Anna G I A C A L O N E RAMAT | University of Pavia (original) (raw)

Published papers by Anna G I A C A L O N E RAMAT

Miscellanea di studi in onore di Diego Poli, a cura di Francesca Chiusaroli , 2021

This chapter examines the Italian causative-reflexive construction lasciarsi “to let oneself’+ in... more This chapter examines the Italian causative-reflexive construction lasciarsi “to let oneself’+ infinitive which has been less studied than the other causative construction farsi+ infinitive. I have worked in terms of semantic criteria, making recourse to a number of semantic parameters in order to catch the specificity of the lasciarsi construction with respect both to the farsi construction and the passive with essere auxiliary. The analysis shows that lasciarsi followed by a transitive infinitive has a passive meaning, but is not equivalent to a passive with essere. Moreover, with respect to the other Romance languages, in particular Spanish and Portuguese, Italian shows a more advanced degree of grammaticalization of the causative-reflexive construction.

Folia Linguistica Historica XXXVI,2, 115-138, 2005

ANNA GIACALONE RAMAT 1. Developmental trends in the cross-linguistic coding of relative relations... more ANNA GIACALONE RAMAT 1. Developmental trends in the cross-linguistic coding of relative relations In his typological analysis of relative clauses (=RC), Comrie (1989: 149; 2002, 2003) notes that the relative pronoun (=RP) type is widespread in the languages of Europe but is cross-linguistically quite rare. Indeed, he points outs that examples found outside Europe nearly always turn out to have arisen under the influence of some European languages. Thus the relative-pronoun type gives "the impression of a type that arises rarely spontaneously, but which once it has arisen, is a favoured construction for borrowing" (Comrie 2003: 20). 2 A number of interesting questions arises from this suggestion: first of all one might ask whether RPs are a stable feature in the languages which use them, or show a tendency towards change, reduction or renewal giving rise to more common relative clause formation strategies, such as the anaphoric pronoun strategy and the gap strategy (Comrie 1989: 147ff., Givón 1990: 655). Both strategies, as noted by Comrie (2002), are well represented in Mediterranean and European languages, which have largely lost their case systems. Secondly, one would not expect new relative pronouns to arise easily. For this reason it is striking that Romance languages have recreated a relative pronoun of il quale type, which is marked for gender, number and syntactic role of the relativized item. The motivation for this change deserves to be investigated further. This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents a general picture of the developmental trends from Latin to Romance, taking Italian as an illustrative example. Section 3 illustrates different types of RC. Section 4 outlines the history of il quale and formulates the main claim of this paper, namely that il quale was originally used as a means of textual cohesion. Section 5 presents the results of a corpus study of Old Italian texts. Section 6 explores some Romance and Germanic parallels.

Rafael Salaberry & Yasuhiro Shirai, The L2 Acquisition of Tense-Aspect Morphology, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins, 2002

Revue Française de Linguistique Appliquée, 2011

The Diachrony of Ditransitives, edited by Chiara Fedriani and Maria Napoli101515, 2020

This paper investigates the properties and the diachronic development of a poorly described Itali... more This paper investigates the properties and the diachronic development of a poorly described Italianconstruction vedersi “to see oneself” followed by the infinitive, with the aim of defending its Recipient passiveinterpretation. From the recent typological literature (Malchukov et al. 2010) there emerges a clear tendencyacross languages for behavioral properties to comply with coding properties of arguments: this means that ina language that follows an indirective coding pattern like Italian the passivization of the Recipient argument is not allowed. The correlation is, however, not absolute (as recognized by Malchukov et al. 2010:46). The case under scrutiny represents a special strategy whose motivations are to be searched for, on the one hand, in the tendency for Recipients to be human and topical and to take the subject role in passivization (Haspelmath 2015), and on the other at the pragmatic level in a response to the need for expressing the (mostly negative) subject affectedness. Corpus based data from Modern Italian has been used to illustrate the semantic classes of predicates involved and their dominant maleficiary uses. The diachronic analysis illustrates the grammaticalization path leading from the reflexive construction, in which vedersi has a perceptive meaning, to a Recipient passive construction through texts from Old to Modern Italian, and it will also account for the gradual emergence of a passive interpretation in specific pragmatic contexts. The semantic expansion of the Recipient construction beginning in the late 19th century, through its ability to attract a variety of ditransitive predicates, can also be documented.
The earlier but parallel development of a Theme passive in the construction vedersi + past participle (GiacaloneRamat 2017) confirms the main lines of change and suggests a new assessment of passivization patterns in Modern Italian.

