, 1891), Hanusz (1888), and Meyer (1891), which recorded both voiced and voiceless alternants (cf. Savoia 1980).

(15)

The most typical outcomes include the alternation [p] ~ [β], [t] ~ [ð], and [x k] ~ [ɣ], as in (16a) for San Marzano and (16b) for the Apulian contact variety of Monteparano.

(16)	a.	u hapə ~ u haβə	‘I open’
		ujə-ðə ~ ujə-tə	‘the water’
		ɲə ðɛmbə ~ ɲə təmbə	‘a tooth’
		ja ðavv-a ~ ja tavv-a	‘I gave it to her/him’
		krak-u ~ krag-u	‘the arm’
		ʎʎa-ɣəʃ-ɲa ~ ʎʎa-kə-ʃ-ɲa‘I washed myself’
San Marzano
	b.	nipɔtɛ ~ nibɔt̬ɛ	‘nephew’
		ʃtɛ ddurm-i ~ turm-i	‘you are sleeping/you sleep’
		krɛt-u ~ krɛð-u	‘I believe’
Monteparano

These data seem to weaken the idea that the systems involved in bilingual grammar have different phonological constraints. Generally, in prolonged contact, phonologies overlap or, at least, end by including fundamental phonetic patterns.

An anonymous reviewer asks whether alternants such as Arbëresh hɔrmikul-a ‘the ant’ and Romance hormikul-a ‘ant’ (cf. (10a,a’)) are cases of code-mixing or imply loan. The previous discussion aims to overcome this contrast, insofar as it assumes that at least a part of the lexicon in the contact competence can be traced back to a single system comprising the bases available for different syntactic computations, i.e., the rules of word formation. This means that the language knowledge of speakers includes different selection rules expressing the distribution of the morphological exponents, as in (11a’,a”) and (11b’,b”), on which the same basic syntactic rule of Merge operates in forming inflected words (cf. Savoia and Baldi 2022).

4. Convergence in Verbal Structures

The Romance and Arbëresh systems of Vena share the pattern of auxiliary selection in which have occurs in active, middle-reflexive, and unaccusative, except in the passive and stative periphrasis, where be occurs. In Romance and Arbëresh, the participle does not agree in have contexts, in (16a,b,c) and (16a’,b’,c’). In be contexts, it agrees, as in (16d) for the Romance dialect and in (16d’) for Arbëresh. In fact, the Romance distribution is independently attested in Calabrian dialects (Manzini and Savoia 2005), and all Arbëresh dialects form the middle-reflexive with (j)u and the auxiliary have as in (16b). However, this congruence can in turn favor mixing effects.

(16)	a.	(sta kamisa)		l	avia	ripɛtts-a-tu
	a’.	(kumiʃə-nə)		ɛ	kɛʒ	ripɛtts-a-rə
		this shirt(-Acc)		it	I.had	darn-TV-PP
		‘(This shirt) I had darned it’
	b.	m	avia		sɛtt-a-t-u
		me	have.Impf-3sg		sit-TV-PP-msg
		‘I sat down’
	b’.	ju	kiʃə		sɛt-a-rə
		MP	have.Impf-3sg		sit-TV-PP
		‘I sat down’
	c.	avi-anu		vɛn-u-tu
		have.Impf-3pl		come-TV-PP
		‘They had come’
	c’.	kiʒ		ard-urə
		have.Impf.3sg		come-PP
		‘(s)he has come’
	d.	st-a	kamis-a	ɛ	ripɛtts-a-t-a
		this-fsg	shirt-fsg	is	darn-TV-PP-fsg
		‘This shirt is darned’
	d’.	kjɔ	kumiʃ	ɐʃt/kiʎɛ	ɛ	ʎa-rə/ʎaʃt-u-rə	(ŋga ajɔ)
		this	shirt	is/was	fsg.Def	wash-(TV)-PP	by her
		‘This shirt is/was washed (by her)’
Vena

A consequence of contact is provided by the fact that Vena’s Arbëresh grammar has acquired the participle suffix -t for be contexts from Romance. This inflection appears in the verbal bases of Romance origin, where it alternates with the Albanian inflection –r, cf. (17a) vs. (16b’) and (17b-b’) vs. (16d’). As we noted in the previous section, the verbal loans preserve the TV; thus, -t is merged to the TV and followed by the agreement inflection –a for the plural and lacks the pre-posed article. Specifically, it behaves like the adjectival borrowings examined in Section 2. The latter property separates these participles from a sub-class of the participle in -t(ə), which is independently documented in Albanian for some verbal classes (Demiraj 1986, 2002). These forms, unlike the participles -t considered here, select the appropriate article, as in (17c).

(17)	a.	jiʒə		sɛt-a-t-a
		be.impf-3pl		sat-TV-PP-pl
		‘They were seated’
	b.	kjɔ kumiʃ	ɐʃt	ripɛts-a- t	(ŋga ai)
		this shirt	is	darn-TV-PP	by him
		‘This shirt is darned (by him)’
	b’.	kitɔ kumiʃ	ki:ʎɛn	ripɛtts-a-t-a	(ŋga ai)
		these shirts	were	darn-TV-PP-pl	by him
		‘These shirts were darned (by him)’
	c.	kiˈʎɛ	i	ʎag-t
		(s)he.was	msg.def	wetted
		‘(S)he has been wetted’
Vena

Again, we can assume that the participles of verbal loans and the corresponding forms in the Romance variety share the same internal structure. Applying the amalgamation procedure suggested by Chomsky (2021) (cf. Savoia and Baldi 2022), we can assume that these participles are created as in (18) by Merge, which operates on morphemes, the root, and the inflectional elements, combining them into a complex word. As shown, (18a) and (18b) amalgamate the participial form of Romance/Arbëresh type; meanwhile, (18c), i.e., the plural agreement, only applies to the Romance type. Furthermore, (18d) illustrates the selection constraints that regulate the distribution of the inflectional elements, whereby the TV is inserted only in the subset of roots that occur both in Arbëresh and in the Romance variety. φ indicates the bundle of features associated with amalgam formed by Merge.

(18)	a.	< ripɛttsR, aTV/φ > → [φ [R ripɛtts]-a ]
	b.	< [φ ripɛtts-a ], t/rə PP → [PP [φ ripɛtts-a ] t/rə]
	c.	< [PP [φ ripɛtts-a ] t], apl> → [φ ripɛtts-a-t-a]
	d.	TV ←→ R Romance___
		t PP ←→ TV ___
		apl←→ tPP ___
Vena

Comparable conditions emerge in the perfect, which in the sub-set of Romance-Arbëresh roots is formed by the addition of the inflection -ʃt/-st, corresponding to the morpheme -st/-ʃt in the Romance variety. As indicated in (19a), Arbëresh inserts -ʃt/–st in all the persons, unlike the Romance paradigm which has -st/-ʃt only in second person, in (19b). Arbëresh also shows the morphological alternant –v in first/second singular and –u in third singular, which in turn coincide with the Romance inflection –v- in krið-i-v-i ‘I believed’ and –u in the third singular ‘(s)he believed’. This paradigm includes both the verbal bases with Romance etymology and native Albanian bases with the vocalic theme, as in (19c).

(19)	a.	ripɛtts-a-st-a/ripɛtts-a-v-a	b.	ripɛtts-a-i
		ripɛtts-a-st-ɛ/ripɛtts-a-v-ɛ		ripɛtts-a-st-i
		ripɛtts-a-st-i/ripɛtts-a-u		ripɛtts-a-u
		ripɛtts-a-st-əmə		ripɛtts-a-mɛ
		ripɛtts-a-st-ətə		ripɛtts-a-sti-vu
		ripɛtts-a-st-ərə		ripɛtts-a-ru
		‘I darned, etc.’
		krið-i-st-a/kriði-v-a		krið-i-v-i
		krið-i-st-ɛ/kriði-v-ɛ		krið-i-st-i
		krið-i-st-i/kriði-u		krið-i-u
		krið-i-st-əmə		krið-i-mɛ
		krið-i-st-ətə		krið-i-sti-vu
		krið-i-st-ərə		krið-i-ru
		‘I believed’, etc.’
	c.	ʎ-a-st-a
		ʎ-a-st-ɛ
		ʎ-a-st-i/ʎ-a-u
		ʎ-a-st-əmə
		ʎ-a-st-ətə
		ʎ-a-st-ərə
		‘I washed’, etc.
Vena

The internal structure of the forms in (19) brings to light an inflectional system partially shared by Arbëresh and Romance grammars. In the sub-set of Romance/Arbëresh roots, we find a common rule which inserts the TV, as in (18a). The inflected form is yielded by amalgamating the agreement inflection to this thematic form, as in (20a,b).

