Perfective auxiliaries in the pluperfect in some southern Italian dialects

This article investigates auxiliary selection in the pluperfect of all verb classes and in the imperfect/pluperfect of copular sentences in some Molisan and Campanian varieties, in relation to the forms EVA and SEVA. and their synchronic and diachronic relationship to the other perfective auxiliaries BE and HAVE. It is demonstrated that the forms EVA/SEVA, which in some varieties also occur as a copula, derive from have. It is also. shown that the distribution of these auxiliaries reflects aspectual and thematic constraints, pointing to a change in progress in Campanian varieties: the reintroduction of an active system marked through auxiliary selection and sensitive to a gradient model of split intransitivity.