Auxiliary selection across Catalan dialects: an overview

Abstract

This article presents a comprehensive description of auxiliary selectionin Catalan. Specifically, after explaining how the phenomenon worked in OldCatalan, we show what are the factors (such as the event/argument structure or thegrammatical person, among others) that determine the use of BE and HAVE in thoseCatalan varieties that, although with some innovations, retain this distinction: (i)Algherese Catalan, (ii) Northern Catalan and some varieties of Central Catalan, (iii)Ribagorçan Catalan, and (iv) Balearic Catalan. Likewise, we show a series oftheoretical considerations that we believe are relevant for the analysis of the patternsof variation found in Catalan and, by extension, in Romance.