The History of Modal Verbs in Central and Southern Italian Dialects

In this work modal verbs of Old Italian varieties are analyzed by means of two different linguistic approaches: Functional Grammar (as presented by Dik 1989, Siewierska 1991 among others) and Generative Grammar (Principle and Parameters approach and the Minimalist Program introduced by Chomsky 1981 and 1995 respectively, and extended by various scholars). These two linguistic schools have seemingly irreconcilable theoretical bases and clearly different aims and expectations concerning linguistic analysis. The basic target of the author is to see how the same problems are treated from two different points of views and to discover, if possible, converging solutions. A further aim is to present a basically new corpus for the analysis of modality which could be of interest also for further researches. Many studies have been made concerning English modals and their diachronic development. It is not the case for their Italian counterparts. A well documented case in the history of Romance languages is the evolution of a Latin necessity periphrasis into the Romance future forms, which will serve as a basic picture to project the possibilities of grammaticalization for other modal periphrases.