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Discourse markers in Italian: towards a “compositional” meaning
... La prospettiva funzionale (cf. De Marco 2017) mette in luce una delle caratteristiche che contraddistinguono il carattere sfuggente di questi elementi linguistici, ossia la mancanza di significato denotativo e la polifunzionalità che opera a diversi livelli della significazione, per cui uno stesso SD può assumere funzioni diverse, ossia esibire una compresenza di valori pragmatici diversi, in un'unica occorrenza nel discorso (Bazzanella 2006;Bazzanella, Borreguero Zuloaga 2011). L'esteriorità al contenuto proposizionale di ciò che viene espresso verbalmente contraddistingue dunque i SD come elementi non indispensabili alla comprensione del contenuto proposizionale di un enunciato, per cui è quasi sempre possibile ometterli. ...
... L'esteriorità al contenuto proposizionale di ciò che viene espresso verbalmente contraddistingue dunque i SD come elementi non indispensabili alla comprensione del contenuto proposizionale di un enunciato, per cui è quasi sempre possibile ometterli. Secondo la classificazione di Bazzanella (2006) -una delle più utilizzate in letteratura -i SD possono essere raggruppati in tre macrocategorie funzionali: la funzione interazionale, la funzione metadiscorsiva e la funzione cognitiva. ...
... La funzione interazionale si riferisce ai SD come mezzi utilizzati dal parlante per verificare la comprensione, come meccanismi atti a prendere, cedere o mantenere il turno (Bazzanella 2006;Sansò 2020); la funzione metadiscorsiva include invece tutte le microfunzioni che strutturano il discorso in modo da assicurare la chiarezza dell'esposizione; la funzione cognitiva riguarda le microrelazioni tra il contesto e le conoscenze condivise, legate a loro volta all'attivazione della funzione inferenziale, all'attitudine dei parlanti e alla funzione logico argomentativa. ...
The volume collects the contributions of academics from various Italian universities who have worked with Carmel Mary Coonan throughout her career at Ca’ Foscari University. Starting from the themes that have characterised Carmel’s research interests, including Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), professional development for language teachers and action research practice, the volume opens up to original methodological reflections and new lines of research in the field of educational linguistics. The relevance and variety of the studies here described confirm the lively and dynamic character of research and experimentation that shape our discipline. By questioning different language learning environments (both inside and outside language classroom), educational contexts (from kindergarten to university and beyond) and subjects (students as well as teachers), the volume highlights significant gains achieved in the field of language teaching and learning so far. At the same time, however, it makes clear the urge to further boost plurilingualism in language education, a goal that Carmel has tenaciously pursued throughout her whole career.
... Henry: And not-and there is less= Irene: But it's not a matter of -even-= Henry: But today there is less respect [Henry continues] (Schiffrin, 1987, p. 164) In this example, but signals Henry's return to a previous point (there is less respect) to defend himself against Irene's challenge. However, Schiffrin contends that but is not only used to correct misunderstanding or defend one's position, but it also can be used to perform a remark which disagrees with a previous remark, as in (11). (11). ...
... However, Schiffrin contends that but is not only used to correct misunderstanding or defend one's position, but it also can be used to perform a remark which disagrees with a previous remark, as in (11). (11). Henry: Y'see you move across the way, you live in a big house. ...
... But/lakin you let me down.11. I could give you this book, But/lakin frankly, I don't want to. ...
This paper attempted to compare and contrast the discourse functions of the English primary contrastive discourse marker but with its equivalent in Standard Arabic lakin. A judgment test of forty-eight examples was presented to 5 Arabic-English speaking informants and 5 English native informants. The results showed that, like but in English, lakin functions as the primary contrastive discourse marker in Standard Arabic. The analysis of the results showed that although the English but can be translated to Arabic using other discourse markers such as bal, bianama, and lakinna, none of them can function as the primary contrastive discourse marker equivalent to the English but because they cannot capture the semantic meanings of the English but. Only lakin can capture most of the semantic meanings of the English but. However, while lakin and but share many of the discourse functions, they greatly differ when it comes to non discourse marker functions. Lakin does not have the same semantic meanings of but in non discourse marker sequences. The study concluded with several suggestions for teaching and research.
... With some minor changes, such a tripartite taxonomy is also to be found in the realm of Romance pragmatics. Bazzanella's (2006) A central point that emerges from the foregoing discussion is that the selected proposals we have outlined seem to converge on an essential distinction between textual and interactional functions. ...
... Maschler/Schiffrin (2015) recognize a textual ability as complementary to expressive and social knowledge. Bazzanella (2006) and Pons Bordería (2006) identify an interactional dimension as opposed to a textual/connective one. ...
intra-discourse relations, and pragmatic markers, functional items that have interactional and (inter)subjective meanings. Well aware of the challenge that defining and delimiting such elusive entities entails, we first offer a synthesis of the features shared between the two categories of markers by focusing on their shared properties, with a view to providing an introductory picture of Romance discourse and pragmatic markers.
The chapter then seeks to regroup the main classifications found in the Romance pragmatic literature and argue for a prototype-based approach. Lastly, the picture is enhanced by adding a further parameter for distinguishing discourse marking functions from pragmatic marking functions, namely their developmental behavior – a criterion that encompasses not only their functional properties in language use, but also their different behavior in language
change.
