In this paper we carry out a systematic comparison between the German and Italian particles auch and anche (meaning “also”) and provide a formal account of the data couched within the cartographic approach to syntax (Cinque 1999; Rizzi 1997; Cinque & Rizzi 2010). Based on the available literature and on novel data, we show that in both languages this particle exhibits three main functions: (i) additive particle; (ii) connective adverb (residual in Italian) and (iii) modal particle – which correlate with a different syntactic status of the particle (head or maximal projection) and with a different position within the clause. When used as an additive particle, auch/anche lexicalize a head in the lower portion of the clause and function as focalizers (in the sense of Kayne 1998, 2005). When they are connective adverbs, they are maximal projections hosted in a functional projection dedicated to adverbs. Finally, when used as a modal particle auch/anche are heads found in the higher portion of the IP layer. German auch and Italian anche are however not identical, since when used as an additive particle, German auch, but not Italian anche, is compatible with discontinuous constructions in which a given XP in the scope of auch can be moved to Spec,CP leaving auch within the clause. Moreover, German auch is compatible with a variety of illocutionary types in its use as a modal particle, whereas anche can only be used in declarative clauses. We show that the former fact follows from asymmetries in movement options between the two languages (topics move in German but not in Italian) and the latter results from the nature of anche as a polarity item.

The aim of this contribution is twofold: (i) providing a detailed description of subordination in Cimbrian and (ii) discussing the concept of language contact in terms of feature transfer. As has been recently pointed out, Cimbrian declarative and relative clauses display a unique pattern among the German dialects w.r.t. embedding. In fact, different complementizers trigger different syntax as regards the position of the finite verb. In our contribution, we extend the analysis to adverbial clauses for the first time and also investigate the double pattern of embedding in indirect wh-questions. Our data suggest that contact-induced syntactic change can be explained in terms of transfer of single abstract features.

The focus of our contribution is the German particle auch ‘also’ and its Italian counterpart anche. From a semantic point of view, auch and anche convey the same additive meaning in both languages: through them an element, called ‘domain of association’, is added to a list of further elements for which the auch/anche phrase applies. From a syntactical point of view, auch and anche can occupy different positions in the sentence by modifying the type and the scope of the domain of association. This results in four basic usage patterns which are similar in both languages and correspond to just as many functions of auch/anche: (i) additivity, (ii) sentence connection, (iii) focus domain, and (iv) modality. Despite these common functions, auch and anche interact with the syntax and the information structure of the sentence in German and in Italian differently. Furthermore, they are used in conversation contexts, which are distinctive in both languages. By starting from the current description of auch and anche in the literature, the first aim of our contribution is to provide evidence for the above-mentioned four basic functions despite their language-specific usage contexts. As a second aim, we want to validate our systematization through the analysis of spoken data for German and Italian, explaining why some functions are more likely to be found in the former than in the latter.

Lexical expletives can be divided into two main classes: (i) CP expletives required by the V2 constraint and, hence, by the necessity to lexicalize the position on the left of the inflected verb and (ii) TP expletives connected with the negative value of the pro-drop parameter and, therefore, with the necessity to lexicalize the ’structural‘ subject position, specifically, [Spec, TP]. The latter can, in turn, be divided into two subclasses: impersonal subjects and positional expletives, which occur with postverbal/low subjects and extraposed subject clauses. While CP expletives only appear in Germanic varieties that maintain V2, the subclassification of TP expletives yields interesting results when comparing Cimbrian and the Venetan varieties in Nord-East Italy, where the gradual disappearance of the positional expletive in free inversion structures and the residual maintenance of impersonal subjects from North to South along the Adige River confirms the distinction between two classes of subject expletives; furthermore, the resilience of impersonal subjects and their distribution in the northwestern part of the area under consideration sheds light on the role of language contact which is confirmed along the same axis—but crucially in the opposite direction—by the increasing employment of cleft constructions in WH-clauses replacing enclisis (i.e.,: pronominal subject inversion with the finite verb).

In our paper, we deal with the Germanic–Romance language contact, focusing on Cimbrian, a Germanic minority language spoken in Northern Italy. Specifically, we focus on the violation of the well-known that-trace filter, as it appears to be an interesting case of the superficial convergence that we ascribe to the status of T, which is either too rich (model language) or too weak (replica language) to represent a viable landing site for subject extraction.