From comparative to causal relations: the case of siccome ‘because’ in the history of Italian

1 Introduction

Typological studies have demonstrated that adverbial causal clauses usually emerge out of purpose and temporal clauses as the result of diachronic reanalysis (Cristofaro 1998, 2003: Ch. 6; Heine and Kuteva 2002: 246, 291; Thompson et al. 1985). This article adds a new path in the development of causal clauses by uncovering a diachronic link between comparative and causal clauses (see Jędrzejowski 2024b). While the previous literature has reported that various languages extend comparative-similative markers to introduce subordinate clauses of temporal simultaneity (‘when’) or immediate anteriority (‘as soon as’; Deutscher 2000: 38; Eggs 2006: 428–473; Schulze 2017: 48; Taine-Cheikh 2004; Treis 2017: 91, 133), we provide new evidence for the overlap between comparative-similative and causal subordinators through the history of Italian.^[1]

The empirical domain is restricted to the diachrony of siccome ‘because’, an univerbated form morphologically composed of two items: the comparative-similative wh-pronoun come ‘how’ and the demonstrative adverbial pronoun sì (< Latin sic) ‘so’. The development of siccome is studied together with that of its graphically non-univerbated variant sì come. We show that the exclusively causal reading of siccome in Contemporary Italian, seen in (1a), arises from an original comparative-similative meaning, as in (1b), following a three-step diachronic path.^[2]

We demonstrate that, while in the first stage siccome/sì come almost exclusively introduces comparative-similative clauses, in the second stage the lexical item is extended to also express causal relations (Section 2). The possibility for the item to encode causal relations was restricted to specific contexts (Section 3). In these contexts, siccome/sì come introduces a comparison between the dependent and the main event which could be inferred to be causally related. In the third stage, the pragmatic inference of causality becomes syntactically encoded and two distinct structures are available: siccome exclusively introduces causal CPs and the non-univerbated form (sì) come is restricted to comparative-similative CPs. We formalize this change by adopting a free relative clause analysis (Cinque 2020a) to comparative and causal clauses (Section 4). In so doing, we extend to causal clauses the proposal formulated in Haegeman (2010) for temporal clauses and in Donati (1997) for comparative clauses.

2 The relations encoded by siccome/sì come in diachrony

The diachronic development of siccome/sì come was investigated through a survey of the MIDIA corpus, which contains about 800 Italian texts from 1200 to 1947 (D’Achille and Grossmann 2017). The corpus includes five time periods:

First period: 1200–1375

Second period: 1376–1532

Third period: 1533–1691

Fourth period: 1692–1840

Fifth period: 1841–1947

The survey revealed that throughout the history of Italian the subordinator expresses various relations. In (1b), it introduces a comparison in which two events or propositions are compared with respect to some manner or degrees of some properties. Siccome/sì come also introduces a complement clause (Cristofaro 2003), as in (2):

The subordinator can also introduce a temporal clause marking simultaneity or immediate anteriority: the dependent event takes place simultaneously or immediately before the main event:

Finally, siccome/sì come also expresses a causal relation, as in (4), where the dependent event provides a motivation for the main event to occur:

The adverbial siccome/sì come-clauses can also be resumed by a correlative adverb in the host clause (see Appendix A in the Supplementary materials).

The functions we have mentioned are not uniformly distributed diachronically, as clearly illustrated in Figure 1:

1. In the first period (1200–1375), the subordinator exhibited almost exclusively a comparative-similative meaning, which remained the main value till the fourth period (1692–1840).

2. In Period 4, we witness an increase of the occurrences with a causal interpretation and a concomitant decrease of the occurrences with a comparative reading.

3. In a very few occurrences, the items expressed complement and temporal relations. The item disappeared as a marker introducing temporal clauses from Period 3, while only one instance of siccome introducing a complement clause was found in Period 5.^[3]

Figure 1:

The diachrony of the meanings of siccome/sì come across the five MIDIA periods.

