Microvariation and macrocategories: Differential Plural Marking and Phase theory

We collect under the umbrella term of Differential Plural Marking (DPM) the numerous instances whereby in Romance Ds have different plural morphology with respect to Ns and As. The same asymmetry extends to object clitics (OCl) and subject clitics (SCl) when compared to the participles they agree with. The phenomenon has largely escaped attention because most standardized languages (Italian, French, Spanish, European Portuguese) do not present this asymmetry – while in Romanian, postnominal articles and inflections are impossible to tease apart. Nevertheless, in the corpus of 81 varieties presented by Manzini and Savoia (2005, III, pp. 574-660), DPM characterizes practically all Northern Italian and Rhaeto-Romance