Microvariation in dative-marking in the Romance and Greek varieties of Southern Italy

Greek and Romance have been spoken alongside of one another for centuries in
southern Italy. Even though the Greek-speaking areas have been dramatically reduced over the centuries such that today Greek is now only spoken by a small
number of increasingly elder speakers in a handful of villages of Calabria and
southern Apulia (Salentino), the influence of Greek is still undeniable in that it
has left its mark on the structures of the surrounding Romance dialects. Indeed, in
this respect Rohlfs aptly coined the phrase spirito greco, materia romanza (literally
“Greek spirit, Romance material”) to highlight the fact that in many respects the
syntax of these so-called Romance dialects is underlying Greek, despite employing predominantly Romance lexis. In this paper we draw on two case studies from
the Romance and Greek varieties spoken in Calabria to illustrate how the syntax
of argument-marking has variously been subject to contact-induced change, giving rise to significant variation in the marking and distribution of RECIPIENT arguments in accordance with both pragmatic and structural factors. In both cases,
it will be shown that contact-induced borrowing does not replicate the original
structure of the lending language but, rather, produces hybrid structures which
are ultimately neither Greek nor Romance in nature.