In this paper, Italian and Bantu clitic clusters are analyzed and compared. I claim that in both language families, pronouns check case in a low clitic position, and in so doing they reverse the order of arguments. In Italian, clitics move to a high clitic position where they check person and number features. Different types of Italian clusters are individuated: they differ syntactically, phonologically, and morphologically. As in Kayne’s (1994) proposal, clusters can be formed either on one single functional head or on adjacent heads; the former type can appear both in enclisis and proclisis, the latter only in proclisis. Clitic pronouns can end with an epenthetic vowel or a class marker/ inflectional morpheme; the former (consonantal clitics) can appear in clitic clusters in any position, the latter (morphologically complex clitics) cannot be the first element in clitic clusters dominated by one single head. Finally, some clusters are inserted as lexical units, others are two independent words: only the former display the linking vowel [e]. The intricate interplay of these (partially) independent properties explains a number of restrictions on clusters found in Italian (and other Romance languages). The hierarchy of person and number features in the high clitic position is also discussed, which explains other restrictions on clusters.

In this paper, I analyse German and Italian modal particles and argue that they are deficient (i.e., weak) adverbs merged with dedicated functional constituents of the Mood/Mod field. I also show that sentence-initial and sentence-final particles are not one and the same element. In particular, sentence-final particles are not (functional) heads in the left-periphery of the clause and cannot be derived by movement of their complement to their specifier. They are instead merged with functional constituents of the IP-internal Mood/Mod field, like sentence-internal particles, and their final position is derived by remnant movement of what follows the particle to a specifier higher than the particle, similarly to what happens with right-dislocated constituents. Verb-based particles are also briefly discussed. In their sentence-final use, they are shown to have the same syntax as adverb-based particles; in their sentence-initial use, they are instead merged in the CP layer.

This paper presents the results of a pilot study on the distribution of indefinite determiners in contexts with narrow scope interpretation in current informal Italian. It individuates the available forms and presents their diatopic distribution. The research is based on data collected through an online questionnaire designed to detect optionality. The results show that in narrow scope indefinite contexts, i. e., negative statements, both the zero determiner and the definite article are widespread throughout the country. The partitive determiner is only found in episodic sentences and is limited to restricted geographic areas. In all contexts and areas, a large degree of optionality is found. In some context and area, however, it is possible to identify one form more prominent than the others. This can be related to the context, which may favour some specialized meaning of one specific form, e. g., saliency and small quantity, or to diatopic variation due to language contact with the dialect, as shown by comparing present-day informal Italian with the dialectal data reported in AIS and analysed in (Cardinaletti and Giusti. 2018. Indefinite determiners: Variation and optionality in Italo-Romance. In Diego Pescarini & Roberta D’Alessandro (eds.), Advances in Italian dialectology: Sketches of Italo-Romance grammars, 135–161. Amsterdam: Brill).

In this paper, I compare Romance and Germanic left periphery. I show that Italian Resumptive Preposing (RP) differs from both Clitic Left Dislocation (CLLD) and Focalization and shares many properties with fronting phenomena in English (Topicalization, Locative Inversion, Comparative Inversion). RP constituents are (wh-)moved to a high Topic position only available in root contexts and can co-occur with either preverbal pronominal subjects or post-verbal heavy subjects (while CLLD can target a Topic position lower than Focus – Rizzi 1997, Frascarelli and Hinterhölzl 2007 – and does not display any restriction on the subject). The analysis is based on Rizzi and Shlonsky’s (2006) account of English Locative Inversion and will lead us to the discussion of the interaction of Fin and Subj, i.e., the heads which lie at the interface of the I and C layers, and the comprehension of the different restrictions on the occurrence of preverbal subjects in Italian and English/German left-peripheral constructions, ultimately explaining the generalizations arrived at in Cardinaletti (2007).