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.