We conclude that siccome/sì come, originally introducing a comparison between the dependent and the main events, has slowly acquired a causal reading.

The relations plotted in Figure 1 are expressed by different subordinators in Contemporary Italian. Complement clauses and temporal clauses of simultaneity or immediate anteriority can be introduced by the simple form come, which never appears preceded by the adverb sì. Comparative relations are introduced by the subordinator come, which can be preceded by the adverb sì. The univerbated form siccome can only introduce adverbial causal clauses. As in the older stages of Italian, siccome CPs can also be resumed by an adverb in Contemporary Italian. The presence of a correlative element in the matrix clause resuming the adverbial CP suggests that siccome CPs in all stages of Italian are integrated in the matrix clause: they are central adverbial clauses in Haegeman’s (2010) terms. We now ask how the causal meaning come into being, investigating which conditions triggered the semantic shift from a comparative to a causal interpretation.

3 From a comparative to a causal interpretation of siccome

This section demonstrates that the meanings discussed in Section 2 are tied to specific contexts. Specifically, in Section 3.1 we illustrate the conditions in which the causal interpretation of siccome/sì come emerged and their diachronic development. Next, in Section 3.2 we zoom in on the morphological form of the subordinators and their meaning in diachrony. In Section 3.3 our findings are summarized and discussed in light of previous results on other syntactic changes affecting the complementizer domain through the history of Italian.

3.2 Diachronic development of the morphological forms introducing causal clauses

To decipher the diachronic development of the causal meaning, we restricted our corpus to only those contexts in which the causal interpretation could arise, that is, cases that follow conditions (8a)–(8c); there are 2095 occurrences of this type. Since in Contemporary Italian, adverbial causal relations can only be expressed by siccome and not by sì come, we consider the diachrony of the two items separately. Figure 2 illustrates the diachronic development of the meanings encoded by the univerbated form from 1200 to 1947, while Figure 3 depicts the same information for sì come.

Figure 2:

The diachronic development of the meanings of siccome.

Figure 3:

The diachronic development of the meanings of sì come.

Figures 2 and 3 demonstrate that siccome and sì come pattern alike in Period 1 (1200–1375) in expressing a comparative-similative relation in almost all occurrences. Conversely, from Period 2 (1376–1532), the two forms show different trajectories. While the non-univerbated form almost exclusively encodes comparative meanings up to the end of the third period, the univerbated form introduces causal CPs in one-third of its occurrences in Period 2 (1376–1532) and in one-fourth in Period 3 (1533–1691). In Period 4 (1692–1840), an increase in occurrences with a causal reading is registered for both forms. In Period 5 (1841–1947), siccome exhibits a causal meaning in the majority of its instances, while sì come ceases to express a causal relation and it is only attested with a comparative meaning. Hence, between the fourth and the fifth period, a division of the semantic space covered by the two forms is registered in the editions of the MIDIA corpus. By adding our introspective judgments on Contemporary Italian to both figures, we can conclude that, at the end of the diachronic path, the univerbated form siccome introduces finite CPs encoding a causal relation between the dependent and the main events, while the non-univerbated sì come is the subordinator of comparative CPs. Since siccome is a morphologically complex item formed by the adverb sì and the wh-item come ‘how’, we conclude that the pronoun sì underwent a change from a free form to a bound morpheme, a process which is clearly signaled by the phono-syntactic gemination of /k/ in /sik.ˈko.me/. Interestingly, the univerbation process did not occur when the two items introduce comparative clauses. Hence, the adverb sì changed its phonological and syntactic status only in adverbial causal clauses. Since in the earlier periods, orthography is an unreliable diagnostic as it usually depends on editorial choices, and since the texts in the MIDIA corpus are based on modern editions, we cannot individuate a precise moment in which the univerbation process happened. Yet, we can state that from the fifth period the two forms are clearly differentiate in the orthography and, plausibly, in the morphology. We can formally capture this distinction adopting Cardinaletti and Starke’s (1999) pronominal system: between the fourth and the fifth period, the adverb sì changed its status from a weak/clitic pro-form to a bound morpheme in causal CPs, while the weak/clitic pro-form can still be paired with a wh-pronoun in comparative clauses.

