LingLunch Emanuela Pinna

Emanuela Pinna (Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona): Micro-Variation and Change in Greek/Romance Contact: the Perfect Tense in Griko

In the heel of the boot of the Italian peninsula, Griko and Salentino have been influencing each other for centuries at all levels of grammar, in a scenario of intense contact and bilingualism. This complex dynamics of contact-induced and language-internal change leads to an impressive amount of syntactic micro-variation. In this talk we will explore the patterns displayed by the Griko perfect tense, a construction originated through structural borrowing from Salentino and built with auxiliary BE/HAVE + past participle passive (PPP). Looking at the mechanisms of auxiliary selection (AS) and past participle agreement (PPA), we will see how Griko varieties have: 1) Undergone further internal change, diverging from Salentino (e.g., loss of PPA) ; 2) Participated in a deeper areal change together with Salentino, whose surface outcomes diverge in the two languages (e.g., creation of person-driven splits in AS); or 3) remained diachronically stable, keeping the Salentino patterns. We will explore how these three paths can intertwine in AS and PPA even within the same Griko variety, revealing complex interactions between external/ internal change and diachronic resilience. In doing this, we will challenge the ideas that complex patterns are diachronically unstable in contact situations and that simplification leads necessarily to surface convergence with the dominant language.