Indefiniteness, language contact and microvariation on the border of Emilia-Romagna: A pilot study on Ferrarese and Piacentino

Abstract The present study investigates the expression of indefiniteness in two closely related Gallo-Italic local non-standardized languages spoken at the administrative borders of Emilia-Romagna (in Northern Italy): Ferrarese and Piacentino. A questionnaire with a forced-choice task was used to investigate the acceptability of four indefinite determiners (ZERO, ART, bare di , and di +ART) in negative sentences according to event type, noun type, and Clitic Left Dislocation with accusative and quantitative clitics. The data were analysed through Conditional Inference Trees and Random Forest models. The main results are that: (i) Piacentino, differently from Ferrarese, displays bare di in base position; (ii) Ferrarese makes a great use of di +ART and allows ZERO to a greater extent than Piacentino; (iii) both varieties allow resumption by the quantitative clitic with dislocated di +ART. The results are discussed in a comparative perspective with the neighbouring Italo-Romance varieties and Italian. In doing so, perspectives for future research are outlined.