... Research on politeness in Italian has primarily concentrated on certain speech acts and linguistic expressions, including requests (Bartali 2022;Napoli and Tantucci 2022;Rossi 2012;Santoro 2017), apologies (Ghezzi and Molinelli 2019), compliments (Alfonzetti 2010), and discourse markers (Bazzanella 2006;Bazzanella and Borreguero Zuloaga 2011;Bazzanella and Miecznikowski 2009;Bazzanella et al. 2007;Fedriani 2019;Fedriani and Molinelli 2019;Molinelli 2014, 2016;Molinelli 2017Molinelli , 2018. Other related studies have addressed L2 Italian pragmatics (Nuzzo and Gauci 2014;Nuzzo and Santoro 2017), etiquette (Alfonzetti 2023), mitigation (Caffi 2007), meta-pragmatic discourse (Kádár and Paternoster 2015), non-canonical negations (Squartini 2017), and the use of the indicativo imperfetto 'imperfect indicative' (Bazzanella 1990). ...
Politeness relies on interlocutors’ frames, which are cognitive concepts that include a linguistic expression and extralinguistic variables. Politeness research has highlighted the importance of extralinguistic variables on speakers’ linguistic choices. Despite many studies that touch on these topics, questions about the comparative importance of contextual variables and the joint effect of them on speakers’ utterances remain unanswered. To examine these questions, a quantitative approach using a conditional inference tree was employed to investigate the influence of power, distance, and imposition on the use of verb forms in requests in Italian. Verb forms were selected as the dependent variable because they are essential for performing speech acts and they can be placed on a politeness continuum. Considering the importance and hierarchical relationship of the predictor variables of power, distance, and imposition, the results indicated that the three variables were predictors of verb form. While power was the main predictor, the effect of distance and imposition depended on whether the other variables were considered, showing a varying and complex effect of contextual variables. The findings enhance the understanding of Italian politeness, and represent the complex calculations that speakers make when selecting linguistic forms by considering interacting contextual variables.
... As is known, the pragmatic marker set encompasses items belonging to disparate grammatical categories-adverbs, conjunctions, and interjections, but also nouns and verbs-whose lexical meaning is partly or completely blurred out and without morphological inflection as a result of a grammaticalization process. Thus, the most remarkable feature Languages 2024, 9, 125 3 of 21 is that they perform some function linked to discourse markedness and, consequently, they make up a functional class (Schiffrin [1987(Schiffrin [ ] 1997Bazzanella 2006;Fischer 2006;Pons 2006;Cuenca 2013). Pragmatic markers generally provide clues to interpret the relationship among speech units, the speaker's attitude toward what (s)he is saying, as well as signaling aspects related to speech management. ...
This exploratory study aims to investigate the co-occurrence of Catalan pragmatic markers that fulfill an interactive function and multimodal cues, such as manual gestures, adaptors, head gestures, and eye gaze. To do so, we utilized spontaneous face-to-face conversations between ten different dyads, all of whom were undergraduate students discussing movies that they had recently seen. We processed the data with descriptive quantitative statistics, specifically employing exploratory multifactorial statistical visualization techniques, including multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) and cluster analysis. The results showed that pragmatic markers generally co-occur with multimodal cues. Although the multimodal system works independently, when pragmatic markers are uttered, both systems tend to harmonize in accordance with general communicative tasks, particularly turn management, alignment, and social affiliation.
The aim of this paper is to illustrate the incidence and functions of Discourse Markers (DMs) in the speech of tourist guides (TGs), and further investigate their polyfunctionality. Approximately 3½ hours of speech were examined (corresponding to 30,429 graphic words). These consisted of audiovisual recordings of Neapolitan expert guides conducting guided tours of the San Martino Charterhouse (Naples), extracted from the CHROME Corpus (Origlia et al., 2018; Alfano et al., 2023). A total of 1759 occurrences were analyzed. DM functions were studied by means of an onomasiological approach considering interactional, metatextual and cognitive dimensions, and then annotated using a multilevel annotation scheme. The examined features concern frequency, variability in forms, the possibility of co-occurrence and polyfunctionality, on both the syntagmatic and the paradigmatic axes. The results show that DMs are powerful indicators of the type of register: their functional distribution responds to specific communicative needs and the choice of preferred DMs depends very much on their polyfunctionality: the more polyfunctional they are, the more frequent they are likely to be. Finally, polyfunctional clusters of DMs do not present restrictions with respect to functions, whereas monofunctional clusters of DMs tend to appear with a planning or focusing function.
This study aims to explore the use of discourse markers (DMs) in complaints by native and non-native speakers of Italian, focusing on how DMs are employed across different proficiency levels. The goal is to understand the role of DMs in mitigating, intensifying, or structuring complaints in Italian language learners at A1-A2 and B1-B2 levels compared to native speakers. The data were collected through written discourse completion tasks (DCTs), which elicited participants’ responses in various complaint scenarios. The quantitative analysis revealed distinct patterns in DM usage among the three groups, with A1-A2 learners displaying a higher frequency but narrower variety of DMs compared to more advanced learners and native speakers. The DMs used by lower-level learners were mainly interactional, serving to seek attention and employ basic politeness strategies. At the B1-B2 level, a broader range of DMs was observed, fulfilling functions such as mitigating or reinforcing the complaint, modulating certainty, and managing the expressive tone of the interaction. Native speakers showed the most structured complaints and utilized a diverse array of DMs to balance the illocutionary force of their complaints. A consistent finding across all groups was the prevalent use of the dyad scusa/scusi ma highlighting its function in introducing criticism and expressing contrasts in complaint scenarios. Esplorare i marcatori del discorso nelle proteste: un’analisi comparativa di parlanti nativi e non nativi italiani Questo studio si propone di esplorare l’uso dei segnali discorsivi (SD) nelle proteste di parlanti nativi e non nativi di italiano, concentrandosi su come vengano impiegati nei diversi livelli di competenza. L’obiettivo è comprendere il ruolo dei SD nell’attenuare, intensificare o strutturare le proteste tra apprendenti di italiano ai livelli A1-A2 e B1-B2 rispetto ai parlanti nativi. I dati sono stati raccolti attraverso DCT scritti, che hanno sollecitato risposte in diversi scenari. L’analisi quantitativa ha rivelato distinti patterns nell’uso dei SD tra i tre gruppi: gli apprendenti A1-A2 mostrano una frequenza maggiore ma una varietà minore rispetto a quelli più avanzati e ai parlanti nativi. I segnali utilizzati dai principianti erano prevalentemente interazionali, volti a richiamare l’attenzione e a impiegare strategie di cortesia molto semplici. Al livello B1-B2 si osserva una gamma più ampia di SD, che servono a mitigare o rinforzare la protesta, modulare la certezza e gestire il tono espressivo dell’interazione. I parlanti nativi presentano atti più strutturati e utilizzano una varietà diversificata di SD per bilanciare la forza illocutiva delle loro proteste. Un risultato comune a tutti i gruppi è l’uso prevalente della diade scusa/scusi ma, che evidenzia la sua funzione nell’introdurre critiche ed esprimere contrasti nei diversi scenari esaminati.