(20)	a.	< [φ [kriðR] iTV ], stpast > → [φ [ [kriðR] iTV ] stpast ]
	b.	< [φ [ [kriðR] iTV ] stpast], i/ɛ2sg > → [φ [[kriðR-iTV] st] i/ɛ2sg]
Vena

(21)	C	T	v	VP
		[φ/T [kriðR-iTV] stpast] i/ɛ2sg]
Vena

As indicated, (20b), that is, the inflected verbal form, is able to realize the properties associated with the inflectional position of the sentence, at the phase C-T, in (21), as suggested by Chomsky (2021) (cf. the discussion in Section 3).

5. The Case System

The reduction and reorganization phenomena highlight the weakness of certain grammatical sub-systems, such as the case paradigm, on which contact with Romance grammar exerts a continuous influence. The changes in the case system seem to be particularly interesting insofar as the system is, all in all, preserved, but with morphophonological simplification and a general reduction of the forms. For the sake of clarity, shown in (22)–(23) is the paradigm of the case usually instantiated by Albanian varieties, including most of the Arbëresh dialects (here, that of San Benedetto Ullano). The definite and the indefinite paradigms must be distinguished, where the definite realizes three specialized case exponents.

(22) SG	Definite			Indefinite
	F.	M.		F.		M.
Nominative	vajz-a	burr-i	ɲə		vaiz	burr
Accusative	vaiz-ən	burr-i-n	ɲə		vaiz	burr
Oblique (gen/dat)	vaiz-ə-s	burr-i-t	ɲəi		vaiz-ɛ	burr-i

(23) PL	Definite		Indefinite
	F.	M.	F.	M.
Nominative	vajz-a-t	burr-a-t	vaiz-a	burr-a
Accusative	vaiz-a-t	burr-a-t	vaiz-a	burr-a
Oblique (gen/dat)	vaiz-a-vɛ-t	burr-a-vɛ-t	vaiz-a-vɛ	burr-a-vɛ
San Benedetto Ullano

The main properties are synthesized in the following scheme:

(24)	-a	indefinite plural nominative and accusative in some sub-classes: burr-a ‘men’/vaiz-a girls’
		definite feminine nominative context: vajz-a ‘the girl’
	-ɛ	indefinite singular oblique in feminine (and indefinite plural in a sub-set of feminine)-i definite masculine singular nominative: burr-i ‘the man’ masculine singular oblique: burr-i ‘of/to a man’/burr-i-t ‘of/to the man’
	-n	definite singular accusative: vaiz-ə-n ‘the girl’, burr-i-n ‘the man’
	-t	definite plural nominative, accusative and oblique, both with bare stems, e.g., ʃpi-t ‘the houses’, kəmb-t ‘the feet’, cɛn-t ‘the dogs’ and with stems including the plural inflections, such as, for instance, -a, burr-a-t/vaiz-a-t ‘the men/the girls’, vaiz-a-vɛ-t ‘of/to the girls’, burr-a-vɛ-t ‘of/to the men’, in masculine singular oblique, burr-i-t ‘of/to the man’, in singular neuter nominative and accusative, diaθ-t ‘the cheese’
	-s	definite feminine singular oblique: vaiz-ə-s ‘to/of the girl’
	-vɛ	indefinite plural oblique: vaiz-a-vɛ ‘of/to girls’, burr-a-vɛ ‘of/to men’
		i, t(ə), s(ə), ɛ/a occur also as linkers—pre-nominal articles—introducing the post-nominal or
		predicative adjectives and genitives, as in burr-i i mað ‘man.the the big, i.e., the big man’ (Manzini and Savoia 2011b).

Nominative and accusative generally coincide, except for the singular definite where accusative introduces the exponent -n; the inflection of plural can coincide with the definiteness element inserted in the nominative singular feminine, here -a. The distribution of the exponent -t in the singular oblique definite and in the plural definite suggests that -t is an element of definiteness.

Before making some brief considerations on the nature of the case, let us consider the type of change that has re-organized the system of post-positive articles and case markers in the dialect of San Marzano (Savoia 1980; Belluscio and Genesin 2015). We see that the exponent -i- of the singular masculine occurs on the right of the inflectional cluster, closing the inflectional string. The pattern exemplified in (25)–(26) for the lexical base vaɲɲun- ‘girl/boy’ encompasses all the lexical sub-classes, apart from the plural inflection, which includes the morpheme –(d)r- only in certain classes and not obligatorily.

(25) SG	Definite		Indefinite
	F.	M.	F.	M.
Nominative	vaɲɲun-j-a9	vaɲɲun-i	ɲə vaɲɲun-ɛ	ɲə vaɲɲun-ə
Accusative	vaɲɲun-ənə	vaɲɲun-ə-ni	ɲə vaɲɲun-ɛ	ɲə vaɲɲun-ə
Oblique	vaɲɲun-ə-sə	vaɲɲun-ə-ti	ɲəi-ti vaɲɲun-ɛ	ɲəi-ti vaɲɲun-ə
(genitive/dative)

(26) PL	Definite		Indefinite
	F.	M.	F.	M.
Nominative	vaɲɲun-(drə-)tə	vaɲɲun-(drə-)tə	vaɲɲun-dr-ɛ	vaɲɲun-dr-ɛ
Accusative	vaɲɲun-(drə-)tə	vaɲɲun-(drə-)tə	vaɲɲun-dr-ɛ	vaɲɲun-dr-ɛ
Oblique	vaɲɲun-drə-vɛ	vaɲɲun-drə-vɛ	vaɲɲun-drə-(vɛ)	vaɲɲun-drə-(vɛ)
(genitive/dative)
San Marzano

Thus, we find preserved the original distribution of case morphemes in the relevant contexts in (27), although, as we will see, there are contexts in which the case system is not applied. As indicated, (27a,a’) illustrate the occurrence of the nominative, singular, and plural, while (27b) illustrates the occurrence of the accusative and (27c) that of the oblique.

(27)	a	ka	ardrə		vaɲɲunn-i /		gru(v)-j-a
		Have.3sg	come		boy-msg.Def/woman-fsg.Def
		‘The boy/the woman has come’
	a’.	kannə	ardrə		vaɲɲun-drə- tə/		burr-ə-tə /atɔ vaz-ə-rə
		Have.3pl	come		girl-pl-Def/		man-pl-Def/those girl-pl-Def
		‘The girls/the men/those girls have come’
	b.	kammə parə	vaɲɲunn-ə-nə/gru-ə-nə				/burr-ə-ni/vaɲɲun-(drə-)tə/burr-ə-tə
		have.1sg seen		girl-Acc.fsg/woman-Acc.fsg/man-Acc.msg/boy-pl-def/man-Def
		‘I have seen the girl/the woman/the man/the boys/the men’
	c.	kamm-	j-a		tənnə	vaɲɲun-ə-ti/vaɲɲun-drə- vɛ/gru-ə-sə
		have.1sg	Dat-it		given	boy-Dat.Def/boy-pl-Dat/woman-Dat.def
		‘I have given it to the boy/to the boys/to the woman’.
San Marzano

A crucial property of the Albanian case system (Manzini and Savoia 2012, 2014a, 2014b) is that in indefinite singular forms, only obliques are marked, in (22), by the morpheme -ɛ for the feminine and -i for the masculine, both exponents also associated with definiteness. In fact, -i is also the definite nominative, and both ɛ and i occur also as the pre-adjectival/genitival articles, as in (28a) for feminine and (28b) for masculine in the dialect of San Benedetto Ullano and, analogously, in (29a,b,c) for the dialect of San Marzano.

