Selection and morphology of expletive subject clitics in northern Italian dialects

This paper aims to sketch a morphological typology of 3sg expletive subject clitics (ESCs) in northern Italian dialects (NIDs). In order to show a variation greater than that reported in descriptive studies, a preliminary examination of the ESCs of some varieties of Piedmontese is made, with particular reference to the impersonal verbs sembra (‘it seems’) and bisogna (an impersonal only verb meaning ‘it is necessary’). Keeping the same focus, such a microvariational analysis is then extended to the whole of NIDs, seeking to draw up a morphological typology linked to syntax-semantic interface hypotheses. Lastly, some suggestions about a crosslinguistic comparison and some diachronic facts are presented.