Updating My curriculum vitae: My latest publications: The diachronic development of the Italian ... more Updating My curriculum vitae: My latest publications:

The diachronic development of the Italian focus particle almeno, Archivio Glottologico Italiano CIII, 2017, 205-224

Forme e funzioni di costruzioni passive. In: G.Brincat & S.Caruna (eds.), Tipologia e ‘dintorni’: il metodo tipologico alla intersezione di piani d’analisi (Atti del XLIX Congresso Internazionale di studi della Società di Linguistica Italiana (SLI), 105-127, Roma: Bulzoni, 2018

Degrees of grammaticalization and measure constructions in Italian, Revue Romane, published on line 5 February 2018

On the passive alternation in the construction with vedersi, in: R.Bombi & F. Costantini (a cura di), Percorsi linguistici ed interlinguistici. Studi in onore di Vincenzo Orioles, 327-339, Udine: Forum

Passives of ditransitives: the gradual rise of a Recipient passive in Italian.
In press in M. Napoli and C. Fedriani (eds). Diachrony of Ditransitives, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter

La costruzione causativo-riflessiva lasciarsi+ infinito e la sua interpretazione passiva. In press in “Studi per Diego Poli”

Archivio Glottologico Italiano CII,II , 2017

Percorsi linguistici ed interlinguistici. Studi in onore di Vincenzo Orioles, 2018

The paper describes variation in the passive construction with the Italian verb vedersi. Both mon... more The paper describes variation in the passive construction with the Italian verb vedersi. Both monotransitive and ditransitive predicates may be associated with vedersi and consequently the semantic function of the passive subject may be that of Patient or Recipient . Keeping in mind that the function of the passive is to change the perspective on the event, different types of pragmatic inferences will be discussed that distinguish the vedersi passive from other Italian passives.

Revue Romane 54,2 (2019), 257-277, 2019

Against the background of recent debate on Grammaticalization Theory, this study will provide an ... more Against the background of recent debate on Grammaticalization Theory, this study will provide an overview of some Italian quantifying expressions whose original head is a measure noun. The binominal expressions analysed indicate a quantity, either large or small; as such, they can be substituted by canonical quantifiers such as molto " much " or un po' " a little ". I claim that their functioning as quantifier is the result of a process of grammaticaliza-tion, through which the original head noun of the complex construction has been reanalysed as quantifier. At a closer look, however, the degrees of grammaticalization appear different for specific items, as well as the sources providing the recruitment of new quantifiers. The specific collocational patterns that trigger the pragmatic inferences prior to their semanticization and reanalysis have not as yet received sufficient attention. Adopting a diachronic Construction Grammar approach, the paper discusses various case studies and provides a number of descriptive and theoretical insights concerning the rise of distinct grammaticalization patterns.

Normes et grammaticalisation: le cas des langues romanes. Sous la diréction de Malinka Velinova, Sofia 2017 , 2017

After a short outlook of the history of Grammaticalization, the paper focuses on some specific to... more After a short outlook of the history of Grammaticalization, the paper focuses on some specific topics concerning Italian: the diachrony of contrastive connectives and the historical development of passive auxiliaries. It is proposed that a diachronic construction grammar approach may account for much of what has been discussed in the Grammaticalization literature.

Atti del XLIX congresso internazionale di studi della Società di linguistica Italiana (SLI), Malta 24-26 settembre 2015; Bulzoni, Roma , 2018

Some Italian passive-like constructions are examined in the light of the features discussed in th... more Some Italian passive-like constructions are examined in the light of the features discussed in the literature on passives. Constructions with finire, rimanere, trovarsi + past participle show semantic properties and limitations in generalizability which denote a process of incipient grammaticalization. On the contrary, the verb vedersi can be considered a passive auxiliary .

Transactions of the Philological Society 114,1, 2016, 1-24 , 2016

The two deictic motion verbs ‘go’ and ‘come’ serve as passive auxiliaries in a handful of languag... more The two deictic motion verbs ‘go’ and ‘come’ serve as passive auxiliaries in a handful of languages, in combination with non-finite participial forms of the main verb. Some passive constructions involving deictic motion verbs as auxiliaries are infused with special aspectual or modal meanings, even in the absence of overt aspectual or modal operators. The aim of this paper is to provide an in-depth account of the emergence of the Italian passive with andare (‘go’) + past participle, and to explore the possible crosslinguistic implications of the proposed analysis, with a view to identifying the regularities in the diachronic processes leading to the emergence of passive constructions with deictic motion verbs as auxiliaries. On the basis of a large historical corpus of Italian, we will show that the Italian motion verbs andare ‘go’ and venire ‘come’ develop into passive auxiliaries passing through a stage in which they are used as semi-copulas (with aspectual or modal values), and that this diachronic pathway appears to be valid for other languages in which such a construction type is attested.

The Pace of Grammaticalization in Romance, «Folia Linguistica» 46.2 (2012), 483-512, 2012

In this paper we compare the diachronic processes leading to contrastive connectives in Romance l... more In this paper we compare the diachronic processes leading to contrastive connectives in Romance languages. Contrastive connectives roughfly develop the same function from the same Latin lexical sources through similar paths, but at different rates. In the cases under exam French seems to follow a faster pace, being ahead of other Romance languages , and at the same time it shows a tendency towars innovation. As hypotheses for explanation, we discuss the high degree of differentiation characteristic of spoken Latin and the role of external factors, in particular the intense language contact that characterized Old French.