(28)	a.	kjɔ	gru-a		əʃt	ɛ	ʎart
		this.fsg	woman-fsg		is	fsg	tall
		‘this woman is tall’
	b.	ai	gaɲun	əʃt	i	mað
		that.msg	boy	is	msg	big
		‘that boy is big’
San Benedetto Ullano

(29)	a.	ajɔ	gru-ɛ			iʃt	ɛ	mirə
		that.fsg	woman-fsg			is	fsg	good
		‘this woman is good’
	b.	ai	burr	iʃt	i	mirə
		that.msg	boy	is	msg	good
		‘that boy is good’
	c.	vaɲɲunn-i	i	maðə
		boy-Def	msg	big
		‘the big boy’
San Marzano

Our idea is that the content associated with these exponents encompasses two elementary predicates, i.e., definite/definiteness and the inclusion, part-whole relation ⊆, possibly together with φ-features of gender (Savoia and Manzini 2010; Manzini and Savoia 2011b, 2012, 2014a, 2014b; Manzini et al. 2020b). The interesting point is that its combination with a nominal root gives rise to a nominative, a definite form of accusative or oblique merging with -n and -t, but also to the simple oblique, as in (25). Let us now focus on the morphology of plural and definiteness. We note that i, substantially similar to Italian varieties, realizes the object clitic plural as in (30a), and the oblique, in (30b)10—in this Arbëresh variety, object clitics are doubled in pre- and post-auxiliary positions.

(30)	a.	i	kamm-	i	bbə-nə
		Def.pl	have-1sg	Def.pl	make-PP
		‘I have made them’
	b.	i-a	kann-	i-a	ðə-nnə
		Def.pl-Def.sg	have.3pl-	Def.pl-Def.sg	give-PP
		‘They have given it to them’
San Marzano

Following Manzini and Savoia (2011b, 2012, 2017a, 2017b) and Savoia et al. (2018, 2019), the conceptualization of plural on a par with that of the recipient (dative or genitive) can be connected to the property part-whole/inclusion, i.e., [⊆]. The insight is that in oblique contexts, such as the oblique in masculine nouns and the dative clitic, the exponent i expresses the inclusion relation, based on the notion of zonal inclusion, whereby all types of possession fall under the same basic relation (Belvin and den Dikken 1997, p. 170). In the case of plural, the predicate of inclusion [⊆] indicates that the argument of the root, the referent, can be partitioned into subsets, in the terms suggested by Chierchia (1997). All in all, the exponent i is able to denote a definite referent. In other words, the part-whole relation contributes to identifying the argument, thereby introducing a definite reading in the nominal paradigm, as in (25), and as a pre-adjectival/genitive article (Manzini and Savoia 2012, 2014a, 2014b; Manzini et al. 2014; Franco et al. 2015), as in (29), where it agrees with the head noun. This distribution can be expressed in (31).

(31)	i⊆ ←→ __ Adj/Gen, R__

The definite plural -t is able to introduce the definite plural also combining with bare stems, as in the case of the system of San Marzano in (25) vaɲɲun-(drə-)tə ‘the boys’, but in general in all dialects, as in cɛn-t ‘the dogs’, suggesting that it introduces definiteness. Taking into account the standard examples in (22) and (23), when -t takes scope over the noun to which it attaches, it contributes plurality, as in (32), by individuating a subset of the set of all things that are ‘man’. [⊆] says that the set (the property) denoted by the lexical base can include subsets.

(32)	t = Def, ⊆

Crucially, -t characterizes the sub-set as definite, i.e., anaphoric in relation to discourse, as in (33).

(33)	a.	cɛn-t	‘the dogs’
	b.	the x	[x ⊆ {dog}]
	i.e., ‘the x such that x is a subset of the set of things with the property ‘dog’

This analysis is confirmed by the occurrence of -t as the definite oblique, in cases such as burr-i-t ‘the man.obl’ (San Benedetto Ullano), but vaɲɲunə-t-i ‘the boy-obl’ in the Arbëresh of San Marzano. As discussed above, the property of inclusion [⊆] also characterizes the dative and, in general, the contexts possessed–possessor/locative inclusion, etc. Genitives and datives specify the inclusion within a spatial or abstract zone in relation to a possessor, while locatives specify the inclusion within a referential space. Hence, the occurrence of the exponent –t in the oblique, as the complement of a noun, in (34a,a’) for masculine and feminine, or of a ditransitive as in (34b), can be seen as the realization of the inclusion relation associated with genitives/datives (possession).

(34)	a.	biʃt-i	i	cɛn-	i-t
		tail-Def.msg	msg	dog-msg. ⊆ -Def/⊆
		‘the tail of the dog’
	a’.	grik-a	ɛ	matʃ-əs
		mouth-Def.fsg	fsg	cat-fsg.Def
		‘the mouth of the cat’
	b.	j-a	ðɛv-a		cɛn-	i-t
		to.him-it	give.Past-1sg		dog-msg-Def/⊆
		‘I gave it to the dog’
San Benedetto Ullano

Obviously, we must conclude that –t is subcategorized for the sub-set of lexical items that we label ‘masculine’, in (35a), if it specifies the oblique within a DP, where it alternates with –s for feminine, in (35b). The Elsewhere Condition (Kiparsky 1973) favors the distribution that we find.

(35)	a.	t = Def, ⊆ (D__ Nmasculine)
	b.	s = Def, ⊆, D__ Nfeminine

The inflection -a in turn specifies the plural indefinite and, in singular feminine, definiteness. It is tempting to conclude that –a is also associated with a relator similar to, but not coinciding with, [⊆]. In fact, among others, the quantificational property introduced by -a is sufficient to legitimize a definite reading in the singular or a generic plural reading.

Concluding this discussion, (36) illustrates the derivation of the definite oblique cɛn-i-t ‘the dog.Obl’ (San Benedetto Ullano), where the plural inflection –i is merged to the root, yielding the amalgam [cɛn-i] in (36a), which, in turn, is merged to –t, giving the complex form of definite oblique, in (36b).

(36)	a.	< cɛnR, iφ > → [φ [cɛnR] i]
	b.	< [[cɛnR] iφ], tdef/⊆> → [def/⊆ [[cɛnR] i φ] t]
		San Benedetto Ullano

Finally, we tentatively characterize the morpheme -n of the accusative as the mark of specificity, which introduces the other argument in addition to the subject in transitive or the argument of prepositional contexts.

As highlighted in the previous discussion, we analyze cases as exponents of two basic properties, inclusion and definiteness/specificity, without referring to traditional notions such as nominative, accusative, and oblique (dative, genitive, locative). We use the latter labels only for descriptive reasons, but cases are traced back to the signalization of the referential properties of nouns/DPs rather than properties of the abstract representation of the sentence. This idea, initially proposed in Manzini and Savoia (2014a, 2014b), allows us to explain the possibility that the morphology of cases occurs in unexpected contexts.

5.1. Reorganization and Reduction in the San Marzano System

Coming now to the system of San Marzano in (25)–(26), the comparison with the standard system in (22)–(23) shows that, in that of San Marzano, the masculine has reorganized the distribution of case and definiteness exponents. -i is now part of the accusative and oblique definite inflections, -n-i and –t-i. So, (36) is rewritten as in (37), where -i is associated with the definite reading of the nominative, in (37a), whereas the oblique or the accusative inflections include both the definiteness and the part–whole reading, as in (37b). Consequently, the indefinite is devoid of any case mark, and the lexical system has introduced two new inflectional exponents, in front of a simpler distributional pattern.

(37)	a.	< cɛnnəR , tDef/⊆ > → [Def/⊆ [cɛnn(ə)R] t]
	b.	< [Def/⊆ [cɛnnəR] t], i⊆> → [def/⊆ [cɛnnəR-t] i]
		San Marzano

The feminine singular pattern retains the specialized inflectional exponents, with the difference that the base now incorporates -ɛ, that is, the inflection originally associated with the oblique indefinite. In the plural, -ɛ has been generalized as the vocalic exponent, however, in complementary distribution with -tə, which is also endowed with the properties of plural realized by -ɛ, as highlighted by the comparison between (38a) and (38b), with the difference that -tə implies the part–whole reading. We tentatively characterize -(d)rə- as specialized for the operator ⊆ in a sub-set of nouns, and -ɛ as a mark of specificity (Spc), restricted to the plural. As an anonymous reviewer reminds us, specificity involves ‘picking a specifying element within a set’ and highlighting the link with the sub-set reading of –tə. The amalgamation with -tə provides the definite reading.

(38)	a.	< [[vaɲɲunR] drə⊆], ɛSpc > → [Spc/⊆ [vaɲɲun-dr] ɛ]
	b.	< [[vaɲɲunR] drə⊆], tə def/⊆ > → [def/⊆ [vaɲɲun-drə ⊆] tə]
		San Marzano

As concluded by Savoia (1980), under the re-distribution that we have described, a clear mechanism appears whereby the expression of the case (i.e., definiteness or part–whole relation) is now completely associated with the postpositive article or the indefinite pre-nominal article in indefinite contexts. The indefinite forms coincide with the lexical bases, devoid of any kind of case inflection.

