Federico Seals

The phenomenon of the alternation between the auxiliaries "essere" and "avere" in languages that feature auxiliary selection has been the subject of theoretical linguistic study at least since Perlmutter (1978). Various approaches have been proposed over time, focusing on syntax (Perlmutter, op. cit.; Burzio 1986; Kayne 1994), semantics (Hale and Keyser, 1986; Hale et al. 1993; McClure 1994; Levin and Rappaport-Hovav, 1995; Arad 1998; Borer 1998; Van Hout 2000), or on the syntax-semantics interface (Sorace 2000 and onward). My project falls within the field of syntactic analyses in the minimalist framework, starting from D’Alessandro and Roberts (2010), Bjorkman (2011), Amato (2021), focusing synchronically on morphosyntactic aspects (auxiliary selection and systems of auxiliary usage, reflexivity, participial agreement) and phonological interface (auxiliary selection and phonosyntactic doubling); and diachronically, on the evolution of the double auxiliary in Romance languages. The research takes a cross-linguistic approach, with a focus on the Italo-Romance varieties.