Existential constructions in some Cilento dialects

In this talk we investigate the semantic constraints on existential constructions in some southern Italo-Romance varieties from inner Cilento, in Campania (Felitto, Laurino, Piaggine, Valle dell’Angelo), in the light of the current debate on HAVE and BE existentials in Italo-Romance, their morphosyntax, semantics, pragmatics and diachrony (Parry 2013; Bentley, Ciconte & Cruschina 2015, int.al). We show that the typology put forward in Cruschina 2014, Bentley, Ciconte & Crushina 2015 allows one to organize the synchronic distribution of HAVE and BE existentials in the varieties investigated, revealing a change in progress, the gradual penetration of the pattern with the copula BE, under the influence of Italian, a phenomenon that is well advanced with inverse, deictic locatives and presentational existentials, but not well established yet/still incipient with canonical existentials, for which the pattern with HAVE is either preferred or the only one accepted by some speakers.