ABSTRACT
The most widely attested coordinating conjunction in Romance (except Rumanian) is a reflex of ET, represented throughout Italy by [e] (sometimes [ed] prevocalically). A trace of the original final consonant is also detectable in the fact that [e] triggers raddoppiamento fonosintattico (see Ch. 5): the syntactic contexts that trigger RF are very interesting particularly, it seems, in Tuscany, but have yet to be explored in detail. The conjunction [e] unites grammatical entities of the same category and syntactic level: e.g., clauses, NPs or PPs having the same grammatical function. The possibility of coordinating constituents by means of [e] can be used as a diagnostic for the categorial classification of syntactic elements: e.g., It. voglio partire e che tu mi accompagni ‘I want to leave and that you should come with me’, showing that both subordinate sentences are to be classified as CP.
