The epistemic future in exported grammars: a comparison between two Italo-Romance speech communities

Abstract

Abstract The analysis of differences and analogies that the (synthetic) epistemic future exhibits in two varieties of the Italo‑Romance dialect of Verbicaro contributes to uncover uncharted aspects of its morphosyntax and uses. The case study presented in this paper is based on different degrees of competence of the speakers of the indigenous variety of north-western Calabria as well as the corresponding exported variety spoken in São Paulo (Brazil). The grammar and use of the epistemic future is fully captured if the analysis of the data is pursued alongside an assessment of the acquisitional history of the speakers. Based on the sociolinguistic account of three different groups of speakers of the exported Verbicarese (monolingual Verbicarese L1, bilingual Verbicarese‑Portuguese, Verbicarese heritage speakers), I provide a structural interpretation of the development of the synthetic epistemic future in both the exported and the indigenous variety. More specifically, I show how glaring parallels can be established between the three relevant groups of speakers of the exported speech community and three distinct stages of evolution of the epistemic future in the indigenous variety. This study also serves as a documentation task for the epistemic future which is rapidly disappearing in Verbicarese.