Imperative characteristics in romance varieties spoken in Italy

We examine Romance varieties spoken in Italy to determine if a correlation exists between an imperative verb's morphology and the presence of characteristics unique to the imperative, as suggested by Rivero (1994a), Zanuttini (1994, 1997), and others. This paper calls into question the validity of considering unique morphology as the defining characteristic of 'true' imperatives (vs. 'surrogate' imperatives). The data show that there is no correlation between 'true' imperatives and imperative characteristics such as negative ineffability, postverbal position of clitic pronouns, stress shift in imperative verb + enclitic constructions, and the use of a special clitic pronoun. We find that forms with syncretic morphology also exhibit imperative traits, and forms with unique imperative morphology may lack imperative traits. However, another robust generalization emerges which holds for all of the data we examine: there is a hierarchy of participation in imperative characteristics. The 1PL form may exhibit imperative traits only if they are present in the 2PL, and the 2PL may exhibit imperative traits only if they are present in the 2SG.