La morphologie flexionnelle de l’impératif des dialectes de l’Italie méridionale: La distribution de la métaphonie

From a morphological perspective, a characteristic feature of the Romance imperative is its lack of inflection. However, many dialects of southern Italy display a metaphonetic alternation in the 2SG, a synchronically morphologized pattern which has to varying degrees also extended to the imperative. The aim of the present paper is to examine the distribution of such metaphonetic alternations across the dialects of southern Italy and their relevance for the morphological structure of the imperative. Our investigation of such metaphonetic patterns will highlight the exceptional nature of the imperative as a morphological category, which displays (i) a certain resistance to the many regular and analogical morphological developments that otherwise characterize other parts of the paradigm ; (ii) frequent formal irregularity and, in some cases, entirely unpredictable morphological outcomes ; and (iii) an unmistakable tendency towards extra-paradigmaticity, insofar as the imperative frequently finds itself outside of the core verbal paradigm representing nothing more than the basic meaning form of the relevant lexeme.