Strutture slave e romanze in contatto: il periodo ipotetico nelle varietà slovene del Friuli

In this paper I investigate the role of language contact in the expression of potential and counterfactual hypothetical meanings in Resian, Tersko and Nadiško, three Slovenian varieties spoken in the province of Udine and in contact with Romance languages (especially Friulian and Italian) for centuries. Standard Slovene serves as a point of comparison. In hypothetical utterances Slovene uses the same forms of the conditional mode both in apodosis and protasis: the present conditional in the case of potentiality; the past conditional for the expression of counterfactuality. However, the latter is only used in the literary language, whereas in colloquial speech it is practically avoided. Its functions are fulfilled by the present conditional, which is thus ambiguous. The three examined Slovenian varieties are able, instead, to differentiate between potential and counterfactual meanings. They use the forms of the present conditional in the first case and the past tenses of the indicative in the second. More precisely, in the case of potential utterances, in protasis all three varieties use the conditional of the type bi + -l participle; in apodosis Resian and Tersko often opt for the present conditional of ‘to want’ followed by the infinitive of the main verb. Nadiško, on the other hand, omits the verb ‘to want’. To express counterfactual value, Resian, having retained the forms of the imperfect, uses in apodosis this tense (rarely) or constructions containing it; Tersko generally uses the perfect or the construction “perfect of the verb ‘to want’+ infinitive”; while Nadiško prefers the pluperfect II. The tendency to keep the two values separate and the use of forms that somehow replicate the Romance model may be seen as an enrichment of the original system and at the same time a departure from the Slovene group