This paper provides a preliminary synchronic analysis of the discourse markers originated from the imperative form of the visual perception verb šāf ‘to see/to look’, i.e. šūf, in Moroccan Arabic, by comparing, crosslinguistically, its discoursepragmatic behavior with that of its correlates in other languages. Starting with an overview of the verbs of visual perception in Moroccan Arabic, with a particular focus on the semantics, we explore the pragmatic functions and uses of this type of deverbal marker, and then highlight its functional and formal properties. Finally, we address the question of whether or not our case is an instance of pragmaticalization.
Within the English Medium of Instruction (EMI) framework adopted by many European universities, students listen to lectures, present, write, and take exams in English. Research on EMI settings mostly focused on lectures, leaving scant attention to student writing and in particular to the writing of dissertations in the Italian context. This paper addresses this gap by investigating lexico-grammatical occurrences of selected metadiscursive features adopted in the final dissertations of Italian masters’ students in business and economics courses. The dissertations are retrieved from the MoReThesisCorpus, a large digital repository of theses and dissertations at the University of Modena e Reggio Emilia. By paying close attention to reformulations and exemplifications, our findings reveal a developmental interconnection between spoken and written metadiscursive features.
This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .
This study explores the viability of applying the local grammar approach to speech act studies beyond English by developing a local grammar of apology in Italian. Drawing on data taken from the spoken Italian corpus of KIPTO, we identified nine functional terms that are commonly associated with the semantics of apologies in Italian. We subsequently used these terms to analyse instances of apologies from a local grammar perspective, leading to the identification of 18 local grammar patterns of apology, with the pattern "Forgiveness-seeking" being the most prominent one. We further discussed the opportunities (e.g., facilitating cross-linguistic speech act studies) and challenges (e.g., corpus availability, identification of speech act instances in corpora) of using the local grammar approach to account for speech acts in languages other than English. Overall, our argument is, and our study shows, that local grammars can be a viable approach to speech act studies in and across various languages.
This study examined the Arabic-English speakers' acquisition rate of certain contrastive discourse markers (CDMs): but, however, nevertheless, despite that/this, in contrast, instead, on the contrary, and on the other hand. The subjects were 26 Arabic-English speakers and 25 English native speakers. They were given a judgment test consisting of 30 multiple-choice items. In addition, a computerized English proficiency test was administered to the Arabic-English speakers. The results showed that Arabic-English speakers were far behind their English native counterparts in their correct scores on the CDMs judgment test. Unlike native speakers of English, the Arabic-English speakers lacked the knowledge of the core meanings of the English CDMs, the restrictions they impose on their occurrence between the two sequences they link, and their possible occurrences. Language experience did not contribute to the Arabic-English speakers' performance on the English CDMs judgment test.
Language development is subject to its interaction and alignment with environments. However, how it interacts and aligns with environments necessitates further research, given current incompatible views and findings on language-context relations, particularly marker-context relations in multimodal or second language’s (L2) sustainable development. Thus, this article proposes from the Ecolinguistic Continuum (Xiao 2021) perspective a multidimensional alignment sustainability model (MASM) verified via instantiating a semio-semantic and semio-pragmatic marker continuum in the first language (L1, Chinese) and examining L1 (English) and L2 (English) written and spoken corpora-driven data. Results showed (1) a semio-semantic and semio-pragmatic marker continuum in both languages, ranging/evolving from the conceptually rich/explicit/formal to the partly conceptual/neutral, finally to the conceptually empty/implicit/informal, a process of uni-bi-multi-functions or grammaticalization-semio-pragmaticalization, and (2) the dis/similarities between L1 and L2 marker use distributions, pinpointing the multidimensional niches for languages’ sustainable alignment evolvement/development. The findings corroborate the Ecolinguistic Continuum Paradigm, particularly the MASM, indicating that ideational/referential, structural, interpersonal, cognitive, and psychological functions/meanings of markers emerge dynamically depending on the extent to which they align with their corresponding environments. This view extends previous one-dimensional linguistic and context-related studies and helps unravel the problems in L1 and L2 sustainability development.
