Abstract

This article illustrates a particular phenomenon of the syntax of the relative clause in ancient Italian, a phenomenon that has so far remained almost unknown to scholarship: the assimilation of the case of the pronominal antecedent to that of the relative pronoun. The article is based on the critical edition of Benedetto Varchi’s capitoli burleschi, which offer two testimonies of the phenomenon, and aims to explain and document the syntactic assimilation of the pronominal antecedent to the relative pronoun in Italian, by providing examples in both verse and prose texts from the early 14th through the late 16th century.