Variation in auxiliary selection, syntactic change, and the internal classification of Campidanese Sardinian

In this paper, we analyse some aspects of syntactic variation in Campidanese, comparing the urban varieties of Cagliari and Oristano with some selected rural dialects. The main focus of the paper is on perfective auxiliary selection. Assuming Perlmutter’s Unaccusative Hypothesis, we shall show a) that it is possible to formulate rules accounting for the distribution of perfective auxiliaries in the different dialects; b) that these rules also account for the verb occurring in existential constructions (although with some exceptions); and c) that the different auxiliation options documented in these varieties can be ordered along an implicational scale. Building upon previous similar comparative work on Romance perfective auxiliation, we shall also show that present-day Oristanese and some of the rural varieties in our sample display a triple, rather than a binary, auxiliation choice, and that this is to be understood as a transitional stage between the more conservative auxiliation rule still attested by the rest of rural Campidanese, and the more innovatory system of urban Cagliaritano. Not surprisingly, given what is independently known about the linguistic history of Sardinia, the syntax of auxiliation in conservative rural Campidanese coincides with that of Logudorese. Finally, we shall discuss the implications of our morphosyntactic study for the internal subclassification of Campidanese.