Reflexive Clitics in Aromanian

Objetivo

Reflexive clitics and their role in the argument structure of verbal predicates have posed significant questions for Romance and other languages. This project aims to further investigate the morpho-syntax of reflexive/SE-clitics in Romance and its consequences for argument structure, by studying SE-structures in a cluster of Aromanian varieties spoken in North-Western Greece. Aromanian is a highly endangered and heavily understudied Eastern Romance variety which is closely related to Romanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian, but which has also been in close contact with Greek. Aromanian has SE-clitics which behave differently from SE-clitics in other Romance languages (including Romanian) in significant ways. One of the aims of this project is to compare the Aromanian SE-structures to those reported for Eastern Romance (with an emphasis on Daco-Romance), and Romance more generally, and to identify the grammatical features responsible for such variation. This project involves extensive fieldwork on a fairly uncharted dialect, based on solid theoretical assumptions, and it differs from previous research in that it follows a micro-parametric approach to dialectal syntax within a small set of closely related varieties.