The case system shows a second drift towards the reduction in the domain of demonstratives. In Albanian varieties, demonstratives present the same pattern with three cases as nouns, such as that in (39) for San Benedetto Ullano.

(39)		Nominative		Accusative		Oblique
		M	F	M	F	M	F
	sg	ai/ki	ajɔ/kjɔ	atə/kət		atij/ktij	asaj/ksaj
	pl	ata/kta		ata/kta		atirɛ
San Benedetto Ullano

In San Marzano dialect, demonstratives lost the distinction between nominative and accusative singular, while preserving the specialized oblique, singular, and plural, as in (40). The result is a system in which a direct form is opposed to an indirect form. First and second personal pronouns preserve the original paradigm, as in (40′), where a common form encompasses accusative and oblique, in first and second singular and in the plural an oblique form contrast with the direct form such as that in third person.

(40)	Direct		Oblique
	M	F	M	F
sg	ai/ki	ajɔ/kjɔ	ati-j/kti-j	asa-j/ksa-j
	‘that/this.msg’	‘that/this.fsg’	‘that/this.msg-Obl’	‘that/this.fsg-Obl’
pl	atɔ/ktɔ		atirə-vɛ
	‘those/these.pl’		‘those/these.pl-Obl’
San Marzano

(40′)		Nominative	Oblique	Direct	Oblique
	1st	u	mua	nɛ	nɛ-vɛ
	2nd	ti	ti-ðə	ju	ju-vɛ
San Marzano

As indicated, (41a) and (41b) illustrate the distribution of nominative, (41c) shows the accusative, and (41d) the oblique.

(41)	a.	ka	ardrə		a-i burrə		/a-jɔ	vazə
		have.3sg	come.PP		that-msg man		/that-fsg	girl
		‘that man/that girl have come’
	b.	kannə		ardrə	a-t-ɔ	burrə(-rə)
		have.3pl		come.PP	that-pl	men-pl
		‘those men have cone’
	c.	ka-mmə	parə	ajɔ vazə/atɔ	vaz-rə/ai burrə/atɔ burrə
		have-1sg	seen	that girl/those girl-pl/that man/those men
		‘I have seen that girl/those girls/that man/those men’
	d.	ka-mm- ja	tənnə at-i-ðə burrə/as-a-j vazə/atirə-vɛ burrə/vazə
		have-1sg Dat-it given that-Dat.msg man/that-Dat.fsg girl/those.Dat.pl men/girl
		‘I have given it to that man/to that girl/to those men/to those girls’
San Marzano

We see that only the inclusion relationship is maintained. However, since bare nouns do not express cases even in these contexts, the expression of the case is associated only with the element of definiteness.

5.2. The Neuter

Arbëresh dialects spoken in Southern Italian communities preserve the so-called neuter inflection attested in old documents (Demiraj 1986) but now no longer surviving in standard and other varieties spoken in Albania, where it has been replaced by masculine morphology. The specialized morphology for neuter encompasses a sub-class of substance nouns such as diaθ ‘cheese’, uj ‘water’, miaʎ ‘honey’, miʃ ‘meat’, barr ‘grass’, etc. The data from S. Benedetto Ullano will provide us with the typical pattern of the neuter morphology, whose first characteristic is that the singular definite inflection of neuter nouns is -t, i.e., the same as in plural forms of count nouns (Manzini and Savoia 2012, 2018; Baldi and Savoia 2018a, 2018b).

The neuter attested in San Benedetto Ullano in (42) presents the definite nominative/accusative singular inflection –t in (42a), the demonstrative determiner at-a/kt-a in (42b), and the pre-adjectival article tə in (42b), all coinciding with definite plural forms. Meanwhile, (42c) illustrates the occurrence of the neuter as the object of a transitive, with –t in the definite form, preceded by a demonstrative and followed by an adjective introduced by the linker tə. The comparison with count nouns highlights the fact that the inflectional exponents and determiners of neuter nouns coincide with the plural inflectional exponents of the plural count nouns, as in (43c) and (43d), where the forms ata/kta ‘those/these’ of demonstratives and the inflection -t characterize the plural of feminine and masculine nouns; on the contrary, singulars have the demonstrative ki, kjɔ and ai, ajɔ as in (43a) and (43b). Moreover, these examples show that neuters agree with the third singular of the verb, as in (42a,b). On the contrary, (43c) illustrates the plural agreement of the verb with a plural count noun, introduced by the same inflectional properties that in the neuters do not trigger plural agreement.

(42)	a.	diaθ-t	/kət-a diaθ			/at-a diaθ	ŋgə	mə	pəɾc-ɛ-n
		cheese-Def/this cheese				/that-pl cheese	not	1ps	please-TV-3sg
		‘I don’t like (the) cheese/that cheese/this cheese’
	b.	at-a	diaθ		əʃt	tə	mir
		that-pl	cheese		is	pl	good
		‘That cheese is good’
	c.	bie-it-a		diaθ-t		/kət-a diaθ frisku/diaθ-t				tə	barð
		buy-Past-1sg		cheese-Def		/that-pl cheese fresh/cheese-Def				pl	white
		‘I bought (the) cheese/that fresh cheese/the white cheese’
San Benedetto Ullano

(43)	a.	aj-ɔ/kj-ɔ		grua	əʃt	ɛ	ʎart
		that-fsg/this-fsg		woman	is	fsg	tall
		‘This/that woman is tall’
	b.	a-i/k-i		burr	əʃt	i	ʎart
		that-msg/this-msg		man	is	msg	tall
		‘This/that man is tall’
	c.	kət-a /at-a	gra	/		burr-a		jan tə	ʎart-a
		this-pl/that-pl	woman.fpl/			man.m-pl		are pl.	tall-pl
		‘These/those women/men are tall’
	d.	burr-a-t	tə	mir		/vaiz-a-t		tə	mir-a
		man-pl-Def	pl	good		/girl-pl-Def.pl		pl	good-pl
		‘the good men/the good girls’
S. Benedetto Ullano

In the Calabrian varieties, the neuter oblique has the singular inflection -i-(t) that we find in masculine count nouns, as evidenced by the comparison between (44a) for neuter and (44b) for masculine.

(44)	a.	ɛ	vur-a	pəɾpaɾa	at-	ij	diaθ- i /miaʎ- i
		3sg	put.Past-1sg	in front of	that-msg-	Obl	cheese-Obl/honey-Obl
		‘I put it in front of this/that cheese/honey’
	b	ɛ	vur-a	purpaɾa	at-	ij	cɛlc- i
		3sg	put.Past-1sg	in front of	that-msg.	Obl	glass-Obl.msg
		‘I put it in front of that glass’
S. Benedetto Ullano

Not all dialects retain this distribution. The loss of neuter leads to diverse possible solutions, whereby masculine or feminine inflection is selected on demonstratives and in adjectival constructions. However, in all the dialects that select the masculine or feminine agreement, nominative and accusative definite forms preserve the inflection–t; in other words, this exponent keeps characterizing this subset of nouns, separating it from the masculine class in –i and the feminine class in –a. What changes is the type of agreement, which implies masculine or feminine demonstratives and linkers/adjectives, according to the different varieties.

In the dialect of Vena (Central Calabria), with the sub-set of nouns in –t, as in (45a), the demonstratives, adjectives, and pre-nominal articles have the masculine inflection, in (45b), similar to the other masculine forms, in (45c).

(45)	a.	diaθə-tə
		cheese-Def
		‘the cheese’
	b.	k-i	diaθə	ɐʃt	i	mirə
		this-msg	cheese	is	msg	good
		‘this cheese is good’
	c.	k-i	ɲəʹri		/at-ɔ	ɲɛrəs
		this-msg	man.msg		/those-pl	man.mpl
		‘this man/those men’
Vena di Maida

Most Arbëresh dialects select feminine inflection on demonstratives and linkers/adjectives in agreement contexts. This system characterizes the varieties at the border between Apulia and Lucania and includes San Marzano’s variety (Savoia 1980; Manzini and Savoia 2007). As in the other varieties, the –t morphology embraces nominative and accusative, in (46a) and (46d). As shown, (46b) and (46c) illustrate the occurrence of the feminine agreement on the linkers in predicative and adjectival contexts and on demonstratives. The oblique is realized by the feminine inflection –sə, as in (46e).

