Italian Clitics: An Empirical Study

Italian Clitics

≥

Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs 193

Editors

Walter Bisang (main editor for this volume)

Hans Henrich Hock Werner Winter

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

Italian Clitics An Empirical Study

by

Cinzia Russi

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin.

앝 Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines 앪 of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Russi, Cinzia, 1966⫺ Italian clitics : an empirical study / by Cinzia Russi. p. cm. ⫺ (Trends in linguistics studies and monographs ; 193) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-3-11-019868-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Italian language ⫺ Clitics. I. Title. PC1261.R8778 2008 455⫺dc22 2008003386

ISBN 978-3-11-019868-3 ISSN 1861-4302 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. ” Copyright 2008 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover design: Christopher Schneider, Berlin. Printed in Germany.

Acknowledgements

This monograph is a thoroughly revised and substantially extended version of my doctoral dissertation, which I completed in 2003 in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Washington. I would like to express again my gratitude to the members of my dissertation committee: my warmest thanks to Jurgen Klausenburger, for getting me interested in grammaticalization and for his impeccable supervision, and to Frederick Newmeyer, Alicia Wassinck, and Karen Zagona, for their precious and caring assistance. I would like to thank my colleagues and friends in the French and Italian Department at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as my students, for providing a very pleasant working environment and showing warm encouragement and support. I am grateful to the Dean of Graduate Studies for the Summer Research Award I received in 2006 and to the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts for the Dean’s Fellowship Research Award I was granted in the spring semester of 2007. Being relieved from my teaching duties facilitated the preparation of the manuscript enormously. I am sincerely grateful to the anonymous reviewer for Mouton the Gruyter, who provided clear, detailed, and very helpful comments to the original version of the manuscript. Many warm thanks go also to my editors, Birgit Sievert and Wolfgang Konwitschny, for their patience and for kindly assisting me through the different stages of the publication process, particularly the preparation of the camera-ready copy of the manuscript. Special thanks then go to Cory Lyle, Catharine Minois Stoyanoff, Anne Gaskill, and Traci Andrighetti, who graciously volunteered to undertake the burdensome task of proofreading the final version of the manuscript. Heartfelt thanks go to my dearest parents, Rocco and Teresa, for their love and thoughtfulness; to my sister Claudia, Sebastiano, Alessandro, and Dario piccolo; and to my ‘baby’ sister Laura, who I hope will read the book and give me valuable feedback. I dedicate this book to Dario grande, Chiara, and Alice, who have supported me tirelessly and lovingly throughout this project. The three of them have always been ready to cheer me up with their love and understanding during the moments of crisis, patiently enduring occasional but not rare incidences of unjustified rudeness and undeserved ungratefulness; for this, I

vi Acknowledgements am very grateful. Dario has constantly and firmly pushed me to keep working hard and to remain focused and his strict supervision has considerably sped up the completion of the manuscript; for this, I am even more grateful. Chiara and Alice have been so thoughtful to show interest in my writing and to express great enthusiasm for my project at the most appropriate time; for this I am, perhaps, the most grateful. As cliché as it may sound, I must say that I would not have succeeded without their help.

Austin, March 13, 2008

Contents

Acknowledgements List of figures List of tables Abbreviations

v xi xi xiv

Chapter 1. Introduction 1.1. Background 1.2. Clitics: a controversial category 1.2.1. A basic definition 1.2.2. Romance clitics 1.2.3. Distinctive properties of clitics 1.3. Organization and contents 1.4. A concise diachronic sketch of Italian 1.5. Sources

