Vestiges of Late Latin syntax in (southern) Italo-Romance Existential have and pleonastic se

This paper discusses existential constructions with have and pleonastic reflexives in some southern Italo-Romance dialects, in relation to their Latin antecedents, focussing on the points of continuity of both constructions in the transition from Latin to (Italo-)Romance, involving their core realizations. It is argued that existential have in Romance is not related to an original possession scheme, but that it results from paths of change reflecting the locative-stative uses of the verb habere ‘have, hold’, continuing and further developing Late Latin patterns introducing a new entity or situation into the world of discourse within a spatio-temporal frame. It is also shown that pleonastic se with one-argument verbs in some southern Italo-Romance varieties functions as a split intransitivity marker, continuing a Late Latin usage surfacing also in other Romance languages (e.g., French, European Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish), albeit to a different extent.