Linguistics 50.2: 191-239, 2012

In this paper we propose a multiple-stage model for the development of interclausal adversative c... more In this paper we propose a multiple-stage model for the development of interclausal adversative connectives, based on the qualitative and quantitative exam of the three Italian connectives però, tuttavia and mentre. The main purpose of this study is the identification of the respective roles played by frequency, syntax and context in the development of the adversative function. In the analysis of each of the three diachronic paths at issue, we keep the semantic parameters separate from the syntactic ones, monitoring both the semantic (in)compatibility of each occurrence with the source and the target meaning, identifying three macro-types of contexts (incompatible with the target meaning, compatible with both the source and the target meaning, incompatible with the source meaning), and outlining the syntactic features characterizing each context type through the centuries. Our data show that, despite the differences, the three paths show a number of recurrent properties, which underline the central function of frequency in triggering and spreading the change and the importance of constructions as the units that speakers process, elaborate and innovate. Finally, based on the relative frequency of context types over time, we propose a four-stage model that describes the successive steps of development of the adversative function.

«Folia Linguistica Historica» XXVI, 2005, 115-138 , 2005

In the course of the development of Romance languages from Latin, new relative pronouns of the ty... more In the course of the development of Romance languages from Latin, new relative pronouns of the type of Italian il quale were introduced, while the relative pronouns of Latin origin underwent various reductions of case marking as well as the weakening of gender and number distinctions, thus tending to become invariable markers. The renewal of relative pronouns in Romance languages deserves closer attention because relative pronouns are crosslinguistically a quite uncommon type (Comrie 1989:149). This paper attempts to reconstruct the conditions for the emergence in Romance languages of a relative pronoun reproducing the morphological properties of the Latin relative. The discussion focuses in particular on Italian. It is claimed that the il quale type was first used as a textual cohesion device to link a clause with a preceding one when they shared a participant. The data extracted from a corpus of Old Italian texts also suggests that non-restrictive uses of il quale were primary while restrictive ones were secondary. The il quale type seems to have entered the relative paradigm starting from the most accessible syntactic roles of Subject and Object and then to have spread down the hierarchy to the less accessible roles.

Folia Linguistica Historica 2017, 38,2 - 149-178, 2017

This paper has two goals: First it offers some theoretical reflections on the relations between g... more This paper has two goals: First it offers some theoretical reflections on the relations between grammaticalization and constructionalization. Secondly, the paper discusses a case study as an instance of constructionalization, arguing in favor of the passive interpretation of the Italian construction formed by the verb vedersi " to see oneself " followed by the past participle. The synchronic description of the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features of this construction in Modern Italian is accompanied by a diachronic investigation based on a corpus of texts from the 13th century on. Results show the gradual emergence of the passive interpretation through reanalysis of a reflexive construction and the development of idiosyncratic semantic and pragmatic features distinguishing the vedersi-construction from the standard essere " be "-passive.

Zhì. Studi in onore di Emanuele Banfi, a cura di Nicola Grandi e Gabrielel Jannaccaro, Caissa Italia Editore, Roma, 2006, pp. 239-258, 2006

Strategie di costruzione dell'enunciato nell'italiano di apprendenti: soggetti generici, costruzi... more Strategie di costruzione dell'enunciato nell'italiano di apprendenti: soggetti generici, costruzioni impersonali e passive Anna Giacalone Ramat (Pavia)

in Mario Squartini (ed) Evidentiality between lexicon and grammar. Italian Journal of Linguistics 19.1. 2007, 7-38 , 2007

Drawing on a comparison of two geographically and typologically distantlanguages, Georgian and It... more Drawing on a comparison of two geographically and typologically distantlanguages, Georgian and Italian, this paper aims to provide some insightsinto the patterning of lexical and grammatical strategies in the domain of evidentiality. First of all, in the systems described in this paper evidentialityis signaled in opposition to neutral unmarked discourse. In both languagessome verb forms, associated with various temporal and aspectual values,have taken on evidential meanings in specific contexts. Neither language hasdeveloped a morphological evidential category. A typologically relevant fea-ture is that inferential and reportive evidentiality are articulated differently:they cluster together in the Georgian perfect but are distinguished in Italian. A further conclusion of this study is that the means to express evidentialityare a domain in movement, which admits several intermediate stages, as ismanifested by the presence of grammaticalization processes involving lexicalitems and the increasing use of adverbial constructions

In Engwall, Gunnel & Fant, Lars (eds.) Festival Romanistica. Contribuciones linguísticas- Contributions linguistiques- Contributi linguistici- Contribuições linguísticas. Stockholm Studies in Romance Languages . Stockholm: Stockholm University Press. 2015, pp.13-36, 2015

. 'COME' and 'GO' off the Beaten Grammaticalization Path, Ed. by Devos, Maud / van der Wal, Jenneke, De Gruyter Mouton, 2014, 21-44, 2014

Miscellanea di studi in onore di Diego Poli, a cura di Francesca Chiusaroli , 2021

This chapter examines the Italian causative-reflexive construction lasciarsi “to let oneself’+ in... more This chapter examines the Italian causative-reflexive construction lasciarsi “to let oneself’+ infinitive which has been less studied than the other causative construction farsi+ infinitive. I have worked in terms of semantic criteria, making recourse to a number of semantic parameters in order to catch the specificity of the lasciarsi construction with respect both to the farsi construction and the passive with essere auxiliary. The analysis shows that lasciarsi followed by a transitive infinitive has a passive meaning, but is not equivalent to a passive with essere. Moreover, with respect to the other Romance languages, in particular Spanish and Portuguese, Italian shows a more advanced degree of grammaticalization of the causative-reflexive construction.