The volume collects the contributions of academics from various Italian universities who have worked with Carmel Mary Coonan throughout her career at Ca’ Foscari University. Starting from the themes that have characterised Carmel’s research interests, including Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), professional development for language teachers and action research practice, the volume opens up to original methodological reflections and new lines of research in the field of educational linguistics. The relevance and variety of the studies here described confirm the lively and dynamic character of research and experimentation that shape our discipline. By questioning different language learning environments (both inside and outside language classroom), educational contexts (from kindergarten to university and beyond) and subjects (students as well as teachers), the volume highlights significant gains achieved in the field of language teaching and learning so far. At the same time, however, it makes clear the urge to further boost plurilingualism in language education, a goal that Carmel has tenaciously pursued throughout her whole career.
Well is one of the most widely used, versatile pragmatic markers. Given its multiple functions, it may pose translation challenges, especially in hybrid oral texts translated to be read rather than heard. This paper investigates the presence and function of the pragmatic marker well in a parallel, aligned corpus of English TED Talk transcripts and their Italian translations. All occurrences of well in the English subcorpus were identified and classified to observe whether and how this marker was translated in the Italian transcripts. In the English subcorpus, well is found in sentence-/clause-initial position to introduce (a) rhetorical questions, (b) fictitious turn-takings between the speaker and other fictitious addressees, and (c) quotations. It was generally translated through a limited set of equivalents, which testifies to the standard approach used to transfer the pragmatic meaning of well into Italian, mostly relying on dictionary-based direct equivalents, e.g. beh and its orthographical variants.
he present study investigates the use of Discourse Markers (DMs) in the context of Italian migration varieties using an onomasiological approach, i.e. looking at the functions that DMs entail in conversation. Thus, this study focuses on intergenerational variation, namely, how the use of DMs in terms of their functional space varies across generations. We will consider only the metadiscoursive functions, i.e. all the microfunctions aiming at structuring the discourse, ensuring clarity and affecting the organization of discourse. They are analysed in two generations of Italian migrants living in Munich. Data are taken from a corpus of audio recorded interview with 13 Italian migrants living in Munich (average length of each interview, 30 minutes). Results point out that the second-generation informants DMs undergo both a gradual loss of types and a gradual reduction of tokens.
In the body of research on the relationship between gesture and speech, some models propose they form an integrated system while others attribute gestures a compensatory role in communication. This study addresses the gesture-speech relationship by taking disfluency phenomena as a case study. Since it is part of a project aimed at designing virtual agents to be employed in museums, an analysis was performed on the communicative behavior of tourist guides. Results reveal that gesturing is more frequent during speech than pauses. Moreover, when comparing the types of gestures and types of pauses they co-occur with, non-communicative gestures (idles and manipulators) turn out to be more frequent than communicatively-meaningful gestures, which instead more often co-occur with speech. We discuss these findings as relevant for a theoretical model viewing speech and gesture as an integrated system.
This is the first edited volume dedicated specifically to first person non-singular reference (‘we’). Its aim is to explore the interplay between the grammatical means that a language offers for accomplishing collective self-reference and the socio-pragmatic – broadly speaking – functions of ‘we’. Besides an introduction, which offers an overview of the problems and issues associated with first person non-singular reference, the volume comprises fifteen chapters that cover languages as diverse as, e.g., Dutch, Greek, Hebrew, Cha’palaa and Norf’k, and various interactional and genre-specific contexts of spoken and written discourse. It, thus, effectively demonstrates the complexity of collective self-reference and the diversity of phenomena that become relevant when ‘we’ is not examined in isolation but within the context of situated language use. The book will be of particular interest to researchers working on person deixis and reference, personal pronouns, collective identities, etc., but will also appeal to linguists whose work lies at the interface between grammar and pragmatics, sociolinguistics, discourse and conversation analysis.
Though positioning has been addressed in social psychology and in identity construction, less attention has been paid to the specific linguistic markers which are drawn upon in discourse to position the self and other(s). This volume focusses on address terms, pragmatic markers, code switching/choice and orthography, the indexicalities of which are explored in different communicative activities. The volume is unusual in: i) the range of languages which are covered: Bergamasco, Brazilian Portuguese, English, Finnish, French, Georgian, Greek, Italian, Latin, Russian, Spanish and Swedish; ii) the inclusion of different communicative settings and text-types: workplace emails, everyday and institutional conversations, interviews, migrant narratives, radio phone-ins, dyadic and group settings, road-signs, service encounters; iii) its consideration of both synchronic and diachronic factors; iv) its mix of theoretical and methodological approaches. The volume illustrates some of the linguistic means speakers draw on to position themselves and others and hopes to stimulate further research studies in this vein.
In recent research on discourse markers (DMs), it has been shown that these elements collaborate with prosody to convey crucial information about the organization of the discourse, both at the level of a single turn and the level of the overall conversation.
In this article, we analyze the DM allora ‘then’, occurring in turn-initial position and followed by a silent pause in spontaneous monolingual dialogues between Italian native speakers. Various prosodic measures are taken comparing allora with the following intonational phrase (IP), to investigate the discursive relationship between the DM and the rest of the turn.
The results show that the DM is peripheric as opposed to the general turn’s prosodic planning: it is produced at a higher articulation rate and with a narrower range of pitch values than the following IP, and a pitch reset is visible between the two.
The data suggest that allora and the following IP constitute two distinct units in the turn’s planning. We argue that as much as speakers manipulate their pitch range on the recursive side of the utterance to convey syntactic dependencies, they produce higher or lower turn onset, to express discursive-pragmatics relations between intonation units.
