A diachronic approach to complementizer doubling in Italo-Romance and the notion of downward reanalysis

Building on previous relevant studies, in this work I sketch a diachronic approach to the phenomenon of complementizer doubling attested in early and modern Italo-Romance varieties. It will be argued that the lower complementizer, originally lexicalizing a high functional head of the Topic field, which could attract adverbial clauses into its specifier, has been reanalyzed by the speakers as a lower Topic head and is being reanalyzed as Fin°, the lowest head of the CP layer. The ultimate aim of the paper is to contribute to a deeper understanding of the functional articulation of the Topic field within the left periphery of embedded clauses, taking into account the implications of the observed diachronic development for the notion of downward reanalysis.