The topic of split intransitivity represents a field of study of great complexity.
This paper focuses on a contrastive analysis of the Split intransitivity in Picard and Georgian, with particular attention to diachrony. Split intransitivity is encoded on the head of the verbal phrase in (Old) Picard, i.e. in the auxiliary selection, while on the dependence of the verbal phrase in (Old) Georgian, i.e. in the morphological encoding of the subject (Nichols 1986).
We analyze the Split intransitivity adopting Sorace’s (2000) Split Intransitivity Hierarchy (SIH), a model based on sematic-syntactic interface, revolving around the two key factors of telicity and agentivity.
In Romance varieties regardless of the theoretical perspective adopted (semantic or syntactic), many studies have shown how the auxiliary ‘to have’ has progressively spread at the expense of ‘to be’ (Aranovich 2007; Cennamo 2001, 2002, 2008; Ledgeway 2003, 2009; Legendre & Sorace 2003; Mithun 1991; Sorace 2000, 2011). Several works have focused on Split intransitivity in the earliest phase of the Langue d’Oïl in general (Buridant 2000; 2019; Dufresne & Dupuis 2010; Cassarà & Stein 2023). However, no specific work has been dedicated to Old Picard in particular. Modern Picard rather has lost Split intransitivity generalizing the auxiliary ‘to have’.
A lively debate on Georgian Split intransitivity has been going on for years (Hewitt 1987, Harris 1982, Lazard 1995, Van Valin 1990). However, SIH model has never been tested on MG, nor OG split intransitivity system has ever drawn much attention.
Georgian verbal system is organized in three so called ‘series’, each one characterized by tempoaspectual and morphosyntactic peculiarities (Aronson 1982, Hewitt 1995, Makharoblidze 2012, Tomelleri & Topadze 2015). Verbal forms of the II series (comprising Aorist, Optative and Imperative in MG and Aorist, Subjunctive II, Iterative II and Imperative II for OG) follow an ergative pattern in the argument marking and an accusative pattern in the verbal indexation of arguments. However, among intransitive verbs, some take their subject in the absolutive case (traditionally called ‘nominative’) while others take their subject in the ergative case.
For Old Picard we collect 300 verbal forms from Aliscans (Tome 1) and Conquête de Constantinople. For Georgian we collect 300 II series verbal forms from the Otkhtavi for OG and from Data Tutaškhia for MG, recording the morphological encoding of the subject. We then analyze the data through SIH considering both types and tokens (Levshina 2021).
This work describes for the first time in detail Split intransitivity in two neglected varieties: Old Picard and Old Georgian. An innovative aspect of this work is the corpus based contrastive analysis of a head-marking and a dependent-marking strategy of encoding Split intransitivity throughout diachrony.
Preliminary results show that: 1) Georgian is extremely conservative throughout diachrony in the encoding of Split intransitivity; conversely, Picard is extremely innovative fully generalizing the unaccusative pattern in the contemporary variety; 2) in both varieties the Split intransitivity is sensitive to semantic factors; however, the cut-off point between unaccusative and unergative verbs is different; 3) contrary to what is observed in the Romance domain, Georgian shows that Split intransitivity can be stable through several centuries: this may be related to the strategy of encoding.
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