On triple auxiliation in Romance

Romance languages divide into three classes, as far as perfective auxiliation is concerned: as well as languages showing a binary contrast (e.g., French) and languages showing no contrast (e.g., Spanish), several varieties exist in which auxiliation displays three-way choices. Previous research on Romance auxiliaries has failed to recognize this empirical fact due to its focus on auxiliaries as morpho-lexical items, rather than on auxiliation as a syntactic phenomenon. Building on the approach to Romance auxiliation of Perlmutter (1989), this article proposes an analysis of triple auxiliation systems, as well as of systems which display variation in auxiliation, either free or sensitive to verb person. The rise of these mixed systems, like all other recorded changes in Romance auxiliation, is interpreted as one of the manifestations of the retreat of Proto-Romance active/inactive alignment and of the shift back to a more consistent accusative/nominative orientation.