Chapter 2. Theory-driven approaches and empirical advances

Italo-Romance varieties present at least three types of constructions that cluster together two verbs displaying double tense and double subject agreement and are taken as Pseudo-Coordinations (PseCos) or Multiple Agreement Constructions (MACs). In this paper, we follow Cardinaletti and Giusti’s (1998, 2001, 2003, 2020) hypotheses and claim that unification between the PseCos with a and the MACs with mu/mi/ma or ku in Southern Italian dialects is not viable. We adopt a diagnostic tool, which we call a protocol, that clusters the predictions of theory-driven analyses and apply it to the ‘take and’ construction, which is widespread across dialects and productive in Italian. In doing so, we discuss unobserved facts arising in the well-studied dialectal structures and make fine-grained observations about the less studied ‘take and’ PseCo in Italian.