4 Discussion

Temporal and comparative adverbial clauses have been analyzed as free relative clauses (Caponigro 2000, 2004; Cecchetto and Donati 2012; Donati 1997; Haegeman 2010). We extend this proposal to adverbial causal clauses introduced by siccome/sì come CPs. This extension is motivated by the diachronic development we documented in the previous sections and by the morphological form of the subordinator, which clearly contains the wh-pronoun come ‘how’.

We claim that the diachronic extension of the meanings conveyed by siccome/sì come depends on two properties: (i) the type of null classifier paired with the wh-item; and (ii) the movement of the wh-phrase.

As for (i), we follow the derivation of relative clauses proposed in Cinque (2013) and refined in Poletto and Sanfelici (2018). Relative clauses are CPs embedded under a DP/PP (Kayne 1994) and merged in the specifier of a prenominal functional projection (Cinque 2013: 172, 197). The relative pronoun is a determiner-like element that modifies a null classifier, person, thing, place, time, manner, degree, and so on, which is the smallest component of a nominal expression (Cinque 2020a, 2020b; Kayne 2005). While the wh-item is paired with the null classifier manner/degree in comparative clauses and with the null classifier time/moment in temporal clauses, in causal clauses we suggest that the wh-item is paired with the null classifier situation, thereby rephrasing Arsenijević’s (2021) proposal. The relative clause modifies a nominal expression, which in the case here discussed is further modified by sì. We illustrate the relative clause structure in the simplified tree in (11).^[5]

(11)

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The type of null classifiers determines property (ii), namely whether the wh-item moves to the COMP domain from the vP/TP layer, as in the case of comparative and temporal siccome/sì come, or whether it is already merged in the CP and moves to a higher CP position, as in the case of the causal siccome/sì come. The final landing site of the wh-phrases in relative clauses is Spec, ForceP (Rizzi and Bocci 2017). Hence, in comparative clauses, the wh-phrase moves from a specifier position within the vP layer – the position where manner adjuncts are merged (Cinque 1999) – to Spec, ForceP. In temporal clauses, the wh-phrase moves from a specifier position within the TP – the position where temporal adjuncts are merged (Cinque 1999) – to Spec, ForceP. Finally, in causal clauses, the wh-phrase moves from Spec, FinP – the position where situation and speech acts adjuncts are merged (Cinque 1999) – to Spec, ForceP.^[6] We illustrate the different derivations in (12): comparative clause in (12a), temporal in (12b), and causal in (12c).

(12)

a.

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b.

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c.

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The different merge positions of the wh-phrases in the spine of the relative clause have the desired semantic reflex discussed in Cecchetto and Donati (2012) and Arsenijević (2021). The comparative clause in (1b), ‘As the worm consumes wood and moths consume cloth’, has the same interpretation of the explicit relative clause ‘in/to the (same) manner/way/degree in which the worm consumes wood and moths consume cloth’ and defines the set of manner/way/degree that is the intersection of the manner/way/degree in which the worm consumes wood and moths consume cloth and the manner/way/degree in which envy consumes the human body. Likewise, the adverbial temporal clause in (3), ‘as their eyes met’, can be paraphrased as ‘in the (same) moment/time in which their eyes met’ and it defines the time interval which is the intersection between the moment in which their eyes met and the moment in which they fell in love. Finally, example (4), ‘And since I didn’t know where to find the continuation of the story, I ended up leaving it’, with a causal adverbial clause, can be paraphrased as ‘As in those situations in which I did not know where to find the continuation of the story, in the same situations I ended up leaving it’. Causal clauses assert that the antecedent is true in the actual situation in which the antecedent is also asserted to obtain.