(46)

a.

mə pərc-ɛ-kə-tə

ujə-tə

/miʃ-tə

/miar-t

1sg please-MP-3sg

water-Def

/meat-Def

/honey-Def

‘I like the water/the meat/the honey’

b.

aj-ɔ

/kj-ɔ

miɛlə

/ujə

/miʃə

that.fsg /this.fsg

flour

/water

/meat

‘that/this flour/water/meat’

b’.

a-i

/k-i

burrə

/aj-ɔ/kj-ɔ

gru-ɛ

that.msg/this.msg

man.msg

/

that.fsg/this.fsg

woman.fsg

‘that/this man’

‘that/this woman’

c.

ujə-tə

iʃt

ɛ

ŋgrɔɣərə/friddu

water-Def

is

fsg

hot

/cold

‘the water is hot/cold’

d.

biɛ-mmə

aj-ɔ

miɛlə/miʃ-tə

/cɔ

miaʎə

give-1sg

that.fsg

flour/meat-Def

/this.fsg

honey

‘give me that flour/the meat/this honey’

e.

sapɔr-i

tə

miʃə-sə

/miaʎə-sə

taste-msg

.Def

meat-Obl.fsg/honey-Obl.fsg

‘the taste of the flour/the meat/the honey’

San Marzano

Other original neuter nouns have adopted the declension of feminine or masculine. For instance, diah ‘cheese’, has the feminine inflection –a. So, its morphosyntactic behavior comes to coincide with other mass nouns such as vɛr-a ‘the wine’ and kripp-a ‘the salt’, which have an original feminine inflection, as in (47a,b).

(47)	a.	diah-a	/vɛr-a	/kripp-a	mə pərc-ɛ-kə-tə
		cheese.fsg/wine.fsg		/salt.fsg	me please-TV-MP-3sg
		‘I like the cheese/the wine/the salt’
	b.	kammə	blɛrə	diahə-nə	/vɛrə-nə	/krippə-nə
		have.1sg	buy.PP	cheese-Acc.fsg/wine-Acc.fsg/salt-Acc.fsg
		‘I bought the cheese/the wine/the salt’
San Marzano

On the whole, among the different varieties, a clear preference for feminine morphosyntax emerges, which led the original neuters to assume feminine agreement and feminine exponent in the oblique. The occurrence of a sub-set of feminine mass nouns such as vɛr ‘wine’ and krip ‘salt’ could contribute to enhancing this solution.

Before addressing the question of the change in the feminine agreement, consider the relation between the neuter and the plural inflection. It is natural to think that the selection of the plural inflection –t, corresponding to the part–whole relation (cf. (31)), and of plural demonstratives by neuters is connected to the mass content of this subset of nouns, a link documented in the literature for different languages (Baldi and Savoia 2018a, 2018b; Manzini and Savoia 2017a, 2017b, 2018). The occurrence of the plural exponent –t on a non-countable singular suggests that the same part–whole operator is relevant. In this context, however, the interpretation implies the existence of non-atomic parts in the mass continuum denoted by the base. In other words, a singular mass noun is treated like a type of plural count noun, as both include a multiplicity of parts. Manzini and Savoia (2017a, 2017b) and Savoia et al. (2018) argue for an analysis that identifies the mass content with the [aggregate] interpretive property, used by Chierchia (2010) to characterize the common core of mass and plural denotation, i.e., a weakly differentiated set of parts/atoms (in the terms of Acquaviva 2008). In (48a), the lexical root diaθ ‘cheese’ is merged with the exponent –t, [⊆]. In other words, the part–whole reading of -t is compatible with the (weakened) plurality of the base, making it visible, as suggested by the selection rule in (48b).

(48)	a.	< [diaθR], tdef/⊆ > → [def/⊆diaθ-t]
	b.	tdef/⊆ ←→ Raggregate__
San Benedetto Ullano

An interesting point is that these formations trigger the singular form of the verb. In other words, in these nouns, -t is interpreted as the exponent of mass content, and a plurality of individuals is not involved. We simply appeal to the idea of the Minimal Search procedure whereby the inflection of third person is saturated by the mass noun. Within the DP, on the other hand, demonstratives express the implicit plurality of the mass noun by assuming in turn the plural form.

In cases where interference with Italian systems has worked in reducing the agreement to a twofold system of Romance, we must conclude that not only the verb but also the demonstratives in the DP agree in terms of the gender classes. We see that feminine is generally preferred in grammars where a new agreement system is introduced. We can only suppose that feminine introduces semantic properties more suitable to realizing the aggregate content of the neuter sub-class. In fact, the feminine inflection –a in Albanian is associated with both plural and feminine singular interpretations. In the case of Arbëresh varieties, we noticed that –a characterizes masculine and feminine plurals such as burr-a ‘men’/vajz-a ‘girls’ and feminine definite singular nominative vajz-a ‘the girl’. This distribution recalls behavior of –a in many Italian Romance varieties, including standard Italian, where –a specifies both feminine singular and (a class of) plural. Manzini and Savoia (2017a, 2017b), Savoia et al. (2018), and Manzini et al. (2020a) propose that the –a is associated with the [aggregate] reading.

Moreover, feminine in Albanian varieties is associated with mass reading, where it triggers the plural agreement, as in (46). This behavior could suggest that the feminine is also available for an aggregate interpretation in Albanian. In other words, this distribution seems to evoke a content including both singular and plural, similar to Romance feminine. Here, we only suggest that this referential property could explain the preference for feminine agreement for mass nouns in the reorganization phenomena occurring in Arbëresh dialects.

6. The Sentence: Causatives

In Italo-Albanian dialects, the causative verb, i.e., a form of bəɲ ‘I do’, embeds a finite inflected sentence introduced by the particle tə, which in the Arbëresh of Vena is preceded by the preposition pə ‘for’ (Savoia 1989a, 1989b; Manzini and Savoia 2007)11. In Vena, the causee can be lexicalized as nominative in (49a) or accusative in (49b) when the embedded verb is intransitive, and as a dative when the embedded verb is transitive, in (49c). If the causee is realized by a DP, it can occur both in the final position or between the causative verb and the introducer elements pə tə, as in (49b,c). The causee can furthermore be lexicalized on the higher causative verb as an accusative clitic, as in (49d,e):

(49)

a.

bɐ-ɲɲa

(pə)

tə

ha-rə

diaʎ-i

make-Pres.1sg

for

Prt

eat-Sub.3sg

boy-Def

‘I make the boy eat’

b.

u

bɐɾ-a

(ɲeriu-nə)

pə

tə

ikənə

(ɲeriu-nə)

I

make-Past.1sg

man-Acc

for

Prt

run-Pres.3sg man-Acc

‘I made the man run’

c.

u bɐɾ-a

(buʃtri-tə)

tə

pi-ɾə

krumiʃti-nə

(buʃtri-tə)

I make-Past.1sg dog-Dat.Def

Prt

drink.Subj.3sg milk-Acc

dog-Dat.Def

‘I make the dog drink the milk’

d.

mə

bɐ-ɲɲ-ənə

(pə)

t

ɛ

ʃɔxə

1sg

make-Pres-3pl

for

Prt

3sg

see.Pres.3sg

‘They make me see him’

e.

ɛ

bɐ-ɲɲ-ənə

(pə)

t

ɛ

ʃɔ-rə

3sg

make-Pres-3pl

for

Prt

3sg

see-Subj.3sg

‘They make him/her see it’

Vena

The data in (49) are surprising, in that they display a realignment of the causative construction of Albanian on the Romance case pattern, despite the presence of an embedded finite verb. Manzini and Savoia (2007) use data such as (49b-e) to argue against the idea that agreement with I/T is a sufficient condition to determine the nominative assignment (Chomsky 2001, 2008). By the same token, examples such as (49b,d-e) show that agreement with v is not a necessary condition for the assignment of accusative, etc. (cf. Baker and Vinokurova 2010). Actually, if we follow the proposals of Chomsky (2020, 2021), the problem is no longer crucial.

We can think that the structures in (49) are influenced by Romance causative, where the case assignment is regulated by the causative verb fare. More precisely, the DP corresponding to the causee can assume the properties of accusative or dative/oblique insofar as the search procedure permits to identify it with the referent expressed by the agreement inflection of the embedded verb. We saw in Section 5.1 that both accusative and oblique express a definite reference. Naturally, deviant interpretation can be expected, but in this framework, nothing excludes this procedure, available in a grammar in which the transfer effect of the Romance structure is strong.

