Some preliminary observations on auxiliary selection and participle agreement in Greko and Bovese

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to describe the peculiar syntactic behaviour of Greko and Calabrian of Bova (Reggio Calabria) in their patterns of auxiliary selection and participle agreement. The pluperfect of the former variety exhibits an analytic form consisting of the imperfect of BE and the active aorist participle, regardless of verb class, unlike Standard Modern Greek and Griko. Likewise, a similar pattern is attested in the Calabrese of Bova, which forms the pluperfect with the auxiliary BE with all verb classes, followed by the past participle. As for the agreement on the lexical verb, a previously unnoticed property of the Calabrian of Bova is that the past participle never exhibits agreement, even with unaccusatives. In addition to presenting our novel data, the article offers a number of diachronic and diatopic speculations regarding both phenomena.