On the development of the Italian truth adverbs davvero and veramente
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Davide Ricca
Abstract
The article compares the meanings and uses of the two main Italian adverbs of truth and truthfulness, namely davvero and veramente, across the whole documented history of the language. The investigation is carried out by inspection of two large corpora, Opera del Vocabolario Italiano (OVI; Old Italian) and Letteratura Italiana Zanichelli (LIZ; literary Italian from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century), supplemented by oral data from corpora of contemporary spoken Italian. While both items display a wide and overlapping polysemy, which includes objective and subjective uses, since the beginning of their documentation, veramente alone develops a new mitigation function when occurring in a confutational context. This represents a further evolution from subjectification to intersubjectification, in the perspective of Traugott’s model (Traugott and Dasher 2002; Traugott 2010a, 2010b), and arguably shows the relevance of interactional factors in semantic change, pointing in particular to the strong intersubjective potential of the turn-taking position, in which veramente occurs much more frequently than davvero.
Abstract
The article compares the meanings and uses of the two main Italian adverbs of truth and truthfulness, namely davvero and veramente, across the whole documented history of the language. The investigation is carried out by inspection of two large corpora, Opera del Vocabolario Italiano (OVI; Old Italian) and Letteratura Italiana Zanichelli (LIZ; literary Italian from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century), supplemented by oral data from corpora of contemporary spoken Italian. While both items display a wide and overlapping polysemy, which includes objective and subjective uses, since the beginning of their documentation, veramente alone develops a new mitigation function when occurring in a confutational context. This represents a further evolution from subjectification to intersubjectification, in the perspective of Traugott’s model (Traugott and Dasher 2002; Traugott 2010a, 2010b), and arguably shows the relevance of interactional factors in semantic change, pointing in particular to the strong intersubjective potential of the turn-taking position, in which veramente occurs much more frequently than davvero.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface vii
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Introduction
- Diachronic corpus pragmatics 3
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Words
- I had lost sight of them then for a bit, but I went on pretty fast 29
- Grammaticalisation of the Finnish stance adverbial muka , ‘as if, supposedly, allegedly’ 53
- From degree/manner adverbs to pragmatic particles in Japanese 77
- Analyzing polysemy in Estonian 107
- On the development of the Italian truth adverbs davvero and veramente 133
-
Phrases and clauses
- “Strong churlish purging Pills” 157
- On the origin of clausal parenthetical constructions 189
- Tracing the history of deontic NCI patterns in Dutch 213
- Front field negation in spoken Swedish 237
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Utterances and dialogues
- Complimenting in the history of American English 257
- Exploring verbal aggression in English historical texts using USAS 277
- A matter of tradition and good advice 303
- Language index 329
- Name index 331
- Subject index 333
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface vii
-
Introduction
- Diachronic corpus pragmatics 3
-
Words
- I had lost sight of them then for a bit, but I went on pretty fast 29
- Grammaticalisation of the Finnish stance adverbial muka , ‘as if, supposedly, allegedly’ 53
- From degree/manner adverbs to pragmatic particles in Japanese 77
- Analyzing polysemy in Estonian 107
- On the development of the Italian truth adverbs davvero and veramente 133
-
Phrases and clauses
- “Strong churlish purging Pills” 157
- On the origin of clausal parenthetical constructions 189
- Tracing the history of deontic NCI patterns in Dutch 213
- Front field negation in spoken Swedish 237
-
Utterances and dialogues
- Complimenting in the history of American English 257
- Exploring verbal aggression in English historical texts using USAS 277
- A matter of tradition and good advice 303
- Language index 329
- Name index 331
- Subject index 333
