Deictic motion verbs as passive auxiliaries: the case of italian andare ‘go’ (and venire ‘come’).

Abstract

AbstractThe two deictic motion verbs ‘go’ and ‘come’ serve as passive auxiliaries in a handful of languages, in combination with non‐finite participial forms of the main verb. Some passive constructions involving deictic motion verbs as auxiliaries are infused with special aspectual or modal meanings, even in the absence of overt aspectual or modal operators. The aim of this paper is to provide an in‐depth account of the emergence of the Italian passive with andare (‘go’) + past participle, and to explore the possible crosslinguistic implications of the proposed analysis, with a view to identifying the regularities in the diachronic processes leading to the emergence of passive constructions with deictic motion verbs as auxiliaries. On the basis of a large historical corpus of Italian, we will show that the Italian motion verbs andare ‘go’ and venire ‘come’ develop into passive auxiliaries passing through a stage in which they are used as semi‐copulas (with aspectual or modal values), and that this diachronic pathway appears to be valid for other languages in which such a construction type is attested.