As shown in Section 3.1, various occurrences up to Period 4 were ambiguous between manner, temporal, and causal interpretations: the clause introduced by siccome/sì come provided the manner/time but it also entailed the cause for the realization of the main event. We specified the conditions which could license a causal reading in (8). All occurrences compatible with a causal interpretation of the subordinator met these conditions up to Period 4. Until that period, the occurrences where a causal interpretation was detected and then coded as such were ambiguous between a causal and comparative reading. It was the context that guided our choice for one interpretation over the other. From Period 4, these conditions were not mandatory anymore and were then completely lost in Period 5. Given this picture, we must then account for three aspects: (i) the comparative-similative meaning of siccome/sì come, (ii) the possibility of a causal interpretation of the subordinator to arise when the licensing conditions were met and its concomitant ambiguity between a causal, temporal, and comparative interpretation, and (iii) the causal versus comparative distinction and the loss of the licensing conditions.

We propose that (i) siccome/sì come is a comparative subordinator paired with a null nominal manner, (ii) the ambiguity up to Period 4 results from a pragmatic inference which applies when the event participants are shared and the dependent and main events are contiguous, and (iii) this pragmatic inference undergoes syntacticization in Period 4 and then the new derivation involving causation regularizes in Period 5. The comparative/temporal wh-phrase moves from vP/TP to the left periphery. When the dependent event is factual, temporally contiguous to the main event, and shares the participants with the main event, a pragmatic inference arises during Periods 2 and 3:^[7] the dependent event can be inferred to be causally related to the main event.^[8] Hence, the wh-phrase could be either interpreted in its original position only, where it expresses a manner or temporal relation, or, in addition, in its derived position, thereby entailing a causal relation as in (7a).

In Period 4, this inference becomes conventionalized. The conventionalization has the syntactic reflex that the wh-determiner is now paired with the classifier situation. The conditions licensing the pragmatic inference of causality in (8) are slowly lost. Therefore, two derivations distinguish the comparative/temporal and causal adverbial clauses: in the former the wh-phrase moves from the wh-phrase vP/TP to the left periphery, in the latter the wh-phrase is externally merged in the left periphery. From a derivation in which siccome/sì come moves to the left periphery and the causal relation results from a pragmatic inference, Italian slowly develops a derivation with siccome paired with the null classifier situation which is exclusively externally merged and encodes causality. This diachronic change is thus an instance of the Merge-over-Move principle proposed in van Gelderen (2004) illustrated in Table 1.

The syntacticization of the pragmatic inference has a morphological reflex. While in former stages of Italian the univerbated and non-univerbated forms basically had the same distribution and interpretation, from Period 4 the form (sì) come conveys a comparative and temporal meaning, while siccome mainly, and nowadays only, means ‘because’.^[9] Until Period 4, the diachrony of siccome patterns like that of the French comparative/temporal comme (Moline 2006). Italian and French differ in the final step of their diachronic change. In French the causal and comparative/temporal relations are morphologically neutralized, being encoded by comme. In Italian, the adverbial distinctions morphologically neutralized in the older stages are then restored and encoded by two different items.

5 Conclusions

This article has demonstrated that an item undergoes semantic extension in specific contexts as defended in various works on grammaticalization (e.g., Diewald 2002; Giacalone Ramat 2015; Heine 2002; Mauri and Giacalone Ramat 2012). The change from a comparative-similative marker to a subordinator expressing causality was formally captured by adopting a free relative clause analysis along the lines of Cinque (2020a). We have proposed that from a derivation in which the comparative/temporal wh-phrase moved to the left periphery and was enriched with a pragmatic inference of causality, Italian grammar developed a derivation in which the causal relation was syntactically encoded. This analysis formalizes the syntacticization of discourse pragmatic features adopting Kayne null elements, thereby opening a new theoretical perspective on how null elements may enter the derivation.