Italian adverbs and discourse particles
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Maria Rita Manzini
Abstract
In Italian and its dialects, there is no evidence that lexical items functioning as discourse particle correspond to specialized functional heads, or that they have a truncated internal structure, making them into weak categories. Rather they have the syntactic distribution of adverbs, with which they coincide lexically. Therefore ‘discourse particle’ is the name of a special interpretation of adverbs, which also have a conventional temporal/aspectual/manner interpretation – to be captured by a scope(-like) mechanism at the LF interface. Temporal/aspectual/manner modifiers take events as their arguments – while discourse particles take the entire assertion (or command, question) as their argument, relating it to the store of propositional contents shared by speaker and hearer.
Abstract
In Italian and its dialects, there is no evidence that lexical items functioning as discourse particle correspond to specialized functional heads, or that they have a truncated internal structure, making them into weak categories. Rather they have the syntactic distribution of adverbs, with which they coincide lexically. Therefore ‘discourse particle’ is the name of a special interpretation of adverbs, which also have a conventional temporal/aspectual/manner interpretation – to be captured by a scope(-like) mechanism at the LF interface. Temporal/aspectual/manner modifiers take events as their arguments – while discourse particles take the entire assertion (or command, question) as their argument, relating it to the store of propositional contents shared by speaker and hearer.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Issues in discourse-oriented syntax 1
- The derivation and interpretation of left peripheral discourse particles 13
- On the interpretation of modal particles in non-assertive speech acts in German and Bellunese 41
- Italian verb-based discourse particles in a comparative perspective 71
- Italian adverbs and discourse particles 93
- Is particle a (unified) category? 121
- The particle how 159
- The cartography of yes and no in West Flemish 175
- On polarity particles in Italian varieties 211
- Discourse and the syntax of the left periphery 229
- Index 251
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Issues in discourse-oriented syntax 1
- The derivation and interpretation of left peripheral discourse particles 13
- On the interpretation of modal particles in non-assertive speech acts in German and Bellunese 41
- Italian verb-based discourse particles in a comparative perspective 71
- Italian adverbs and discourse particles 93
- Is particle a (unified) category? 121
- The particle how 159
- The cartography of yes and no in West Flemish 175
- On polarity particles in Italian varieties 211
- Discourse and the syntax of the left periphery 229
- Index 251