The paper studies the functions of negated indicative present forms of the verb vedere 'to see' that refer to the speaker and are followed by an indirect wh-interrogative subordinate clause. The investigation of an Italian written corpus of newspaper articles, reviews and forum posts shows that this construction set forms a discourse routine with a recurrent pragmatic function. It expresses a disagreeing action of rebuttal that includes the refor-mulation and critical assessment of an interlocutor's preceding utterance and projects arguments sustaining the speaker's standpoint. The routine is highly specialized: its functions are limited to those mentioned, whereas it does not express bare denial, coun-terarguments, or agreeing actions. The corpus analysis also shows that this specialization is a characteristic of the combination of the examined negated verb forms with indirect wh-interrogative clauses, whereas combinations with other complement types either do not occur at all in the corpus (indirect polar questions and complement clauses introduced by che) or have a broader range of diverse discourse functions (nominal complements with propositional meaning). The routine's lexical and grammatical components (inferential lexical meaning, deixis, negation and its scope, the presupposing properties of indirect wh-interrogatives, mood) all contribute to realize its discourse function.
This contribution offers a quantitative and qualitative linguistic analysis of discourse markers (DMs) in an emerging digital genre: online travel reviews posted on TripAdvisor. In particular, we analyse reviews written in Italian, which is still an understudied language in this context. We analyze a corpus consisting of 200 negative and 200 positive hotel reviews, investigating which types of DMs are used, their functions, and their interpretive contribution to the review context. Our findings show that the number of occurrences of DMs is significantly higher within negative reviews when compared to positive ones. Further, DMs detected in the two groups of reviews are distributed in different functional categories: the majority of DMs in negative reviews have interactional functions, whereas the majority of DMs in positive reviews have meta-textual functions. Finally, we also offer a qualitative analysis of specific DMs, discussing the pragmatic functions of actual examples extracted from our corpus.
The relation between pragmatic markers and the peripheries of clauses, utterances and/or turns has been a topic of linguistic interest for the last few decades. Many issues continue to be debated, however, such as “how should the notion of periphery be defined?”, “to what extent do pragmatic markers in the left versus the right periphery fulfill different functions?” and “which factors determine the order of multiple pragmatic markers in a periphery?”. This volume brings together a number of studies addressing these and other questions. It presents new data from a diverse range of languages – including less researched ones in this context like Ainu, Latvian and Lithuanian – and on a variety of types of pragmatic marker – including emoji. The volume as a whole offers new insights into, among other things, the subjectivity intersubjectivity peripheries hypothesis, the idea of left-to-right movement and the matrix clauses hypothesis.
Las evidencias científicas sobre la adquisición de los marcadores del discurso apuntan a la necesidad de un enfoque en los procesos cognitivos para abordar los retos específicos (como, por ejemplo, la versatilidad funcional) que se plantean en su enseñanza/aprendizaje. Proponemos, para ello, un enfoque funcional y una pedagogía de reflexión dialéctica con los aprendices. Ejemplificamos este enfoque heurístico a través de algunos ejemplos de reflexión consciente en conectores y operadores argumentativos.
Studies on the development of interlanguage pragmatic markers (PMs) have attracted increasing interest recently. However, little research is available on the PM dynamic development in alignment with English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classroom contexts. Given the lacuna, this article, based on the Complexity and the Alignment theories, investigates how PMs develop and how aligning with film-situated un/equal role relationships influences development. The study with eight data collection points tracks 28 EFL learners’ PM production over around 1.5 year. Results revealed: (1) the employed PM functions fluctuated but developed from singular to multiple, with the interpersonal function use being regressive and the structural and the cognitive, progressive; (2) the PM development manifested a significant gain in aligning with the equal role relationships; and (3) different proficiency learners had dissimilar PM development. These findings corroborate the view of context-dependent dynamic development and provide strong evidence for aligning EFL learning with various role relationships.
This paper examines the pragmatic uses and functions of the Latin verb inquam (‘I say’) and compares it with three synonyms – dico (‘I say, I speak, I declare’), loquor (‘I speak, I say, I utter’) and aio (‘I say yes, I say, I affirm’). Verbs of speech and thought in the first person are (cross-linguistically) a source of pragmatic markers, because the first person of these verbs is necessarily speaker-orientated and is also apt for expressing the speaker’s attitude. This can be seen in English pragmatic markers developed from verbs, such as I mean, I think and I say , and Romance ones, such as the Italian credo (‘I think’). Latin verbs with the meaning ‘I say’ (henceforth used as a hypernym for all of the verbs examined herein) also show pragmatic uses, as is clear from Latin dictionaries. The issue addressed in this paper is the extent to which they are interchangeable and how advanced they are in their development towards becoming pragmatic markers. For this goal, the paper will focus on a variety of pragmatic uses of ‘I say’, the contexts in which they appear, and the influence of genre on their distribution. Drawing on Bazzanella (2006) and Ghezzi (2014) , the pragmatic uses will be divided into three main categories: textual, cognitive and interactional. It will be shown that the border between different pragmatic functions or readings is not neat and one instance can have various pragmatic uses at the same time.
Il presente lavoro si concentra sull’uso dei SD da parte di apprendenti di italiano L2 di livello B1 e B2. L’uso appropriato dei SD può aiutare gli apprendenti stranieri ad elaborare e gestire il loro discorso in L2, nonché a migliorarne la fluenza. Lo studio si divide in due parti: 1. raccolta delle produzioni degli apprendenti (monologhi e dialoghi); 2. analisi qualitativa di alcuni SD caratterizzati da polifunzionalità sintagmatica presenti nel corpus (ma e però, quindi e allora). L’analisi si basa su tre importanti fattori: la posizione strutturale, il significato primario e la funzione comunicativa. A dispetto delle somiglianze di significato tra le coppie di SD osservate, ci sono delle differenze sul piano dello sviluppo acquisizionale legate al loro spettro funzionale. L’analisi ha permesso di fornire informazioni sulla relazione tra sequenza acquisizionale e polifunzionalità, descrivendo la varietà d’uso di alcuni SD metatestuali e cognitivi nel passaggio da uno stadio postbasico intermedio ad uno avanzato.