Something similar characterizes the Arbëresh variety of San Marzano, where the causative provides two possible constructs. In the present, an invariable causative verbal form bəðə/bətə, including the base bə ‘make’ and the particle tə, embeds an inflected verb, as in (50a). This construct is possible also when the causative is embedded under the auxiliary have, as in (50b). The examples show that, in these constructs, the subject of the embedded sentence is in the nominative, such as vaɲɲunn-ja ‘the girl’ and cɛnn-i ‘the dog’.

(50)	a.	(u) bə ðə	frɛɲɲə		vaɲɲunn-ja
		I causative	sleep-3sg		girl-fsg.Def
		‘I make the girl sleep’
	b.	ka	bəðə	biei	cɛnn-i
		have.3sg	made	fall.3sg	dog-msg.Def
		‘(s)he made the dog fall’
San Marzano

Past contexts introduced by have generally present a structure where the embedded verb has the form of a participle, as in (51a,b,c).

(51)	a.	ka		bə ðə	iku-rə		/flɛttə-rə	cɛnnə-n-i	/cɛnn-i
		have.3sg	causative		run-pp		/sleep-pp	dog-msg.Acc/	dog-msg.Def
		‘(s)he made the dog run/ sleep’
	b.	kimmi	bə tə		flɛtt-ərə		vaɲɲunn-i	/vaɲɲunn-ən-i
		have.1pl	causative		sleep-pp		boy-msg.Def/boy-msg.Acc
		‘We have made the boy sleep’
	c.	kammə	bə ðə		pirə		vaɲɲunn-i		ujə-ðə
		have.1sg	causative		drink-pp		boy-msg.Def		water-Acc
		‘I have made the boy drink the water’
San Marzano

The causative compound and the following verb are treated as a single form, giving rise to a complex participle of the type [cause+V]PP. In other words, we have the derivation in (52), where the causative and the verbal root form an amalgam, in (52a), to which the morpheme of past participle is merged, in (52b); this verbal element, specified for causative voice, realizes the event as a property of the argument, while T is realized by have, in (52c):

(52)	a.	< bəðəCaus, [flɛtR] > → [Cause/Voice bəðə [flɛttR]]
	b.	< [Voice bəðə [flɛttR]], -ərəPP > → [PP [bəðə [flɛttR]]-ərə]
	c.	C	T	v	PP
			ka		[PP [bəðə [flɛttR]]-ərə]
San Marzano

On the contrary, the causative pattern in which the embedded verb is inflected implies two clauses, the matrix and the dependent, as clearly shown by the fact that both the matrix and embedded verbs are completely inflected, agreeing with the respective subject (a pattern widely documented and analytically studied in Manzini and Savoia 2007, 2018). Let us briefly consider these structures. In Vena dialect, both the causative verb and the embedded verb agree with their subject, but the subject of the latter can occur with the accusative case, as in (49b), u bɐɾɐ pə tə ikənə ɲeriu-nə ‘I made the man run’. Obviously, we have two work spaces, the one of the matrix and the one of the dependent verb, as in (53).

(53)	C	T	[v	R]	C	T	v	R	DP
		u bɐɾɐ			pə tə ikənə3SG				ɲəri-unəAcc
		‘I made the man run’
Vena

As we noticed, the agreement with the subject is not necessarily associated with the traditional generative approach to the case. In this dialect, the accusative on ɲəriunə shows that the speakers treat the entire sequence as a single clause so that the DP can realize the properties of the second argument of the sequence. More precisely, the causative behaves as a kind of auxiliary, thus implying the deletion of phase v. The sequence pə tə ikənə, includes the introducers, i.e., following Manzini and Savoia (2007, 2018), the preposition pə and tə, with the element D corresponding to a nominal variable. The embedded verb (partially) realizes the properties that T inherits from C. Its agreement depends on the procedure of Minimal Search, which finds the closest DP to the embedded verb. The same structure can be assigned to (50a) of San Marzano, with the difference that the causative is an invariable element, and its subject is specified independently of a visible agreement. The result is that a single structure with the following verb is formed, as in (54), where the morphological amalgam causative+inflected verb in T realizes the voice, tense, and agreement properties of T and v.

(54)	C		T	v	DP
		u	[bə ðə frɛɲɲə3SG	vaɲɲunn-ja
		‘I make the girl sleep’
San Marzano

The result is that the embedded subject, the causee, has the definite form (the so-called nominative) generally associated with the subjects of a clause, also in the presence of other arguments. The causer, the subject of the causative, in turn, occurs in the definite form, as generally in similar causative constructs emerging in many other Arbëresh varieties, for instance in the causative of San Benedetto Ullano in (55).

(55)	at-ɔ	bi-tɛ	u	uj-a
	D-pl	causative	MP	sit-Impf-1sg
	‘they	made me sit down’
San Benedetto Ullano

In (55), the causative has a form combining an invariable form of bəɲ ‘to make’ and the particle tə. Thus, the subject of the causative is licensed by no agreeing inflection.

Middle-Passive with Incorporation

The active pluperfect of the Arbëresh of San Marzano is formed by the auxiliary have followed by the invariable past participle, as in (56), where, as already seen even in (30a,b), clitics occur both in proclisis (variably) and in enclisis on the auxiliary.

(56)	ɛ	ka-mm-	ɛ	ʎa-rə
	3.sg	have-1sg	3sg	wash-PP
	‘I have washed it/her/him’
San Marzano

Albanian varieties generally form the middle-passive inserting a specialized paradigm, including –h- between the root and the agreement inflections in the present and the imperfect. In auxiliary contexts, the reflexive clitic u is inserted, as in (57). The reflexive u occurs in enclisis or in proclisis, depending on the dialect, as in (56) for San Benedetto (Manzini et al. 2016).

(57)	k-iʃ-ɲa	u	ʎa-it-ur
	have-Impf-1sg	MP	wash-PP
	‘I had washed myself’
San Benedetto Ullano

In the San Marzano dialect, in the middle-passive forms, the middle-passive pronoun u (variably) occurs in proclisis, and the auxiliary is realized by a specialized alternant incorporating u inside the root, as illustrated in (58a,b,c).

(58)	a.	u	kw-a-mmə	ʎa-rə
		MP	have.MP-Pres-1sg	wash-PP
		‘I have washed myself’
	b.	u	kw-a-nnə	viʃ-ərə
		MP	have.MP-Pres-3pl	dress-PP
		‘they got dressed’
	c.	u	kw-iʃ-əmə	viʃ-ərə
		MP	have.MP-Impf-1pl	dress-PP
		‘we were dressed’
San Marzano

The lexicon of this variety has two alternants of the auxiliary, of which one is specialized for middle-passive, as suggested in (59). As indicated, (59a) characterizes the stem occurring in MP contexts, while (59b) characterizes the stem occurring elsewhere, including the contexts of the verb of possession.

(59)	a.	kwa-MP ← →	(u) __ PP
	b.	ka-have
San Marzano

As to the origin of this innovation, it is tempting to link the incorporation of u to the phonological phenomenon of propagation of pre-tonic u on the next nucleus in the context of a velar consonant, i.e., k (Savoia and Baldi 2016). However, in the Arbëresh of San Marzano, propagation is not otherwise attested in other contexts, and the isogloss of these phenomena is, at least now, fixed by the dialects of the Bari area. Be that as it may, we must admit that in this system, the pronominal element u caused a change in the stem, which incorporated it.

7. Arguments and Their Instantiation

The third person object clitic system of Calabrian varieties distinguishes two singular forms, masculine and feminine, and a plural form l-i, as illustrated in (60) for the neighboring Calabrian variety of Iacurso.

(60)	l-u	/l-a	/l-i	ˈviðɛ-nu
	3-msg/3-fsg	/3-pl	see-3pl
	‘they see him/her/them’
Iacurso

Differently from this usual Romance paradigm, the Romance variety of Vena reproduces the Albanian accusative clitic paradigm, which includes only one form for the accusative singular, i.e., ɛ, which contrasts with the accusative plural/dative i. As a consequence, the Romance clitic paradigm of Vena has only two forms, l-a for the singular, masculine, and feminine, and l-i for plural, as in (61a), (61b), and (61c). Dative is lexicalized by the (syncretic) locative (ɲ)tʃi (Manzini and Savoia 2005, 2007), (61d). In predicative contexts, l-a allows agreement with adjectives both masculine with the exponent –u and feminine with -a, as in (61b). The corresponding forms of Arbëresh are reported in (61a’,b’,c’,d’).