1 1 2 2 3 5 8 10 16

Chapter 2. Grammaticalization, lexicalization, and language change 2.1. Introduction 2.2. General features of grammaticalization 2.2.1. Basic theoretical assumptions within the traditional framework 2.2.2. Grammaticalization continua 2.2.3. Diachronic and synchronic relevance of grammaticalization 2.2.4. Cognitive and pragmatic factors 2.2.4.1 Metaphor 2.2.4.2. Metonymy and pragmatic inference 2.2.4.3. Context-induced interpretation 2.3. Lexicalization 2.3.1. Defining properties 2.3.2. Grammaticalization and lexicalization 2.4. Controversial issues in grammaticalization theory 2.4.1. The role of reanalysis and analogy 2.4.2. Grammaticalization as an epiphenomenon 2.5. Summary

21 21 22 22 30 32 34 34 35 37 38 38 39 41 41 42 45

viii

Contents

Chapter 3. The Italian clitic system: a brief introduction 3.1. Introduction 3.2. The clitic system of Contemporary Standard Italian 3.2.1. The clitic pronoun inventory 3.2.2. Gli as plural indirect object form 3.2.3. The clitic si 3.2.4. The clitics ci and vi 3.2.5. The clitic ne 3.3. Clitic linearization in Contemporary Standard Italian 3.4. The clitic system of Old Italian 3.5. Summary

47 47 47 47 49 51 57 61 63 65 68

Chapter 4. Grammaticalization of the clitic pronouns 4.1. Introduction 4.2. The general process 4.2.1. The initial phases 4.2.2. Moving forward 4.2.2.1. Fixation of the clitic-verb linearization 4.2.2.2. Fixation of the order of clitic sequences 4.3. The allomorphy in clitic sequences 4.4. Neutralization processes in the third person clitic 4.4.1. Gender and number neutralization 4.4.2 Ci as third person indirect object 4.5. Conclusion

71 71 71 71 76 78 79 89 92 92 96 101

Chapter 5. Verbs in ne 5.1. Introduction 5.2. Obligatory ne 5.3. Function(s) of lexicalized ne 5.4. Idiomatization and fixation 5.4.1. Degrees of idiomatic value 5.4.2. Fixed and semi-fixed locutions 5.5. Non-obligatory ne: saperne 5.6. Conclusion

103 103 104 113 119 119 123 127 136

Chapter 6. Verbs in ci 6.1. Introduction 6.2. Obligatory ci 6.2.1. Volerci

139 139 143 143

Contents

6.2.2. 6.2.2.1. 6.2.2.2. 6.3. 6.3.1. 6.3.1.1. 6.3.1.2. 6.3.2. 6.4. 6.4.1. 6.4.2. 6.4.3. 6.5.

Metterci, entrarci and starci Metterci Entrarci and starcia Obligatory ci and semantic specialization Starcib and provarci Starcib Provarci Farci Esserci, averci and verbs of perception Esserci Averci Verbs of perception Conclusion

ix 149 150 152 154 155 155 156 157 160 160 162 167 171

Chapter 7. Verbs in la 7.1. Introduction 7.2. Some verbs in la 7.2.1. Smetterla and finirla 7.2.2. The farla type 7.3. Verbs in sela 7.4. Verbs in cela 7.5. Conclusion

173 173 174 180 193 197 202 205

Chapter 8. Clitics or affixes? 8.1. Introduction 8.2. Italian clitic pronouns as inflectional affixes 8.2.1. Selectional restriction with respect to the host 8.2.2. Arbitrary gaps in clitic sequences 8.2.3. Idiosyncratic behavior 8.2.3.1. Morphological idiosyncrasies 8.2.3.2. Semantic idiosyncrasies 8.2.4. Syntactic rules 8.2.5. Clitic ordering 8.3. A clitic-affix continuum 8.3.1. Synchronic vs. diachronic approach 8.3.2. Pragmatico-pronominal clitics 8.3.3. The lexicalized clitics in the clitic-affix continuum 8.3.4. The inflectional-derivational continuum 8.4. Conclusion

207 207 209 210 211 217 217 222 222 224 228 228 228 236 242 245

x

Contents

Chapter 9. Conclusion

247

Notes References Index of names Subject index

251 261 290 294

List of figures

Figure 1. Figure 2. Figure 3. Figure 4. Figure 5.