La tradición gramatical italiana ha sostenido que ma y però son intercambiables en la zona de adversatividad parcial, puesto que la única diferencia entre ellos es la fuerza adversativa (De Mauro 2000). Apoyados en la Teoría de la argumentación (Anscombre / Ducrot 1983), la Gramática cognoscitiva y la Teoría de la subjetivización (Langacker 1985) proponemos que ambas conjunciones operan en contextos distintos y designan significados diferenciables (relacionados con la restricción en el caso de ma, y la objeción en el caso de però) y con activaciones pragmáticas distintas que rebasan la generalmente reconocida diferencia de intensidad. Los nexos contrastan en términos de alcance (scope) restringido para ma, amplio para però. Con base en la observación de 600 casos de però (oral), mostraremos que este se centra en soportes informativos más amplios que los de ma. El scope de però incorpora la relación de los participantes tanto del evento como de la interacción discursiva y resalta la mirada (auto)-evaluativa del hablante, quien recupera todas las asociaciones relacionadas con el evento. Ma opera con un scope restringido. La subjetividad de però presupone un scope abierto que licencia la incorporación de inferencias de corte enciclopédico asociadas al mundo del hablante y eventualmente del oyente, que están fuera del alcance de ma.
The articles compiled in this volume offer new insights into the wealth of prosodic and syntactic phenomena involved in the encoding of information structure categories. They present data from languages which are rarely, if ever, taken into account in the most prominent approaches in information structure theory, and which belong to the Afroasiatic, Amerindian, Australian, Caucasian, and Niger-Congo language stocks. In addition to the significant descriptive value of these pioneering contributions, several studies also draw attention to previously undescribed or typologically rare phenomena. By adapting a variety of methods to under-described and endangered languages, ranging from experimental to naturalistic corpus studies, this volume also aims to serve as an invitation for further research in this direction.
This study explores the use of discourse markers (DMs) in metadiscursive activities such as word searches, repairs or metalinguistic evaluations that occur during spontaneous oral production. The analysis is based on a corpus of telephone conversations between advanced learners and native speakers of French and draws on functional as well as on interactional work on DM. In a first step, three selected learner profiles provide insight, by means of sequence analysis, into how individual learners make use of their particular DM inventory for their utterance planning, carrying out repairs and expressing attitudes toward their oral production. In a second step, the study compares native and non-native speaker’s DM inventories in order to detect general tendencies in the learners’ DM use that differ from the native speakers’ use of DMs. The comparison of the profiles shows that, even if there is relatively little agreement among the learners regarding the concrete lexical forms of the DMs, similarities can be discerned regarding the interlinguistic characteristics (e.g. individual preferences and overuse in the form of “lexical teddy bears” such as oui, alors or voilà, underuse of typical French reformulation markers like enfin, and weak routine in the lexicalisation of metadiscursive comments).
This volume explores how emergent patterns of complex syntax – that is, syntactic structures beyond a simple clause – relate to the local contingencies of action formation in social interaction. It examines both the on-line emergence of clause-combining patterns as they are ‘patched together’ on the fly, as well as their routinization and sedimentation into new grammatical patterns across a range of languages – English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Mandarin, and Swedish. The chapters investigate how the real-time organization of complex syntax relates to the unfolding of turns and actions, focusing on: (i) how complex syntactic patterns, or routinized fragments of ‘canonical’ patterns, serve as resources for projection, (ii) how complex syntactic patterns emerge incrementally, moment-by-moment, out of the real-time trajectories of action, (iii) how formal variants of such patterns relate to social action, and (iv) how all of these play out within the multimodal ecologies of action formation. The empirical findings presented in this volume lend support to a conception of syntax as fundamentally temporal, emergent, dialogic, sensitive to local interactional contingencies, and interwoven with other semiotic resources.
The paper presents the definition of the TOPIC information unit within the Language into Act Theory (L-AcT) and the prosodic and informational criteria used for its recovery in spontaneous speech corpora: Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish and American English. The TOPIC develops the specific function of field of application of the illocutionary force accomplished by the COMMENT unit, it is performed through a prefix prosodic unit and precedes the Comment. The TOPIC must be coherent with the set of requirements determined by the illocutionary force of the Comment and adequate to the speaker-addressee relation. TOPIC mostly correlates in spoken corpora with NP and ADVP and must be functionally distinguished from “postponed Topic” (APPENDIX in the L-ACT framework). However, corpora also show a good percentage of modal expressions filling its prosodic and distributional conditions.
This book offers new perspectives into the description of the form, meaning and function of Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles in a number of different languages, along with new methods for identifying their ‘prototypical’ instances in situated language contexts, often based on cross-linguistic comparisons. The papers collected in this volume also discuss different factors at play in processes of grammaticalization and pragmaticalization, which include contact-induced change and pragmatic borrowing, socio-interactional functional pressures and sociopragmatic indexicalities, constraints of cognitive processing, together with regularities in semantic change. Putting the traditional issues concerning the status, delimitation and categorization of Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles somewhat off the stage, the eighteen articles collected in this volume deal instead with general questions concerning the development and use of such procedural elements, explored from different approaches, both formal and functional, and from a variety of perspectives – including corpus-based, sociolinguistic, and contrastive perspectives – and offering language-specific synchronic and diachronic studies.
