The development of the Latin gerund in Rhaeto-Romance

Abstract

<p><i>L gerundie indichea la modalitèdes o la condizions de n'azion. L vegn durà demò te la forma prejenta; tel passà se doura de autra construzions perifrastiches. [...] De spes se pel l transformèr te n complement indiret de temp, de meso, de modo o te na frasa temporèla, ipotetica, e c.i.</i> <p>This is how the Grammar of Fascian Ladin (issued by the Ladin Cultural Institute in Vigo di Fassa) describes this grammatical category. However, there is a discrepancy between the canonical functions of the gerund as usually presented and described in traditional grammars and its actual use. The results of a pilot study conducted at the University of Verona with the help of a limited number of Ladin speakers have highlighted this divergence, where alternative non gerundial constructions, such as an instrumental expression, temporal, causal and similar, are preferred instead of the canonical one. For example, we find <i>Col dormir l se a remetù</i>, instead of the expected <i>*Dormian l se a remetù</i>. <p>Few studies have recently examined this category, but none of them provide a full overview of the gerundial structures. For instance, Casalicchio 2013 illustrates different types of gerund constructions with perception verbs in Gardenese. He claims that sentences with a subordinate verb use the gerund, instead of infinitive, as in Italian. In his view, the use of the gerund in perceptive constructions may have developed in Vulgar Latin. <p>In this project, I detect the contexts in which the gerund - in terms of its \mbox{etymological} definition - is used, but also which functions this so-called "gerund" has. Such a work is supported by an extensive fieldwork that covers two varieties of Ladin, Friulan and a smaller amount of data from Swiss Romansh. Data was collected via a survey conducted as a written translation task from Italian/German into the speaker’s variety. In addition to this corpus retracing the oral speech, I included a corpus of written texts and a smaller corpus of diachronic data. The analysis provides a larger picture on the development of the Latin gerund in this Alpine area. The final outcome allows us to assess variation and possible contact-induced phenomena in synchrony drawing on the analysis of processes of change in diachrony.