Fieldwork
Syntactic questionnaires
The syntactic questionnaires contained in this section are designed to test the influence of Sicilian syntax on the grammatical system of Gallo-Italic varieties. The phenomena investigated are the following: differential object marking (DOM); the raising of clitic pronouns; pseudo-coordination (PseCo); the so-called “loss of the infinitive”, whose presence is limited to northeastern Sicily; dual complementation, of which only the Gallo-Italic variety of Sperlinga (partially) preserves traces; finally, the questionnaire on personal pronouns explores the causes of syncretism leading subject pronouns to additionally express direct, indirect and oblique object functions (in Sanfratellano this occurs in the 1SG and 2SG and in Nicosiano/Sperlinghese only in the 2SG).
Sociolinguistic Questionnaire
This section contains the sociolinguistic questionnaire administered to Gallo-Italic speakers of Nicosia, Sperlinga, Novara di Sicilia, and Fondachelli-Fantina. It constitutes a revised version of the questionnaire developed by Alfonzetti, Assenza & Trovato (2000) for the Atlante Linguistico della Sicilia. The questionnaire investigates the characteristics of the linguistic repertoires of the communities under investigation, and includes a series of questions on the linguistic habits of individual speakers, their perceived competence in the various linguistic codes adopted, along with their attitudes towards the respective varieties.
It also has a semasiological component, which is designed to assess the vitality of specific archaic terms in each dialect.