This book offers new perspectives into the description of the form, meaning and function of Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles in a number of different languages, along with new methods for identifying their ‘prototypical’ instances in situated language contexts, often based on cross-linguistic comparisons. The papers collected in this volume also discuss different factors at play in processes of grammaticalization and pragmaticalization, which include contact-induced change and pragmatic borrowing, socio-interactional functional pressures and sociopragmatic indexicalities, constraints of cognitive processing, together with regularities in semantic change. Putting the traditional issues concerning the status, delimitation and categorization of Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles somewhat off the stage, the eighteen articles collected in this volume deal instead with general questions concerning the development and use of such procedural elements, explored from different approaches, both formal and functional, and from a variety of perspectives – including corpus-based, sociolinguistic, and contrastive perspectives – and offering language-specific synchronic and diachronic studies.
This book offers new perspectives into the description of the form, meaning and function of Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles in a number of different languages, along with new methods for identifying their ‘prototypical’ instances in situated language contexts, often based on cross-linguistic comparisons. The papers collected in this volume also discuss different factors at play in processes of grammaticalization and pragmaticalization, which include contact-induced change and pragmatic borrowing, socio-interactional functional pressures and sociopragmatic indexicalities, constraints of cognitive processing, together with regularities in semantic change. Putting the traditional issues concerning the status, delimitation and categorization of Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles somewhat off the stage, the eighteen articles collected in this volume deal instead with general questions concerning the development and use of such procedural elements, explored from different approaches, both formal and functional, and from a variety of perspectives – including corpus-based, sociolinguistic, and contrastive perspectives – and offering language-specific synchronic and diachronic studies.
This book is the first collective volume specifically devoted to the multifaceted phenomenon of intensification, which has been traditionally regarded as related to the expression of degree, scaling a quality downwards or upwards. In spite of the large amount of studies on intensifiers, there is still a need for the characterization of intensification as a distinct functional category in the domain of modification. The eighteen papers of the volume contribute to this aim with a new approach (mainly corpus-based). They focus on intensification from different perspectives (both synchronic and diachronic) and theoretical frameworks, concern ancient languages (Hittite, Greek, Latin) and modern languages (mainly Italian, German, English, Kiswahili), and involve different levels of analysis. They also identify and examine different types of intensifiers, applied to different forms and structures, such as adverbs, adjectives, evaluative affixes, discourse markers, reduplication, exclamative clauses, coordination, prosodic elements, and shed light on issues which have not been extensively studied so far.
The present volume is centered on the notional domain of additivity. Many linguistic phenomena are based on additivity (i.e. are incremental) and additive relations are a mechanism that underlies a wide array of text types. Specifically, the present volume is centered on the class of function words which have been labeled, among many others, Additive Focusing Modifiers (FMs). The chapters gathered in this volume deal with the syntactic, prosodic and pragmatic properties of Additive FMs and new lines of research on these items are pursued, including (i) the historical development of Additive FMs and the use of these forms in older stages of the European languages; (ii) the pragmatic and sociolinguistic properties of Additive FMs, in particular of the functions they play in discourse and their distribution in different language varieties; (iii) the processing of Additive FMs by adults, in particular by relying on reading experiments involving eye tracking and self-paced reading; (iv) the use of Additive FMs in language contact situations and (v) the acquisition of Additive FMs by different learner groups.
The present volume is centered on the notional domain of additivity. Many linguistic phenomena are based on additivity (i.e. are incremental) and additive relations are a mechanism that underlies a wide array of text types. Specifically, the present volume is centered on the class of function words which have been labeled, among many others, Additive Focusing Modifiers (FMs). The chapters gathered in this volume deal with the syntactic, prosodic and pragmatic properties of Additive FMs and new lines of research on these items are pursued, including (i) the historical development of Additive FMs and the use of these forms in older stages of the European languages; (ii) the pragmatic and sociolinguistic properties of Additive FMs, in particular of the functions they play in discourse and their distribution in different language varieties; (iii) the processing of Additive FMs by adults, in particular by relying on reading experiments involving eye tracking and self-paced reading; (iv) the use of Additive FMs in language contact situations and (v) the acquisition of Additive FMs by different learner groups.
This paper examines how native speakers (NS) and non-native speakers (NNS) of Italian approach topic organisation (topic shift, topic closure, digressions, topic recovery, and summary) in oral interactions. The research focuses on which discourse markers (DMs) are used when speakers try to organise discourse topics, and the differences between NS and NNS when performing such metadiscourse functions. The analysis is based on data from a spoken corpus designed to study conversational strategies in Spanish learners of L2 Italian. It reveals that the acquisition of metadiscourse functions progresses at different rates depending on the function: whereas learners have a good pragmatic competence in using DMs for the introduction of new topics in conversation, they have difficulties with other functions, such as topic closure or summary. In addition, the function of topic recovery after a digression is explicitly marked by NNS by DMs which are not found in native varieties.
This volume gathers together for the first time contributions from the most relevant approaches in discourse segmentation developed in the last fifteen years in Romance languages. All these approaches share the assumption that discourses (either oral or written) can be fully divided into units and subunits: just like sentences are fully analyzed with the help of Syntax, discourse can be fully analyzed with the help of Pragmatics. In this sense, the approaches in this volume represent a step forward with respect to the issues in segmentation addressed by Conversational Analysis or by Discourse Analysis. The research questions addressed in this volume range from the distribution of foci to the coupling of gestures and discourse units, the treatment of discourse markers or the interplay between intonation and discourse organization; all of great interest for General Linguistics, as well as for Romance Languages.