Folia Linguistica Historica XXXVI,2, 115-138, 2005

ANNA GIACALONE RAMAT 1. Developmental trends in the cross-linguistic coding of relative relations... more ANNA GIACALONE RAMAT 1. Developmental trends in the cross-linguistic coding of relative relations In his typological analysis of relative clauses (=RC), Comrie (1989: 149; 2002, 2003) notes that the relative pronoun (=RP) type is widespread in the languages of Europe but is cross-linguistically quite rare. Indeed, he points outs that examples found outside Europe nearly always turn out to have arisen under the influence of some European languages. Thus the relative-pronoun type gives "the impression of a type that arises rarely spontaneously, but which once it has arisen, is a favoured construction for borrowing" (Comrie 2003: 20). 2 A number of interesting questions arises from this suggestion: first of all one might ask whether RPs are a stable feature in the languages which use them, or show a tendency towards change, reduction or renewal giving rise to more common relative clause formation strategies, such as the anaphoric pronoun strategy and the gap strategy (Comrie 1989: 147ff., Givón 1990: 655). Both strategies, as noted by Comrie (2002), are well represented in Mediterranean and European languages, which have largely lost their case systems. Secondly, one would not expect new relative pronouns to arise easily. For this reason it is striking that Romance languages have recreated a relative pronoun of il quale type, which is marked for gender, number and syntactic role of the relativized item. The motivation for this change deserves to be investigated further. This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents a general picture of the developmental trends from Latin to Romance, taking Italian as an illustrative example. Section 3 illustrates different types of RC. Section 4 outlines the history of il quale and formulates the main claim of this paper, namely that il quale was originally used as a means of textual cohesion. Section 5 presents the results of a corpus study of Old Italian texts. Section 6 explores some Romance and Germanic parallels.

Rafael Salaberry & Yasuhiro Shirai, The L2 Acquisition of Tense-Aspect Morphology, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins, 2002

Revue Française de Linguistique Appliquée, 2011

The Diachrony of Ditransitives, edited by Chiara Fedriani and Maria Napoli101515, 2020

This paper investigates the properties and the diachronic development of a poorly described Itali... more This paper investigates the properties and the diachronic development of a poorly described Italianconstruction vedersi “to see oneself” followed by the infinitive, with the aim of defending its Recipient passiveinterpretation. From the recent typological literature (Malchukov et al. 2010) there emerges a clear tendencyacross languages for behavioral properties to comply with coding properties of arguments: this means that ina language that follows an indirective coding pattern like Italian the passivization of the Recipient argument is not allowed. The correlation is, however, not absolute (as recognized by Malchukov et al. 2010:46). The case under scrutiny represents a special strategy whose motivations are to be searched for, on the one hand, in the tendency for Recipients to be human and topical and to take the subject role in passivization (Haspelmath 2015), and on the other at the pragmatic level in a response to the need for expressing the (mostly negative) subject affectedness. Corpus based data from Modern Italian has been used to illustrate the semantic classes of predicates involved and their dominant maleficiary uses. The diachronic analysis illustrates the grammaticalization path leading from the reflexive construction, in which vedersi has a perceptive meaning, to a Recipient passive construction through texts from Old to Modern Italian, and it will also account for the gradual emergence of a passive interpretation in specific pragmatic contexts. The semantic expansion of the Recipient construction beginning in the late 19th century, through its ability to attract a variety of ditransitive predicates, can also be documented.
The earlier but parallel development of a Theme passive in the construction vedersi + past participle (GiacaloneRamat 2017) confirms the main lines of change and suggests a new assessment of passivization patterns in Modern Italian.

Updating My curriculum vitae: My latest publications: The diachronic development of the Italian ... more Updating My curriculum vitae: My latest publications:

The diachronic development of the Italian focus particle almeno, Archivio Glottologico Italiano CIII, 2017, 205-224

Forme e funzioni di costruzioni passive. In: G.Brincat & S.Caruna (eds.), Tipologia e ‘dintorni’: il metodo tipologico alla intersezione di piani d’analisi (Atti del XLIX Congresso Internazionale di studi della Società di Linguistica Italiana (SLI), 105-127, Roma: Bulzoni, 2018

Degrees of grammaticalization and measure constructions in Italian, Revue Romane, published on line 5 February 2018

On the passive alternation in the construction with vedersi, in: R.Bombi & F. Costantini (a cura di), Percorsi linguistici ed interlinguistici. Studi in onore di Vincenzo Orioles, 327-339, Udine: Forum

Passives of ditransitives: the gradual rise of a Recipient passive in Italian.
In press in M. Napoli and C. Fedriani (eds). Diachrony of Ditransitives, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter

La costruzione causativo-riflessiva lasciarsi+ infinito e la sua interpretazione passiva. In press in “Studi per Diego Poli”

Archivio Glottologico Italiano CII,II , 2017

Percorsi linguistici ed interlinguistici. Studi in onore di Vincenzo Orioles, 2018

The paper describes variation in the passive construction with the Italian verb vedersi. Both mon... more The paper describes variation in the passive construction with the Italian verb vedersi. Both monotransitive and ditransitive predicates may be associated with vedersi and consequently the semantic function of the passive subject may be that of Patient or Recipient . Keeping in mind that the function of the passive is to change the perspective on the event, different types of pragmatic inferences will be discussed that distinguish the vedersi passive from other Italian passives.

