Federico Piersigilli

The phenomenon of the alternation between the auxiliaries "essere" (to be) and "avere" (to have) in languages that feature auxiliary selection has been the subject of theoretical linguistic study at least since Perlmutter (1978). Over time, various approaches have been proposed, focusing on syntax (Perlmutter, cited work; 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 the syntax-semantics interface (Sorace 2000 and subsequent works). My project follows in the path of syntactic analyses within the minimalist framework, starting from D’Alessandro and Roberts (2010), Bjorkman (2011), Amato (2021), focusing, synchronically, on morphosyntactic aspects (auxiliary selection and systems, reflexivity, participial agreement) and on the phonological interface (auxiliary selection and syntactic doubling); diachronically, on the evolution of the double Romance auxiliary. The research takes a cross-linguistic approach, with a focus on Italo-Romance varieties.