Evidenze del quarto genere grammaticale in salentino antico

The existence of four-gender systems in the morphology of a substantial part of the Romance language family has been demonstrated by some recent works due to Michele Loporcaro and other scholars. In particular, a four-gender system has been observed in the Roman medieval variety: in addition to the three genera inherited by Latin, here one can find a fourth alternating gender specular to the neuter. In this article the author discusses the pertinance of an analogous fourth gender to the gender-system of the ancient Salentino, by conducting the analysis on the entire documentation from the XIth to the early XVIth century; it is also offered a comparison with the coeval texts from Puglia and, moreover, some observations about the residues of the phenomenon in Salentino modern dialect.