A comparative analysis of Romanian and Southern Italian untensed finite clauses

The paper compares the Balkan phenomenon known as “infinitival loss” in two varieties of Romance that have not been in direct contact, i.e., Romanian and some southern Italian dialects. The aim is to investigate how the Romance clausal structure realizes a phenomenon that does not generally appear in Romance. We focus on two main properties: the fine structure of the complementizer field, with left-dislocated elements sandwiched between two overt complementizers, and that of the inflectional field, in which clitic pronouns and clausal negation adjoin to Tense and Mood, respectively. The differences between the two varieties of Romance are reduced to the different first-merge positions of the particles characterizing finite untensed clauses. Comparison with Romanian permits a better understanding of the southern Italian dialects, which show micro-variation and optionality in the position of complementizers and particles and the realization of negation.