(61)	a.	l-a		lav-a-i
	a’.	ɛ		ʎa-ʃt-a
		3-sg		wash-Past-1sg
		‘I washed him/her’
	b.	l-a	piɟɟ-a-i		ccu		vaʃʃ-u/vaʃʃ-a
		3-sg	take-Past-1sg		more		short.msg/short.fsg
	b’.	ɛ	mɔra		mɐ	i	maθ/ɛ		mað-ɛ
		3-sg	take-Past-1sg		more	msg	big.msg/fsg		big.fsg
		‘I took it bigger’
	c.	l-i	piɟɟ-a-i			ccu	vaʃʃ-i
		3-pl	take-past-1sg			more	sort-pl
	c’.	i	mɔra		mɐ	tɐ	mbið-ɛɲ
		3-pl	take-Past-1sg		more	pl	big.pl
		‘I took them shorter/bigger’
	d.	ɲtʃi	la	dɛtsi
	d’.	j-	a	ðɛ
		3.dat 3-sg		give-Past.1sg
		‘I gave him/her/it to him’
Vena

The choice of –a, generally associated with the feminine nominal class, as inflection for the (gender neutral) accusative clitic seems to relate to the corresponding properties of the Albanian accusative clitic ɛ. In fact, this latter element occurs as the pre-posed article agreeing with feminine and as the feminine singular inflection in some nominal classes, cf. dɛʎ-ɛ ‘sheep’. An interesting point is that syncretic l-a in the Romance variety of Vena is restricted to the accusative interpretation in transitive contexts; unlike clitics, Vena’s Romance articles maintain the morphological distinction between l-a and l-u. In fact, this different treatment between clitics and articles seems to confirm the lexical identification between the Albanian formative and the Calabrian one. This is independent of the fact that the article systems of the two varieties are not homogeneous given that Albanian has an enclitic article, while Romance has a proclitic element.

8. Nominal Complements

In Albanian varieties, the complement of a noun is introduced by the linker/article followed by a complement in the genitive; the linker agrees with the head noun. Some Arbëresh varieties admit constructions shaped on Romance syntax, in which the complement is introduced by a preposition, which in some dialects can be ðə, in turn, a Romance borrowing, as in the Lucanian Arbëresh of Ginestra in (62a) or that of the Apulian Arbëresh of Casalvecchio in (62b) (Savoia 2008). In other varieties, for example, in Vena, the Albanian preposition ŋga ‘from/at’ is used in alternation with the linker construction, as in (63a,b).

(62)	a.	ɲə bukir	ðə	vitrə
		a glass	of	glass
		‘a glass of glass’
Ginestra
	b.	ɲə	ɣaʃt	ðə	cɛn-i
		a	bon	of	dog-Obl
		‘a bon of dog’
Casalvecchio

(63)	a.	sɛdʒ-a	ŋga	kambr-a
		chair-fsg.Def	from	room-fsg.Def
		‘the chair of the room’
	b.	tə	biç-ətə	ɛ	sa-çə
		pl	child-pl.Def	fsg	hers-Obl
		‘her children’
Vena

It is useful to underline that in all Albanian varieties, there are locative prepositions that combine with definite forms of the noun (nominative), as illustrated by the data from San Benedetto Ullano in (64a,b).

(64)	a.	vɛt-ɛ		tɛk	a-i
		go-1sg		at	that-msg
		‘I go to him’
	b.	vi-ɲ	ŋga	ʃpi-a
		come-1sg	at	house-fsgDef
		‘I come home’
San Benedetto Ullano

The data in (64) confirm our approach whereby the so-called cases are nothing but bundles of referential properties. In this sense, (62) and (63) document not so much a special use of the cases as the substitution of the heritage constructions with constructions modeled on the Romance syntax. In fact, the heritage constructions would require the linker followed by the oblique form of the noun, as exemplified in (34). As for the San Marzano variety, we find a system in which inherited rules and structures are due to the contact. In locative contexts, the preposition ndə is repeated after the axial element, as in (65a,b,), reproducing the corresponding structures of Southern Italian dialects.

(65)	a.	ka-mm	ɛ	vənnə para	ndə/prapa	ndə	vaɲɲunə/dɛrə
		have-1sg	3sg	put.PP before	at/behind	at	boy/hand
		‘I have put it before/behind the boy/the hand’
	b.	ka-mm	ɛ	vənnə		para ndə/prapa ndə		vaɲɲun-drə-vɛ/vaɲɲunə-t-i
		have-1sg	3sg	put.PP before		at/behind at		boy-pl-Obl/boy-sg-Obl
		‘I have put it before/behind the boys/the boy’
	c.	a-i		vi-n		ndə	mua
		D-msg		come-3sg		at	1sg-Obl
		‘he comes to me’
	d.	a-i	vi-n			para ndə mua		/a-i	/ajɔ
		D-msg	come-3sg			before at 1sg-Obl		/D-msg	/D-fsg
		‘he comes before me/him/her’
San Marzano

Different arrangements appear. The oblique is selected, as in (65b,c), or a non-definite form is inserted, as in (65a). Meanwhile, (65d) illustrates the distribution of personal pronouns. As for the indefinite, we note that this possibility is widely attested in Albanian varieties (Manzini and Savoia 2012; Franco et al. 2021), cf. (66) from San Benedetto Ullano.

(66)	ja-n	ndə	ʃpi
	be-3pl	at	house
	‘They are at home’
San Benedetto Ullano

This solution recalls Italian phrases such as ‘in camera’ ‘in the (known) room’, where the non-definite implies the reference to a well-known location. Turning now to (65b), we see that the definite form introduces the oblique, i.e., as discussed, the form characterized as the recipient of the inclusion relation, the locus including the space defined by prapa ‘behind’, as in (67) (cf. (48)).

(67)	prapa	ndə	[ vaɲɲunə- tdef/⊆] i⊆]
San Marzano

The data regarding the personal pronoun are unexpected, insofar as they differentiate first/second pronouns from third person pronouns. In fact, as we saw in (40)–(40′), the first/second person pronouns have the oblique form, while the third person pronouns have the direct form. We can connect this contrast to a DOM phenomenon, whereby the first and second person pronouns in dependent contexts present the oblique form, thereby treating the relationship in terms of possession. If we look at genitive and other similar contexts, the invariable element tə/ðə (Prt) is inserted between the head noun and the dependent noun in oblique form, as illustrated in (68a–d).

(68)	a.	klittʃ-i	tə	dɛrə-sə
		key-Def.msg	Prt	door-Obl.fsg
		‘the key of the door’
	b.	libr-i	tə	t-imə		nippə-t-i
		book-Def.msg	Prt	my-Obl		nephew-Obl.msg
		‘the book of my nephew’
	c.	dɔr-a	tə/ðə		gruə-sə
		hand-Def.msg	Prt		woman-Obl.fsg
		‘the hand of the woman’
	d.	hik-a	tə	miʃə-sə
		knife-Def.fsg	Prt	meat-Obl.fsg
		‘the knife of the meat’
	e.	hik-a	ɛ	glatə
		knife-Def.fsg	fsg	long
		‘the long knife’
San Marzano

The data in (28) for San Benedetto Ullano and (29)/(68e) for San Marzano show that linkers agree with the head noun, such as generally in Albanian varieties. This also applies to the introducer of the genitive, as exemplified by the data of San Benedetto Ullano in (34a,a’). It is in this last context that, in the dialect of San Marzano, the element tə/ðə occurs, which, as noted, does not agree. The most natural hypothesis is to suppose that it is the borrowing of the Romance preposition ti/ði of surrounding dialects, as in (69).

(69)	dɔr-a	tə/ðə⊆	[ [R gruə-] sədef/⊆]
San Marzano

The insertion of this functional element does not change the original structure, which in fact preserves the oblique form of the possessor/including noun. This is despite the fact that the Romance preposition di itself introduces the inclusion relationship (Baldi and Savoia 2021).

9. Conclusions

Is there something such as a parameter that governs the effects of contact and their distribution? Needless to say, as a first step, we must agree on the notion of parameter, specifically in relation to language acquisition. In its minimal design, the basic property of language, whereby each language provides an unbounded array of hierarchically structured expressions that receive interpretations at two interfaces, sensorimotor for externalization and conceptual–intentional for mental processes (Chomsky 2015, p. 4), relies on ‘the simplest computational operation’, i.e., Merge (Chomsky 2015, p. 16).

