La coniugazione di genere. Ipotesi e teorie sullo sviluppo di una distinzione flessiva

The article is dedicated to the development of the gender inflection within
the verbal conjugation. More particularly, it discusses a generalisation formulated
by Talmy Givón, claiming that all the verbal inflectional exponences arise from
the agglutination of pronominal forms. Examples, attesting the Givón’s path in
the development of gender distinction in conjugation, are examined: Italian
objective conjugation and Arabic perfect conjugation. Nevertheless, cases in
which the origin of the gender distinction in the verbal system can be connected
with other factors are clearly attested. Examples from Italian dialects, Russian
and Iranian dialects are discussed, where the gender marks of the conjugation are
produced by phonological processes, by the “exaptation” of a free variation and
by the agreement of the past participle.