Marche di genere nella sesta persona del verbo ‘essere': il caso di Sèneghe (Or)

This paper aims to describe particular forms of 6th person of the simple present of ‘to be’ in some Sardinian dialects. My data show an intromission of -/s/ (mark of plural) after the vowel -/i/ (which was originally paragogic) in the forms suni/sunti ‘(they) are’ (outcomes of Latin SUNT). Arguably such process is the starting point of the development of the double form suntos/suntas (‘they are’ masculine/‘they are’ feminine) which I attested in Sèneghe (Province of Oristano). As we can see, these forms exhibit marks of gender (-o- for masculine and -a- for feminine) in addition to the -/s/ of plural.