Andare vs. andarsene Mettere vs. metterci Template for the Italian clitic clusters Grammaticalization chain Grammaticalization chain for Italian clitic

117 150 225 240 241

List of tables

Table 1. Table 2. Table 3. Table 4. Table 5. Table 6. Table 7. Table 8. Table 9. Table 10. Table 11. Table 12. Table 13. Table 14. Table 15. Table 16. Table 17. Table 18. Table 19. Table 20.

Modern Italian masculine definite article allomorphy Third person subject pronouns Subject pronoun forms in LIP Thirteenth to fifteenth century sources Sixteenth to early twentieth century sources Parameters for establishing degrees of grammaticalization Principal aspects of linguistic autonomy Lehmann’s parameters of grammaticalization Grammaticalization processes Hopper’s (1991) principles of grammaticalization Instances of lexicalization The personal clitic pronouns of CSI Other clitic pronouns of CSI The personal tonic pronouns of CSI Occurrences of 3PL gli and 3PL loro in Hall (1960) Occurrences of 3PL IO loro and gli in LIP Occurrences of non-personal vi in LIP sorted by city and discourse type Allomorphy in OI third person clitic pronouns Allomorphy in OI first and second person plural clitic pronouns Grammaticalization of Italian clitics

12 13 13 19 20 25 27 28 28 29 38 48 48 48 50 51 59 72 72 78

Table 21. Table 22. Table 23. Table 24. Table 25. Table 26. Table 27. Table 28.

Table 29. Table 30. Table 31. Table 32. Table 33. Table 34. Table 35. Table 36. Table 37. Table 38. Table 39. Table 40. Table 41. Table 42. Table 43. Table 44. Table 45.

Occurrences of DO– IO and IO– DO in Old Florentine Occurrences of DO– IO and IO– DO in Old Florentine Occurrences of DO– IO and IO– DO in Old Italian Summary of the distribution of 1/2IO–3DO sequences in Old Italian (tenth–thirteenth centuries) Distribution of 1/2IO–3DO sequences in the first and second half of the fourteenth century Distribution of 3DO–1/2IO sequences in the first and second half of the fourteenth century Distribution of me/te-3DO vs. mi/ti-3DO pattern in OVI (chronologically unrestricted) Distribution of me/te-3DO vs. mi/ti-3DO pattern in OVI geographically separated and chronologically constrained Variable and invariable gli(e)-DO in Old Florentine (900-1300) Variable and invariable gli(e)-DO in Old Florentine (1301-1400) Grammaticalization developments involving third person indirect object Italian verbs and verbal periphrases in ne Sources of fregarsene and its synonyms Occurrences of uscirsene in the third person form in CORIS/CODIS Occurrences of che so vs. che ne so in LIP Italian verbs in ci Frequency values of averci in LIP (Koch 1994) Frequency values of averci configurations in LIP (Koch 1994) Avere vs. averci in LIP in constructions involving 3DO Avere vs. averci in LIP: a partial assessment (a) Avere vs. averci in LIP: a partial assessment (b) Verbs in la Frequency of imperative forms of smettere and smetterla in CORIS/CODIS Verbs in sela Grammaticalization continuum of anaphoric forms and external agreement (Lehmann 1982)

85 85 86 86 86 87 91 92

95 95 100 107 120 122 136 142 164 164 164 164 165 176 188 198 230

Table 46. Table 47. Table 48.

