Clitic syntax in areal linguistics

In this study, we present the results of a linguistic survey conducted using AlpiLinK, a corpus of crowdsourced data, to highlight the potential of such a tool when dealing with areal contact. The data concern the syntax of clitics and prodrop phenomena in the Italo-Romance varieties spoken in North-Eastern Italy. We analyze (a) the dropping of the 2nd person singular clitic in Gardenese Ladin and (b) the distribution of the 3rd person singular clitic in constructions with weather verbs in the Italo-Romance varieties of Northeastern Italy, in particular, Venetan, Trentino and Friulian, using a dataset of over 250 localities. The results demonstrate the potential of AlpiLinK in both qualitative and quantitative research, allowing us to draw some conclusions about the dynamics of Germanic-Romance language contact in this area.