This exploratory study intends to investigate the use of discourse markers (DM) in Italian L2 by learners with different L1s and different levels of competence (three at A2/B1 level and two at B2/C1 level). The analysis aims to describe the functions, the distribution, and some acoustic features of three DMs ( però ‘but’ , allora ‘then’ , quindi ‘ therefore’) in semi-spontaneous conversations between the learners and two native speakers. The purpose is to determine the possible uses and the relationship between the forms and functions of the DMs in native and non-native speakers distinguishing three main macro-functions (interactional, cognitive and metadiscursive) activated by speakers on the basis of the characteristics of the cotext (acoustic profiles), the context and the communicative situation. Such an analysis suggests a possible sequence in the emergence of DMs in the speech of L2 learners with different levels of competence in the target language. This exploratory study adopts a functional approach (Bazzanella 1995a, b; 2006; Fisher 2006). The outcomes of the analysis show that learners use a variety of DM forms and functions, and that some functions only emerge in more proficient speakers. The structural context and, to a lesser degree, the acoustic profile prove to be reliable indicators of the spectrum of functions performed by DMs in verbal interaction.
This study addresses the development undergone by
para colmo
, a form which is in the process of becoming fixed as an argumentative operator and additive connector.
Para colmo
has undergone a process of subjectification (Traugott 1995a), which is crucial in the development of discourse markers, where the presence of the speaker is manifested in various ways to cover important areas of meaning in the interpretation of the discourse. It has polarized its meaning in the negative and has progressed to indicate scalar saturation, or a position at the highest level of the argumentative scale, with an evaluation of excess on the part of the speaker. The study has been carried out on the basis of both diachronic and synchronic corpora compiled by the Real Academia Española, and covers the period from 1200 to 2004.
Résumé Les grammaires de l’italien pour des publics francophones mentionnent peu però et ne sont qu’allusives quant à ses différences avec le connecteur adversatif ma . L’étude des traductions italien / français de però dans le roman Caos calmo de Veronesi (2005), étayée d’observations de celui-ci dans des emplois oraux (corpus LIP 1993) amène à moduler certaines assertions des grammaires (équivalence avec ma, liberté de position, force majeure) et à les élargir. L’étude contrastive menée de façon synchronique est éclairée par les étapes du lent processus de grammaticalisation des connecteurs à partir de relations temporelles et causales et explique la distribution actuelle dans les deux langues.
This paper investigates the role of verbs of appearance as argumentative indicators analysing the uses of the Italian verb sembrare (‘to seem’) in a sample of 40 texts chosen from a corpus of reviews, editorials and comment posts. An analysis conducted within the framework of the Argumentum Model of Topics, shows that the verb, in its evidential-inferential uses, indicates specific argument schemes of the symptomatic as well as the causal type.
Los operadores argumentativos de comentario son unidades que introducen una evaluación del hablante sobre lo dicho. Se diferencian de otros operadores argumentativos en que presentan un
afterthought
o información añadida que apunta a la fuerza argumentativa de lo asertado. Estas expresiones actúan como sobrerrealizantes o realizantes y aún no han culminado su proceso de lexicalización y gramaticalización.
This study aims to conduct a pragmalinguistic analysis of the use of interpersonal discourse markers (DMs) to regulate politeness in a Spanish language digital forum. The study is based on the premise that relation-oriented particles are imported from oral conversation into the forum's written exchanges and that these particles maintain their prototypical interpersonal functions while coexisting with prototypical monological DMs. The focus is on these interactive particles, and DMs such as hombre, ¿no?, bueno, and mira are singled out, with special attention paid to their role in the management of polite relations. The results show that these DMs are frequently used and fulfil various types of dialogical functions (to structure dialogical exchanges, to involve the addressee, to express deontic modality, to express evidentiality, etc.). Some regular patterns that contribute to rapport management are identified (illocutive force modulation, dialogical rituals, negotiation of agreement/disagreement, regulation of assertiveness). If these patterns are interpreted in terms of mitigation/intensification, focalisation/defocalisation, agreement/disagreement and distance/closeness, they are part of the pragmalinguistic manifestations of polite verbal behaviour. Our conclusions highlight that the technological factors and participation framework of the forum create medium-specific DM patterns that help to meet the participants’ behavioural expectations and face concerns in online debating.
The research work on discourse markers/particles has become a growth industry within linguistics. Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen has contributed, with her first (1998) book, numerous papers, and this last book, to the development of this stimulating field, which has helped to clarify theoretical questions, starting from a detailed analysis of the four phasal French adverbs, dejà, encore, toujours, and enfin.
The review discusses both the general theoretical background and the several relevant issues, among which: polyfunctionality, diachronic development, speaker’s attitudes and subjectivity, as well as the nature of the interactional exchange, metatextual structure, and cognitive processes involved.
This paper demonstrates the need for a uniform model of discourse variation analysis which is equipped to capture the complex nature of discourse variation and change whilst also ensuring generalizability. A review of the literature shows that the current heterogeneity in corpus construction, data quantification and theorizing of discourse variables impedes reliability and intersubjectivity. Suggestions are offered to achieve comparability, and a case is made for a consistent integration of pragmatic function as a factor group in the analysis. The extension of the variationist paradigm to the level of discourse is discussed, and the need for a definition of discourse variables which caters for their flexibility and multifunctionality is demonstrated. It is argued that some methodological consistency is required in variationist discourse analysis in order to advance towards a holistic description of patterns in language variation and change which spans all components of the grammar, and to systematically explore how discourse features are used and manipulated to create social identities.
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