Subjunctive mood in Griko: a micro-comparative approach

Abstract

We present an analysis of subjunctive complements in Griko, a Modern Greek dialect spoken in Southern Italy. Despite the obvious similarities with the properties of subjunctive clauses in Standard Modern Greek (SMG), introduced by na in both varieties, we capitalize on the contrasting distribution of verbal forms in each case: while in SMG all temporal-aspectual combinations are allowed in na-clauses and no specific subjunctive morphology is used, Griko only features perfective non-past in the same context. This fact is argued to instantiate the specialization of aspectual morphology in Griko for the marking of subjunctive on the verb. We propose that the morphological marking of subjunctive that had been lost in earlier stages of the diachronic development of Greek re-entered Griko as a result of contact with Salentino, the southern Romance variety spoken in the same area, which also exhibits mood concord between a subjunctive complementizer and dedicated subjunctive morphology on the verb. Although the realization of subjunctive in Griko and in SMG appears to be an instance of microvariation in the syntax (mood concord in the former, no mood concord in the latter), we argue that it ultimately reduces to the feature specification of particular elements, namely inflectional morphemes.