A Grammar of Italian Sequence of Tense - Lear

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A Grammar of Italian Sequence of Tense
and Pianesi (2000, 2001a) and Giorgi (2010)– and almost exclusively with respect to
complement clauses. 2
This article is organized as follows: In section 2, I address the issues concerning
indicative complement clauses. In section 3, I consider the distribution of embedded
subjunctive. In section 4, I briefly outline a theoretical account for the observed
phenomena, illustrating the main hypothesis of this article – namely, that the speaker’s
temporal coordinate is represented in the left-most position in the C-layer and that its
presence –or absence– is crucial in determining the distribution of embedded forms. In
section 5, I take into account an apparent exception to the hypothesis, constituted by the
temporal interpretation of complement clauses embedded under a main future verbal
form. In section 6, I consider the temporal interpretation for both indicative and
subjunctive verbal form in relative clauses and finally, in section 7, I draw some
conclusions.
2. Indicative complement clauses
In Italian the verbal form of a complement clause can bear the indicative morphology,
the subjunctive one –where both the indicative and the subjunctive are finite verbal
forms, in that they show agreement with the subject, even if to a different extent– or can
be expressed by means of an infinitive. In this work, I will not consider the infinitive
option, but focus only on the finite ones. In particular, in this section I consider
indicative forms under a past, whereas I will discuss the properties of clauses
complement to a main future in section 5 below. 3
The main clause can be past, present or future and the embedded one exhibits the same
range of possibilities.
The most salient feature of SoT in indicative clauses is the existence of the Double
Access Reading (henceforth, DAR), typically emerging when an (indicative) present
tense is embedded under a past. Consider the following examples:
2 . With respect to the analysis of other languages, in particular English, see among the others, Zagona
(1995), Schlenker (2003, 2005), Stowell (1996), Ogihara (1995, 1996), Higginbotham (1995, 2001).
3 . For a discussion of indicative vs. subjunctive and infinitive embedded clauses, see Bianchi (2006).