Grammaticalization continuum of Italian clitics (a) Grammaticalization continuum of Italian clitics (b) Grammaticalization continuum of Italian clitics (c)

234 235 237

Abbreviations

§ 1, 2, 3 ABL ACC

ADJ ADV AUX

CL CSI DAT DEF DET DO F FUT GER II INF IO IMP

paragraph first, second, third person ablative accusative adjective adverb auxiliary Classical Latin Contemporary Standard Italian dative definite determiner direct object feminine future gerund imperfect indicative infinitive indirect object imperative

IMPS IS M N

NP NOM

OI PERS PI PL

PP PP PPERF PR PRON PS RFLX SG

SL

impersonal imperfect subjunctive masculine neuter noun phrase nominative Old Italian person present indicative plural prepositional phrase past participle past perfect passato remoto pronoun present subjunctive reflexive singular Spoken Latin

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1. Background For the past thirty years or so, grammaticalization (also grammaticization Hopper 1991, Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca 1994; grammatization Matisoff 1991: 383, according to whom the term grammaticalization should be avoided due to “its heptasyllabic cacophony”; and de-syntacticization Klausenburger 2000), has represented a very active and increasingly prolific area of linguistic research. This monograph has three primary objectives. First, I want to offer a recapitulatory assessment of the most salient stages in the evolution of the Italian clitic pronouns, both as individual items and as a system, mainly from a grammaticalization perspective. Second, I intend to provide a comprehensive empirical analysis of phenomena, which, I will propose, involve both grammaticalization and lexicalization. These phenomena pertain to relatively more recent stages in the development of the Italian language and concern only certain clitics or specific clitic clusters. My third goal in the present study is to lay the groundwork for the achievement of an extensive and systematic examination of the different morphosyntactic and semantic-pragmatic functions that Italian clitic pronouns can carry out. More precisely, I will begin to investigate a number of morphosyntactic and semantic-pragmatic functions and values that Italian clitics have developed because of grammaticalization. These relatively novel functions have not yet received the systematic attention they deserve and remain for the most part under-explored, even from a strictly descriptive perspective, with the relevant clitics being hastily attributed vague and unrevealing labels such as “pleonastic”, “emphatic” or “empty” marker. This third objective, therefore, is directly linked to the other two and in fact nicely complements them. This study aims to be fundamentally descriptive. Nevertheless, some discussion about the core theoretical issues related to grammaticalization and lexicalization has been included since they emerge (inevitably, I would say) in connection with the description of the mere linguistic facts. Specifically, given the diverse and at times divergent interpretation these two terms have received (see Bisang, Himmelman, and Wiemer 2004, in particular the introductory article by Bisang and Wiemer; cf. also Wischer and

2 Chapter 1: Introduction Diewald 2002), I found it necessary to characterize as clearly and concisely as possible how the phenomena of grammaticalization and lexicalization are interpreted in this study. As for the presentation and discussion of the data, although quite informally, I embrace the spirit and adopt the core assumptions of the functionalist (cognitive) framework of linguistic analysis as developed mainly in works such as Fillmore (1982, 1985), Lakoff (1987), Langacker (1987, 1991), Talmy (2000), but also Croft (1991, 2001) and Goldberg (1995, 2006). Within this framework, language is not seen as autonomous from cognition: the cognitive and psychological processes and principles that govern languages are the same processes and principles that govern other aspects of human cognitive and social behavior. Grammar is identified with conceptualization, and the conceptualization and representation of language structure follow the same strategies as the conceptualization and representation of conceptual structures other than linguistic ones. Language structure is explained by way of reference to cognitive principles and mechanisms that are not exclusive to language, such as general categorization principles as well as pragmatic and interactional principles. In short, language portrays the way we construe reality (cf. also Haiman’s 1980, 1985 notion of iconicity). Furthermore, linguistic constructions are a pairing of form and meaning, i.e., they carry meaning independently of the specific words they comprise (Goldberg 1995, 2006). Finally, the competence vs. performance dichotomy is rejected since knowledge of language is not considered as simply innate but is viewed as emerging from language use. In other words, the way speakers make use of language (i.e., communicative patterns of language use) shapes linguistic structures. The main reason why I chose to limit the discussion of the theoretical assumptions to the essentials as well as to adopt a minimally technical tone when dealing with them is to accommodate readers with diverse, or perhaps even minimal, linguistics backgrounds and thus make the book accessible to a wider and more diverse audience.