Revue Romane 54,2 (2019), 257-277, 2019

Against the background of recent debate on Grammaticalization Theory, this study will provide an ... more Against the background of recent debate on Grammaticalization Theory, this study will provide an overview of some Italian quantifying expressions whose original head is a measure noun. The binominal expressions analysed indicate a quantity, either large or small; as such, they can be substituted by canonical quantifiers such as molto " much " or un po' " a little ". I claim that their functioning as quantifier is the result of a process of grammaticaliza-tion, through which the original head noun of the complex construction has been reanalysed as quantifier. At a closer look, however, the degrees of grammaticalization appear different for specific items, as well as the sources providing the recruitment of new quantifiers. The specific collocational patterns that trigger the pragmatic inferences prior to their semanticization and reanalysis have not as yet received sufficient attention. Adopting a diachronic Construction Grammar approach, the paper discusses various case studies and provides a number of descriptive and theoretical insights concerning the rise of distinct grammaticalization patterns.

Normes et grammaticalisation: le cas des langues romanes. Sous la diréction de Malinka Velinova, Sofia 2017 , 2017

After a short outlook of the history of Grammaticalization, the paper focuses on some specific to... more After a short outlook of the history of Grammaticalization, the paper focuses on some specific topics concerning Italian: the diachrony of contrastive connectives and the historical development of passive auxiliaries. It is proposed that a diachronic construction grammar approach may account for much of what has been discussed in the Grammaticalization literature.

Atti del XLIX congresso internazionale di studi della Società di linguistica Italiana (SLI), Malta 24-26 settembre 2015; Bulzoni, Roma , 2018

Some Italian passive-like constructions are examined in the light of the features discussed in th... more Some Italian passive-like constructions are examined in the light of the features discussed in the literature on passives. Constructions with finire, rimanere, trovarsi + past participle show semantic properties and limitations in generalizability which denote a process of incipient grammaticalization. On the contrary, the verb vedersi can be considered a passive auxiliary .

Transactions of the Philological Society 114,1, 2016, 1-24 , 2016

The two deictic motion verbs ‘go’ and ‘come’ serve as passive auxiliaries in a handful of languag... more The two deictic motion verbs ‘go’ and ‘come’ serve as passive auxiliaries in a handful of languages, in combination with non-finite participial forms of the main verb. Some passive constructions involving deictic motion verbs as auxiliaries are infused with special aspectual or modal meanings, even in the absence of overt aspectual or modal operators. The aim of this paper is to provide an in-depth account of the emergence of the Italian passive with andare (‘go’) + past participle, and to explore the possible crosslinguistic implications of the proposed analysis, with a view to identifying the regularities in the diachronic processes leading to the emergence of passive constructions with deictic motion verbs as auxiliaries. On the basis of a large historical corpus of Italian, we will show that the Italian motion verbs andare ‘go’ and venire ‘come’ develop into passive auxiliaries passing through a stage in which they are used as semi-copulas (with aspectual or modal values), and that this diachronic pathway appears to be valid for other languages in which such a construction type is attested.

The Pace of Grammaticalization in Romance, «Folia Linguistica» 46.2 (2012), 483-512, 2012

In this paper we compare the diachronic processes leading to contrastive connectives in Romance l... more In this paper we compare the diachronic processes leading to contrastive connectives in Romance languages. Contrastive connectives roughfly develop the same function from the same Latin lexical sources through similar paths, but at different rates. In the cases under exam French seems to follow a faster pace, being ahead of other Romance languages , and at the same time it shows a tendency towars innovation. As hypotheses for explanation, we discuss the high degree of differentiation characteristic of spoken Latin and the role of external factors, in particular the intense language contact that characterized Old French.

Linguistics 50.2: 191-239, 2012

In this paper we propose a multiple-stage model for the development of interclausal adversative c... more In this paper we propose a multiple-stage model for the development of interclausal adversative connectives, based on the qualitative and quantitative exam of the three Italian connectives però, tuttavia and mentre. The main purpose of this study is the identification of the respective roles played by frequency, syntax and context in the development of the adversative function. In the analysis of each of the three diachronic paths at issue, we keep the semantic parameters separate from the syntactic ones, monitoring both the semantic (in)compatibility of each occurrence with the source and the target meaning, identifying three macro-types of contexts (incompatible with the target meaning, compatible with both the source and the target meaning, incompatible with the source meaning), and outlining the syntactic features characterizing each context type through the centuries. Our data show that, despite the differences, the three paths show a number of recurrent properties, which underline the central function of frequency in triggering and spreading the change and the importance of constructions as the units that speakers process, elaborate and innovate. Finally, based on the relative frequency of context types over time, we propose a four-stage model that describes the successive steps of development of the adversative function.

