Causatives and ‘inverse’ agreement in Ginestra (Arbëresh)

Causative sentence in Arbëresh varieties present a peculiar mix of bi-clausal Albanian syntax, whereby a causative predicate embeds a tensed sentence, and of case and agreement re-alignment phenomena of the type familiar from Romance languages. Here we concentrate on the variety of Ginestra, where agreement is sensitive to the split between Participant argument and non-Participant arguments. Thus agreement with the embedded verb favours 3rd person (3P) over 1st/2nd person (1/2P) independently of their respective roles (causer or causee) – a pattern which evokes so-called inverse agreement.