Progressivo e imminentivo nel sistema verbale dell'albanese d'Italia

Progressive and imminentive periphrases in the Italo-Albanian verb system This article deals with some particularities of the Italo-Albanian (Arbëresh) verbal sys-tem, including the “presumptive” and “unfinished” past, but focusing, especially, on the expression of Aktionsart with the help of periphrases absent or present, if not mar-ginally, in Balkan Albanian and attested already in the first Arbëresh grammars of the 19th century. The distribution of the periphrastic constructions with progressive and imminentive functions in a series of Italo-Albanian dialects is analysed on the basis of a first grid of durative periphrases presented in Savoia (1991), but elaborated on by further research and summed up in a typological overview. The author hypothesises that the periphrases in question are not so much the result of linguistic contact with actual Italo-Romance varieties, but rather go back to the Balkan context of possibly Proto-Romance origin.