«Folia Linguistica Historica» XXVI, 2005, 115-138 , 2005

In the course of the development of Romance languages from Latin, new relative pronouns of the ty... more In the course of the development of Romance languages from Latin, new relative pronouns of the type of Italian il quale were introduced, while the relative pronouns of Latin origin underwent various reductions of case marking as well as the weakening of gender and number distinctions, thus tending to become invariable markers. The renewal of relative pronouns in Romance languages deserves closer attention because relative pronouns are crosslinguistically a quite uncommon type (Comrie 1989:149). This paper attempts to reconstruct the conditions for the emergence in Romance languages of a relative pronoun reproducing the morphological properties of the Latin relative. The discussion focuses in particular on Italian. It is claimed that the il quale type was first used as a textual cohesion device to link a clause with a preceding one when they shared a participant. The data extracted from a corpus of Old Italian texts also suggests that non-restrictive uses of il quale were primary while restrictive ones were secondary. The il quale type seems to have entered the relative paradigm starting from the most accessible syntactic roles of Subject and Object and then to have spread down the hierarchy to the less accessible roles.

Folia Linguistica Historica 2017, 38,2 - 149-178, 2017

This paper has two goals: First it offers some theoretical reflections on the relations between g... more This paper has two goals: First it offers some theoretical reflections on the relations between grammaticalization and constructionalization. Secondly, the paper discusses a case study as an instance of constructionalization, arguing in favor of the passive interpretation of the Italian construction formed by the verb vedersi " to see oneself " followed by the past participle. The synchronic description of the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features of this construction in Modern Italian is accompanied by a diachronic investigation based on a corpus of texts from the 13th century on. Results show the gradual emergence of the passive interpretation through reanalysis of a reflexive construction and the development of idiosyncratic semantic and pragmatic features distinguishing the vedersi-construction from the standard essere " be "-passive.

Zhì. Studi in onore di Emanuele Banfi, a cura di Nicola Grandi e Gabrielel Jannaccaro, Caissa Italia Editore, Roma, 2006, pp. 239-258, 2006

Strategie di costruzione dell'enunciato nell'italiano di apprendenti: soggetti generici, costruzi... more Strategie di costruzione dell'enunciato nell'italiano di apprendenti: soggetti generici, costruzioni impersonali e passive Anna Giacalone Ramat (Pavia)

in Mario Squartini (ed) Evidentiality between lexicon and grammar. Italian Journal of Linguistics 19.1. 2007, 7-38 , 2007

Drawing on a comparison of two geographically and typologically distantlanguages, Georgian and It... more Drawing on a comparison of two geographically and typologically distantlanguages, Georgian and Italian, this paper aims to provide some insightsinto the patterning of lexical and grammatical strategies in the domain of evidentiality. First of all, in the systems described in this paper evidentialityis signaled in opposition to neutral unmarked discourse. In both languagessome verb forms, associated with various temporal and aspectual values,have taken on evidential meanings in specific contexts. Neither language hasdeveloped a morphological evidential category. A typologically relevant fea-ture is that inferential and reportive evidentiality are articulated differently:they cluster together in the Georgian perfect but are distinguished in Italian. A further conclusion of this study is that the means to express evidentialityare a domain in movement, which admits several intermediate stages, as ismanifested by the presence of grammaticalization processes involving lexicalitems and the increasing use of adverbial constructions

In Engwall, Gunnel & Fant, Lars (eds.) Festival Romanistica. Contribuciones linguísticas- Contributions linguistiques- Contributi linguistici- Contribuições linguísticas. Stockholm Studies in Romance Languages . Stockholm: Stockholm University Press. 2015, pp.13-36, 2015

. 'COME' and 'GO' off the Beaten Grammaticalization Path, Ed. by Devos, Maud / van der Wal, Jenneke, De Gruyter Mouton, 2014, 21-44, 2014

This paper investigates the properties of a set of poorly described Italian constructions charact... more This paper investigates the properties of a set of poorly described Italian constructions characterized, at the same time, by (i) a dubitative component, challenging a presupposition generated by the preceding context and (ii) a corrective function. These constructions revolve around four adverbial elements (al massimo, al limite, tutt\u2019al pi\uf9 and caso mai) that have other functions besides the dubitative-corrective one. The analysis will illustrate how their dubitative-corrective function emerges in specific discourse configurations and will discuss their further pragmatic uses as mitigators, which appear to be crucially connected to the dubitative component. The theoretical implications of the analysis concern the definition itself of dubitative-corrective construction and the role of dialogical contexts in the development of a dubitative-corrective function. It will be shown that the constructions in question, though sharing a dubitative-corrective function, differ in various respects. These differences can be traced back to their different diachronic sources, namely a scalar construction for al massimo, al limite, and tutt\u2019al pi\uf9, and a conditional construction in the case of caso mai. The evolutionary paths leading from these source constructions to dubitative-corrective constructions present a different configuration, whereby the dubitative function emerges after the corrective function in the case of elements originally participating in a scalar construction (al limite, al massimo, tutt\u2019al pi\uf9) while in the development of caso mai the simple dubitative function precedes the dubitative-corrective one

Revue Romane / Langue et littérature. International Journal of Romance Languages and Literatures, 2018

Against the background of recent debate on Grammaticalization Theory, this study will provide an ... more Against the background of recent debate on Grammaticalization Theory, this study will provide an overview of some Italian quantifying expressions whose original head is a measure noun. The binominal expressions analysed indicate a quantity, either large or small; as such, they can be substituted by canonical quantifiers such as molto “much” or un po’ “a little”. I claim that their functioning as quantifier is the result of a process of grammaticalization, through which the original head noun of the complex construction has been reanalysed as quantifier. At a closer look, however, the degrees of grammaticalization appear different for specific items, as well as the sources providing the recruitment of new quantifiers. The specific collocational patterns that trigger the pragmatic inferences prior to their semanticization and reanalysis have not as yet received sufficient attention. Adopting a diachronic Construction Grammar approach, the paper discusses various case studies and provi...

