Cambiamenti nell'uso dei soggetti clitici veneti: il ruolo del contatto con l'italiano

This chapter discusses the results of a series of data on the syntax of subject clitic pronouns in Venetan dialects. The data were gathered through a crowdsourcing tool (google modules), and more than 700 participants took part in the inquiry. The data collection asked for grammaticality judgements on a series of contexts. The main research question was whether the syntax of subject clitics is changing in the language of the younger generation: this question is particularly important because the distribution of the Venetan varieties througout the Veneto region is changing, due to the increasing influence and presence of Italian, which is the L1 of most of the younger speakers. The results show that there are indeed differences between older and younger generation, but also that the contact-induced change is not leading to a generalized reduction of the use of subject clitics, but rather to a restructuring of the system. While the use of subject clitics depends on the interface between syntax and pragmatics in the 'older' system, the younger generations tend to reanalyse as a purely syntactic phenomenon.