1.2. Clitics: a controversial category 1.2.1. A basic definition A very basic morphosyntactic definition of the term clitic (from the Old Greek verb klínein ‘to lean’) can be formulated as follows: clitics refer to

Clitics: a controversial category 3

intermediate linguistic units, which grammatically behave like in that they combine with other words or phrases to make phrases, but are phonologically bound to an adjacent word traditionally referred to as the “host” (Zwicky 1977; Klavans 1982; Matthews 1991; Halpern 1998; Riemsdijk 1999, among others). However, clitics form a considerably heterogeneous linguistic category, which includes pronouns, auxiliaries, determiners, negative particles, and interrogative particles (Zwicky 1977; Klavans 1982, 1985, among many others). A general characterization of the category of clitics can be found in Zwicky’s (1977) pioneering study on the topic, where two main classes are distinguished: simple clitics and special clitics. Simple clitics are prosodically weak (i.e., unstressed) and phonologically reduced forms, which are transparently derived from correspondent strong (i.e., stressed) full forms. These forms, however, do not behave like canonical inflectional or derivational affixes in that they do not attach to lexemes or parts of lexemes (roots and stems) to obtain different forms of a same lexeme or derive new lexemes. Typical examples of simple clitics are English reduced auxiliaries (e.g., ’ve
have, ’re
are/were) and personal pronouns (e.g., ‘m
him/them). Special clitics, on the other hand, cannot be transparently related to full (or simply stressed) corresponding forms, from which they differ also (and more importantly) in terms of morphosyntactic behavior.1 The unstressed (also weak or atonic) pronouns found in Romance languages are considered among the best representatives of the special clitic class because they indeed manifest the distinguishing features of the class. That is, Romance clitic pronouns stand in opposition to stressed (also strong or tonic) pronominal forms with analogous grammatical functions.2 The members of this clitic series, however, are not reduced forms of their tonic equivalents in that they do not stand in the same relation as, for instance, English them ~ ’m. Moreover, the two series are characterized by specific (complementary) distributional properties; that is, they appear in different constructions, as it will be shown presently.

1.2.2. Romance clitics Romance clitic pronouns are also frequently referred to as bound pronouns (e.g., Lambrecht 1994, 2001). The term clitic has been rejected in this case because it presents a number of conceptual problems, which will be dis-

4 Chapter 1: Introduction cussed in some detail later. The choice to adopt the traditional term clitic neither arises from nor aims at embracing a specific theoretical standpoint. Rather, it derives simply from the reluctance to abandon a long-standing tradition among Romance linguistics research, especially diachronic. Although this study will reveal that Italian clitics (and therefore, possibly, Romance clitics in general) constitute a linguistic category that cannot be related to traditional, well-established linguistic categories and should thus be viewed as a sui generis class, I believe that there is no need for the introduction of a new label to refer to them. The important thing is to clearly specify which items belong to the class. Once the class has been accurately identified in terms of the crucial (i.e., defining) features and properties of its members, the name attributed to it becomes, in my opinion, irrelevant. Romance clitics include mostly object personal pronouns,3 which derive from the Latin distal demonstrative ILLE (the third person clitics) or from Latin personal pronouns (the first and second person clitics). They select a verb as their host and are subject to a variety of morphosyntactic constraints.4 Some of these constraints are illustrated in the Italian examples (1)–(6). Further restriction typical of Italian clitic pronouns will be discussed in detail in later chapters. (1)

a. Carlo saluta Mario. “Carlo greets Mario.”

b. *Carlo Mario saluta.

(2)

a. *Carlo saluta lo. “Carlo greets him.”

b. Carlo lo saluta.

(3)

*Carlo loi saluta Marioi. “Carlo greets Mario.”

(4)

a. per salutar-loi for greet.INF-him

(5)

a. Carlo saluta LUI (non lei). b. *Carlo saluta LO (not la). “Carlo greets HIM (not her).”