Folia Linguistica, 2017

This paper has two goals: First it offers some theoretical reflections on the relations between g... more This paper has two goals: First it offers some theoretical reflections on the relations between grammaticalization and constructionalization. Secondly, the paper discusses a case study as an instance of constructionalization, arguing in favor of the passive interpretation of the Italian construction formed by the verbvedersi‘to see oneself’ followed by the past participle. The synchronic description of the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features of this construction in Modern Italian is accompanied by a diachronic investigation based on a corpus of texts from the thirteenth century on. Results show the gradual emergence of the passive interpretation through reanalysis of a reflexive construction and the development of idiosyncratic semantic and pragmatic features distinguishing thevedersi-construction from the standardessere‘be’-passive.

Cuadernos de Filología Italiana, 2015

Lo scopo di questo lavoro è duplice, poiché mira a fornire un quadro sincronico e diacronico dell... more Lo scopo di questo lavoro è duplice, poiché mira a fornire un quadro sincronico e diacronico delle funzioni con le quali piuttosto che è utilizzato nell'italiano contemporaneo e a ricostruire il percorso diacronico che ha condotto allo sviluppo di tali funzioni. Accanto al valore originale, in cui il connettivo introduce un'alternativa scartata (a favore di un'altra preferita), piuttosto che viene frequentemente usato anche i) per collegare tra loro alternative equivalenti, tipicamente non esaustive, e ii) in posizione finale di frase, per suggerire la presenza di ulteriori alternative potenziali non menzionate (somigliando ad eccetera). Questi due usi di piuttosto che sono accomunati da una funzione esemplificativa, tramite cui le alternative esplicite sono presentate come membri possibili e rappresentativi di una categoria più astratta. Sia l'analisi sincronica che quella diacronica si basano su un corpus di dati appositamente costruito che include occorrenze di parlato e di scritto del web, in grado di rivelare anche quelle funzioni più colloquiali e discorsive che non sono ancora attestate nello scritto. Accanto all'analisi diacronica, verrà proposto uno sguardo comparativo, volto a mostrare come lo sviluppo diacronico seguito da piuttosto che trovi dei paralleli in altre lingue.

Studies in Language Companion Series, 2007

Page 93. Relativization strategies in the languages of Europe Sonia Cristofaro and Anna Giacalone... more Page 93. Relativization strategies in the languages of Europe Sonia Cristofaro and Anna Giacalone Ramat This paper examines the relativization patterns found in twenty-six languages of Europe, focusing on the strategies used to encode the relativized item. ...

Folia Linguistica Historica, 2005

El español tiene como característica para la formación de cláusulas de relativo la llamada estrat... more El español tiene como característica para la formación de cláusulas de relativo la llamada estrategia del pronombre relativo, en la que éste representa la función que desempeña el ante cedente en la cláusula de relativo, pero, al igual que otras lenguas de diversas familias lingüísticas, participa de la posibilidad de construir cláusulas de relativo en las que la función del antecedente está indicada por un pronombre personal anafórico átono (cf. "Vimos al niño que le dieron el premio ayer") o tónico (cf. "Es una chica que todo el mundo se fija en ella"), según la función de la que se trate en cada caso. Es el mecanismo conocido como estrategia de retención del pronombre 1 o estrategia del pronombre anafórico 2 , que, con algunas variantes entre las lenguas que lo tienen como básico, es un procedimiento de relativización ampliamente extendido visto en perspectiva tipológica 3 .

Studies in Language Companion Series, 2007

This paper focuses on the areal distribution of indefinite man -constructions (i.e. impersonal ac... more This paper focuses on the areal distribution of indefinite man -constructions (i.e. impersonal active constructions in which the subject position is filled by a noun meaning ‘man’) in European languages. It is shown that man -constructions are a widespread phenomenon across Europe: they show up consistently in the so-called “Charlemagne area”, and tend to diffuse eastwards to West and South Slavonic languages, whereas East Slavonic languages do not present clear instances of this construction type. This areal distribution allows us to consider these constructions as a yet unnoticed areal feature of the Standard Average European area, but they are, in a sense, a recessive areal feature, and their distribution in older times included more languages than today (especially in Germanic and Romance). On the other hand, the eastward expansion towards the Slavonic area appears to be a quite recent phenomenon, and man -constructions in Slavonic languages are possibly an incipient category. To cope with this apparent discrepancy, a twowave model of diffusion is introduced, which singles out two historical periods in which the diffusion of these constructions is likely to have taken place.

Studies in Language Companion Series, 2011

In contemporary Italian, there is a passive si-construction in which the patient governs agreemen... more In contemporary Italian, there is a passive si-construction in which the patient governs agreement on the verb and an impersonal si-construction in which either the verb is intransitive or the patient is not promoted to subject. The coexistence of the two constructions is the result of a long-lasting process by which an impersonal has developed out of (and has progressively differentiated itself from) an original passive. In this paper we focus on the initial stage of this process, namely the extension of the si-construction to intransitive verbs, and the emergence of the non-agreeing pattern with transitive verbs. Based on a large corpus of literary and non-literary documents, we argue that both these phenomena require a reanalysis of si as a marker of generic human agency as a necessary precondition, and that such a reanalysis starts with patients that are unlikely candidates for subjecthood.

