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Das Komma in kontrastiver Perspektive Italienisch–Deutsch

  • Angela Ferrari and Roska Stojmenova Weber
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Abstract

The focus of this paper is the use of the comma in Italian in a contrastive comparison with German. We hypothesize that modern Italian punctuation follows communicative-textual criteria and not - as is the case in the widely used grammars andmanuals - syntactic or prosodic criteria,which are secondary phenomena associatedwith punctuation without any direct determining connection. In contemporary Italian, the comma articulates the utterance. The latter expresses the illocutionary speech act in informational units, which can also be organized hierarchically: i. e. as units in the communicative background (thematic units) or foreground (rematic units) of the utterance. Against the background of this communicative-textual function, in Italian the comma differs from the comma in German, where it tends to be used according to morphosyntactic criteria. Significant punctual differences thus emerge, affecting relative, objective and subjective clauses, as well as adverbial clauses, coordinated clauses and interjectional clauses.

Abstract

The focus of this paper is the use of the comma in Italian in a contrastive comparison with German. We hypothesize that modern Italian punctuation follows communicative-textual criteria and not - as is the case in the widely used grammars andmanuals - syntactic or prosodic criteria,which are secondary phenomena associatedwith punctuation without any direct determining connection. In contemporary Italian, the comma articulates the utterance. The latter expresses the illocutionary speech act in informational units, which can also be organized hierarchically: i. e. as units in the communicative background (thematic units) or foreground (rematic units) of the utterance. Against the background of this communicative-textual function, in Italian the comma differs from the comma in German, where it tends to be used according to morphosyntactic criteria. Significant punctual differences thus emerge, affecting relative, objective and subjective clauses, as well as adverbial clauses, coordinated clauses and interjectional clauses.

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