Split auxiliary selection with affected subjects in Old Majorcan Catalan

We aim to shed light on the split auxiliary selection found in Old Majorcan Catalan, in constructions where, instead of haver (‘have’), esser (‘be’) is used as the auxiliary verb for compound tenses, although just with persons 1 & 2; not only with unaccusative verbs, but also with transitive and unergative verbs. We claim that, in fact, these constructions have affected or undergoer subjects, derived from a lower position: at least, [Spec, ProcessP]. Hence, this system for auxiliary selection is mixed: both person-driven and event-driven. The Majorcan data provide evidence in favour of Ramchand’s (2008; 2018) decomposition of the vP, and for a nanosyntactic lexicalization of the auxiliaries: haver lexicalizes a chunk such as [Aux, i*], while esser lexicalizes only [Aux], in case a Person[+participant] head intervenes.