Double-Subject Construction in Sammarchese
(student)
Some Campanian dialects are known to reduplicate subjects (Ledgeway 2011). Double-subject
construction (henceforth DSC) is found not only in Neapolitan, but also in the Sammarchese
dialect, spoken in the Gargano peninsula, in the Apulian province of Foggia. Like in Neapolitan
(Ledgeway 2011:263), DSC in Sammarchese consists in two coreferential subjects expressed
in the clause, the first being a demonstrative pronoun (quiddu), and the latter an explicit subject
in the form of a pronoun, a proper noun, or a common noun:
1. (quiddu)subj1 (Mikelə)subj2
ɛva dʒa
jutə
‘(that one)M.SG.(Michele)M.SG. had already been there’
2. (queddi)subj1 (li kunsuprinə)subj2 vɛnn lu kra
‘(those ones)F.PL. (the cousins)F.PL. come the day after’
As shown in 1 and 2, subj1 and subj2 are not only coreferential, but share also the same φ
features for gender and number.
In Sammarchese, the role of quiddu in DSC does not seem to be so dissimilar from that of a
topic marker. It signals a topic that has already been introduced in the communication flow,
hence a familiar topic (Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl 2007), particularly in contexts where the
familiar topic of the newly introduced clause differs from the one in the last clause, and is hence
signaled by the marker quiddu:
3. A: che t'ha magnatə la pizza accata nonna (did you eat pizza at grandma’s?) B: no (no)
A: tə l'ha data mammta (did your mother give it to you?)
B: stamatina l'e gghiuta a ppigghia mamma [quedda jerə nonna] m'ha chiamatə jevənə
quasa li junnəcə e dittə mo non pozzə məni (mom went to take it this morning [that
oneF.SG. grandma] called me yesterday at 11pm and I told her I could not come)
A: alli junnəcə (at eleven)
B: e li decj e meza junnəcə jevənə e dittə po vegnə cra po [quedda mamma] eva già
passata (around 10/11pm I told her I’ll come tomorrow but then [that oneF.SG. mom]
already went to take it)
Diachronically, quiddu as topic marker might be the result of a lexicalized hanging topic which
crystallized over time, originating with quiddu as anaphoric pronoun.
Unlike in 1, 2, and 3, in some utterances quiddu shows default masculine singular inflection,
also in the presence of a subject with different inflection like in 4, 5, and 6. The same examples
show that this quiddu, exactly like quiddu as topic marker, occurs in sentence initial position (it
is important to note, that unlike what shown for Neapolitan in Ledgeway 2011, DSC in
Sammarchese is not ungrammatical with indefinite subjects, as shown in example 6 “that one
somebody must have gotten married”):
4. A: no trovə la chiava
‘I can’t find the key’
B: quiddu la sərravə pigghiata Miriam
‘that oneM.SG. must have taken MiriamF.SG.’
5. A: mə vulessə mettə li sandalə
‘I’d like to wear
sandals’
B: quiddu
chiovə
‘that oneM.SG. it’s raining’
6. A: sintə li makənə che fiʃkənə
‘listen, cars are honking’
B: quiddu
sərravə spusatə cacchedunə
‘that oneM.SG somebody must have gotten married’
This structure might be the result of a gapped predication, either quiddu -lu fattə- ɛ che chiovə
 “that one -the fact- is that it’s raining”, where quiddu refers to “the fact”, or quiddu che
saccə/vedə ɛ che chiovə  “that one (what) I know/see it’s that it’s raining”. The construction
in data like the ones in 4, 5, and 6, is also marginally found in Ledgeway
2011 for Neapolitan where the preposition expressed after ‘neuter’ chillo is analyzed as thetic.
While agreeing on the claim that such sentences are thetic, I believe this accounts only for what
follows quiddu and not for quiddu itself.
I hence propose, for Sammarchese, to analyze ‘neuter’ quiddu as an evidential marker.
In such instances, in fact, quiddu seems to signal the evidentiality of the proposition expressed.
Semantically, quiddu could be translated with what I can hear/see/infer leads me to think
that or with what I know is that and with what I’ve been told is that, like in 4 “Since Miriam
always takes the key then she must have taken it”, or 6 “Since I hear cars honking and people
honk cars after a wedding celebration then somebody must have gotten married”, where the
information conveyed is inferred from the situation and the context. Inferred evidentiality (in
the sense of Aikhenvald 2006) is also expressed through the mood of the verb (la sərravə
pigghiata, ‘must have taken’ in 4). The example in 5 shows that the information must have been
acquired in a direct way “I know it’s raining so you should not wear sandals”, whereas hearsay
might be conveyed through verbal mood or the use of dicə “They say/I’ve been told” as in
quiddu dicə che chiovə “that one they say/I’ve been told it’s raining”.
Syntactically, the content expressed by the evidential cannot be negated (Peterson
2009:124), since it would make the sentence infelicitous. Taking the example in 6 it is
impossible to answer to the assertion (I know) it’s raining with a sentence like #no you do not
know without making it infelicitous. The same holds for the examples in 4 and 6.
References
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2006. ‘Evidentiality in Grammar’. In Brown, Keith (ed.),
Encyclopedia of Languages and Linguistics. Elsevier
Frascarelli, Mara & Hinterhölzl, Roland. 2007. ‘Types of Topics in German and Italian’. In
Schwabe, Kerstin & Winkler, Susanne (eds.), On Information Structure, Meaning and Form:
Generalizations across languages. John Benjamins
Ledgeway, Adam. 2011. ‘Subject Licensing in CP’. In Benincà, Paola & Munaro, Nicola (eds.),
Mapping the Left Periphery: the Cartography of Syntactic Structures, Volume 5.
Oxford Studies in Comparative Syntax
Peterson, Tyler. 2009. Epistemic Modality and Evidentiality in Gitksan at the
Semantics/Pragmatics Interface. Doctoral Dissertation, University of British Columbia