Archivio glottologico italiano, 2007

Dans cet article, les As. abordent le cas de « uomo » ("on") et de son emploi indéfini ... more Dans cet article, les As. abordent le cas de « uomo » ("on") et de son emploi indéfini dans les langues italo-romanes. Dans cette optique, ils étudient les contextes typiques de cet emploi. Ils examinent également le processus de grammaticalisation du nom vers le pronom puis ...

La Quantification en Latin

Italian Journal of Linguistics , 2007

Drawing on a comparison of two geographically and typologically distant languages, Georgian and ... more Drawing on a comparison of two geographically and typologically distant
languages, Georgian and Italian, this paper aims to provide some insights
into the patterning of lexical and grammatical strategies in the domain of
evidentiality. First of all, in the systems described in this paper evidentiality
is signaled in opposition to neutral unmarked discourse. In both languages
some verb forms, associated with various temporal and aspectual values,
have taken on evidential meanings in specific contexts. Neither language has
developed a morphological evidential category. A typologically relevant feature is that inferential and reportive evidentiality are articulated differently:
they cluster together in the Georgian perfect but are distinguished in Italian.
A further conclusion of this study is that the means to express evidentiality
are a domain in movement, which admits several intermediate stages, as is
manifested by the presence of grammaticalization processes involving lexical
items and the increasing use of adverbial constructions.

Gradualness in language change: A constructional perspective 27 Graeme Trousdale Gradual change a... more Gradualness in language change: A constructional perspective 27 Graeme Trousdale Gradual change and continual variation: The history of a verb-initial construction in Welsh 43 Currie Can you literally be scared The role of analogy in the rise of a network of Resultative and Degree Modifier constructions 79 Hilene Margerie Binding Hierarchy and peculiarities of the verb potere in some Southern Calabrian varieties 419 De Angelis

IULIA MĂRGĂRIT, Réflexions sur un glossaire dialectal. Attestations "involontaires" (V). .. 107 M... more IULIA MĂRGĂRIT, Réflexions sur un glossaire dialectal. Attestations "involontaires" (V). .. 107 MIHAELA MARIANA MORCOV, Désignations pour ‛(cheveux) blancs' dans les patois dacoroumains sur la base de ALRR.

Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory

Festival Romanistica: Contribuciones lingüísticas – Contributions linguistiques – Contributi linguistici – Contribuições linguísticas, 2015

Transactions of the Philological Society, 2015

The two deictic motion verbs 'go' and 'come' serve as passive auxiliaries in a handful of languag... more The two deictic motion verbs 'go' and 'come' serve as passive auxiliaries in a handful of languages, in combination with non-finite participial forms of the main verb. Some passive constructions involving deictic motion verbs as auxiliaries are infused with special aspectual or modal meanings, even in the absence of overt aspectual or modal operators. The aim of this paper is to provide an in-depth account of the emergence of the Italian passive with andare ('go') + past participle, and to explore the possible crosslinguistic implications of the proposed analysis, with a view to identifying the regularities in the diachronic processes leading to the emergence of passive constructions with deictic motion verbs as auxiliaries. On the basis of a large historical corpus of Italian, we will show that the Italian motion verbs andare 'go' and venire 'come' develop into passive auxiliaries passing through a stage in which they are used as semi-copulas (with aspectual or modal values), and that this diachronic pathway appears to be valid for other languages in which such a construction type is attested. 'The books were read'. 3 (Kachru 2006: 93) 1 This article is the result of joint research. Anna Giacalone Ramat has written Sections 1 and 3 and Andrea Sans o has written Sections 2 and 4. Section 5 has been written together by the two authors. We would like to thank James Clackson and two anonymous referees for their comments on an earlier version of the present article. 2 As the interlinear glosses in (1) clarify, articles and perfective participles in Italian are overtly marked for gender and number. For the sake of simplicity, however, in the remainder of this article we will only make use of ART and PFV.PTCP respectively. 3 The transliteration of Hindi examples follows the transliteration system adopted by Kachru (2006). Examples from other sources have been adapted to this system.

Typological Studies in Language, 2008

130 Anna Giacalone Ramat morphosyntactic contexts under highly specific pragmatic conditions (cf.... more 130 Anna Giacalone Ramat morphosyntactic contexts under highly specific pragmatic conditions (cf. Traugott 2003). Growing attention has also been paid to the issue of the limits of grammat-icalization and the problem of how to distinguish between grammaticalization ...

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2011

The grammaticalization of coordinating connectives: general properties 2.1 Intra-linguistic varia... more The grammaticalization of coordinating connectives: general properties 2.1 Intra-linguistic variation, renewal and borrowability * This work is the result of a continuous exchange of ideas between the two authors. However, Anna Giacalone Ramat is responsible for the writing of sections 2.1, 2.2 and 3.3, and Caterina Mauri is responsible for the writing of sections 1, 3.1 and 3.2.