UG coincides with the notion of the ‘Basic Property of language’ as the specialized property determined by our genetic endowment: ‘namely that each language constructs in the mind an infinite array of structured expressions each of which has a semantic interpretation that expresses a thought, each of which can be externalized in one or another motor system, typically sound, but not necessarily.’ (Chomsky 2020, p. 17).

The task of the learner is to acquire the lexicon and the way it maps semantic contents onto structures interpretable by the interface systems C-I and SM. The conclusion of Chomsky (2020, p.19) is that, on the basis of their traditional characterization, parameters ‘do not enter into determining semantic interpretation’ (see discussion in Baldi 2022). Manzini (2022) observes that the position of Chomsky is that variation is caused by asymmetry between C-I and SM systems; specifically, it can be attributed to the fact that ‘The external systems require such arrangements [linear order and other arrangements], but these are not strictly speaking properties of language: rather, properties of an amalgam of language and systems entirely unrelated to language in their evolution and nature.’ (Chomsky 2021, p. 11). However, this disparity does not necessarily imply treatments where the same meaning is always mapped onto the same structure (the uniformity hypothesis, in the sense of Culicover and Jackendoff 2005, p. 6). The hypothesis that ‘the variation has an unstructured nature’ (Manzini 2022, p. 5) appears to be viable, with good results.

Our idea is that the variation, in the acquisition on par with the contact, depends on the lexical, morphosyntactic, and phonological properties associated with the structural space of language, and, more particularly, as filtered by the specific languages involved. In this light, let us synthesize in (70) the phenomena we have examined in previous sections.

(70)	San Marzano	Vena
Special Romance dialect	-	+
Relexification	+	+
Word-internal mixing	+	+
Verbs and their morphology	+	+
Phonology	+	+
Loss of neuter	+	+
Case in causative	+	+
Innovation (MP)	+	-
PP	+	(+)

Summarizing the discussion on the contact effects in the Arbëresh dialects of San Marzano and Vena, we note the following:

✓

The verbal repertoire of the Vena community includes a specialized Venot Romance, a type of variety absent in that of San Marzano.

✓

The San Marzano dialect presents structural innovations in middle-passive and in the genitive contexts; moreover, it has reorganized the case system.

✓

Venot Arbëresh shows a more in-depth relexification that implies the inclusion of inflectional elements from Romance dialects.

✓

The assimilation of syntactic structures under the pressure of contact is attested in the causative and the adjectival system, where adjectives borrowed from Romance lack the linker, as in Romance.

✓

Comparable realignment phenomena have interested the Greek heritage varieties preserved in some areas of Southern Calabria and in Salento, as in the case of the position and the nature of demonstratives discussed in Guardiano and Stavrou (2020) and in Guardiano et al. (2016).

Our analysis of case realignment in causatives and in other structures, however, is not based on the idea that movement and other cartographic tools are involved. We have concluded that the emergence of unexpected case forms is due to two main facts:

✓

The characterization of cases is in terms of the inherent properties of nouns, such as definiteness/specificity (nominative/accusative) and part–whole relation (oblique, plural).

✓

The possibility that certain forms are introduced in reshaped structures (on the pressure of contact languages, for example).

As a consequence, these phenomena only implement the properties inherent in the morphological devices already available in the lexicon and occurring in the syntax. What we see, in fact, is that contact crucially affects the lexicon and possibly inflectional elements, determining language mixing. In other words, it is the domain of the word (nouns and verbs) that is adapted. Even syntax is involved, but it generally exploits available properties, as in the cases studied in Guardiano and Stavrou (2020), where the high position of the agreeing D was already active and, thus, it can host the demonstrative12.

Our data show two types of change where a certain structural reorganization is applied. The first is the re-alignment in the case system of San Marzano, where we saw that the amalgamation procedure of inflected nouns changes from (36) to (37) (cf. Section 5.1). Causatives provide us with an interesting process in which the periphrasis, including the causative and the dependent verb, tends to form an amalgamation in which the inflection, including tense and aspect properties of T, is realized only on the dependent verb. This change characterizes most Arbëresh dialects, including San Marzano. In the latter, we saw that at least in the auxiliary construction in (52), a clear amalgam combining the invariant form of the causative and the dependent participle is formed.

In the San Benedetto Ullano dialect, the causative is introduced by an invariable form, including the base of bəŋ ‘I do’, the subordinating particle t(ə) and the OCl ɛ; the tense/aspect inflection is realized on the dependent verb, together with the agreement inflection, in turn associated with the embedded subject, as in (71), similarly as in the examples of San Marzano in (50).

(71)	u	bi t-ɛ	fjə-t-i
	I	causative	sleep-Perf-3sg
	‘I made her/him sleep’
	San Benedetto Ullano

Interestingly, there are dialects where the causative and the dependent verb form an amalgam that agrees with the subject of the causative. This is the case of the Lucanian Arbëresh dialect of Barile, as illustrated in (72a), where the subject of 1pl nei ‘we’ agrees with the dependent verb fʎemi ‘sleep-1pl’, and (72b), where the third plural subject atɔ ‘they’ agrees with the dependent verb jektən ‘ran-3pl’. Again, the inflected verb realizes the tense, aspect, and modal properties of T.

(72)	a.	nei	a	pa t-a		fʎe-mi
		we	3sg	causative		sleep-Pres.1pl
		‘We make her/him sleep’
	b.	atɔ	bə t-a		jek-t-ən	cɛn-ən
		they	causative		run-Perf-3pl	dog-DefAcc
		‘They made the dog run’
Barile

In this dialect, the causative element pata/bəta in (72a,b) is now treated as a kind of suffix that merges with the root, yielding a complex form that realizes the features associated with T, as in (73a,b). The merge of the OCl a ‘her/him’ with this amalgam, in (73c), yields the complete realization of the argument properties of the clause, as suggested in (73d).

(73)	a.	< pataCaus, [ fʎeR ] > → [Caus pata [fʎe ]]
	b.	< [Caus pata [fʎe ]], mi1pl > → [φ [pata [fʎe]]-mi ]
	c.	< a3sg, [φ [pata [fʎe]]-mi ] > → a[φ [pata [fʎe]]-mi ]
	d.	C  T  v  R
		aOCl3sg [T/φ[pa-t-a] [fʎe ]] mi] ‘We make her/ him sleep’
Barile

As discussed in Section 3, the inflected form can realize the properties of T, thereby completing the procedure (cf. Chomsky 2021). Of course, we can see in the structures of the kind in (71) and (72) a result of the contact with the causative of Romance dialects. In fact, the re-alignment applied in Arbëresh reflects the organization of Romance causatives where only a subject appears, agreeing with the only inflected verb, the causative. The latter forms a complex phrase with the infinitive of the dependent verb, so that only one inflected form emerges that realizes tense/aspect and agreement properties of T. Moreover, Arbëresh varieties present other periphrases which combine two verbal bases in correspondence of a modal or deontic meaning, as in (74a,b) (Manzini and Savoia 2007).

(74)	a.	do		t	ɛ	jap-iɲ /jap-ʃ		/jap-iɲ
		want		Prt	3sg	open-1sg/open-Subj.2sg		/open-3sg
		‘I want/you want/(s)he wants to open it’
		San Benedetto Ullano
	b.	da	t		a	ʃɔ	/ʃɔ-ʃ	/ʃɛ
		want	Prt		3sg	see.1sg	/see-Subj.2sg /see.3sg
		‘I want/you want/(s)he wants to see it’
Barile

Again, the new causative structure is shaped on the basis of rules and restrictions already present in the grammar. Here, we can resume the discussion on the source of language variation, wondering if the variation is determined by external constraints and mechanisms or if it is explainable within the basic proprieties of languages. Just discussing the differences between the causative structures in Italian, English, and Arbëresh, Manzini concludes by proposing an approach in which the variation implies ‘simply a structural possibility inherent in UG, emerging where and when needed and/or allowed by a particular grammar’ (Manzini 2022, p. 9). This is the idea we have followed in accounting for the contact phenomena analyzed in this contribution. We identify the structural differences we have examined, with different ways to realize possible syntactic structures, based on the properties of the lexical elements available for the speakers. We think that the result is a more natural and simpler approach to language and its variation.