The Expression of Indefiniteness in Italo-Ferrarese Bilectal Speakers: True Optionality and Grammatical Hybridity.

The present work investigates the expression of indefiniteness in two varieties spoken in the province of Ferrara, located in eastern Emilia: the Ferrarese dialect and the local colloquial variety of Italian. According to Cardinaletti and Giusti (2018, 2020), optionality between variants of indefinite determiners is attested throughout the Italian peninsula. The researchers describe the linguistic competence of Italo-Ferrarese bilectal speakers, paying attention to the amount of grammatical hybridity. They verify the impact of both intra- and extra- grammatical factors on the realization of competing forms of indefinite determiners. An online questionnaire was implemented with the focus on the choice of indefinite determiners in object position of negative sentences depending on noun type (mass vs. plural count), event type (habitual vs. episodic), and clitic type in Clitic Left Dislocation (accusative vs. partitive). Statistical analysis of the data showed that the two grammars display points of both convergence and divergence and prove the presence of a certain amount of hybridity in the varieties under investigation. The authors discuss the hypothesis of true optionality in Italo-Romance, which may be the outcome of a diachronic process of grammatical change that involved contact between different grammars, and compare it with the idea of a synchronically active process of mixing.