The morphological nature of person-driven auxiliation. Evidence from shape conditions

This chapter addresses the division of labour between morphology and syntax. The testbed is provided by perfective periphrases showing person-driven auxiliary selection in centralsouthern Italo-Romance, with forms of HAVE and BE within the same paradigm. Such mixed auxiliation systems have been subjected to alternative analyses: a syntactic analysis, tracing the selection of different auxiliaries in different persons (as well as variation in one and the same person) back to differences in syntactic structure vs morphological analyses claiming that the distribution across persons within the paradigm of one and the same verb lexeme is a matter of inflexional morphology, in the same sense as the selection of a specific personal ending contrasting with those from different inflexional classes. The chapter provides a crucial piece of evidence in support of the latter view drawing on an unusual case of phrase allomorphy in the split auxiliary systems of three dialects of central Apulia