(6)

a. Carlo esce con lui. “Carlo goes out with him.”

b. *per loi salutare

b. *Carlo esce con lo.

Clitics: a controversial category 5

As shown by the contrast between (1) and (2), Italian clitic pronouns cannot occupy the same position with respect to the verb host as their corresponding referential expression, most typically a nominal constituent, nor can they co-occur with it, as we see in (3), where the subscript indicates coreference. The examples in (4), on the other hand, illustrate that the clitic pronoun must occur after the verb if the verb is in a non-finite form. In (5) we notice that Italian clitic pronouns, because they cannot receive any stress, must be replaced by their corresponding tonic forms5 in environments where contrastive stress – indicated here by small caps – is required. Finally, (6) shows that clitics must be replaced by their stressed counterparts also when they occur in prepositional complements.

1.2.3. Distinctive properties of clitics Starting with Zwicky’s (1977) seminal study, a vast amount of research has been devoted to precisely identify the phonological and morphosyntactic properties exhibited by clitics cross-linguistically and determine their categorial status within grammar. Despite such intensely prolific investigation, however, a cohesive, satisfactory definition of clitics has not been achieved yet, and whether clitics represent an independent morphosyntactic category, or should rather be incorporated in the category of affix or in the category of words remains an open question. For instance, Zwicky (1994: xiii, [emphasis mine, CR]) argues that the term clitic should be understood as “an umbrella term, not a genuine category in grammatical theory. Umbrella terms are names for problems, for phenomena that present “mixed” properties of some kind, not names for theoretical constructs.” Along the same lines, Sadock (1995: 260 [emphasis mine, CR]) claims the following: …there is [not] a natural class of clitics defined in terms of genuine grammatical properties … [T]he various things which have been put in this category by linguistic researchers do have something sociological in common, namely their reluctance to fit naturally into any single one of the classical components that traditional grammar recognizes. Other (perhaps the majority of) researchers embrace a more unambiguous position, which favors the elimination of an independent category of clitics and consequently the assimilation of its members into one of the two ‘uncontroversial’ morphosyntactic categories, namely affixes (e.g., Miller

6 Chapter 1: Introduction 1992; Monachesi 1999; Cocchi 2000; cf. also Bossong 1998) or words (e.g., Crysmann 1997, 2000). A substantial amount of scholarly work has also been devoted to more strictly syntactic properties of clitics, which include a number of complex (and still unsettled) configurational issues such as those listed in (7). (7)

Configurational properties of clitics a. Clitic placement – whether clitic placement, with respect to the host, is base generated, with the verb + clitic structure directly inserted from the lexicon or derived by movement, with the clitic moving from its source position to adjoin the verb as proposed by Kayne (1975) in his eminent study on French. b. Clitic ‘climbing’ – the ability of the clitic pronoun to attach to V1 in V1 + infinitive V2 constructions (e.g., It. lo vorrei salutare ~ vorrei salutarlo ‘I want to greet him’; Fr. Elle le fera manger à lui vs. * Elle fera le manger à lui ‘She will make him eat it’). c. Clitic ‘doubling’ – the possibility for the clitic pronoun of cooccurring with its nominal referent (e.g., Sp. lai vi a Maríai, Rum. am vzut-oi pe Mariai ‘I saw Maria’ (cf. It., example (3) above). d. Clitic sequences constraints – the strict internal order of clitic combinations; for instance, It. te lo presto ‘I lend it to you’ vs. *lo ti presto, where the indirect object must precede the direct object despite the fact that if both objects are realized by full NPs only the DO-IO linearization is possible (presto il libro a Carlo vs. *presto a Carlo il libro).

The magnitude of this line of research is documented in Nevis, Joseph, Wanner, and Zwicky (1994), which provides an extensive and comprehensive corpus of references from 1982 (the date of Wackernagel’s celebrated paper on clitic placement) to 1991.6 It is not surprising, then, that Romance pronominal clitics represent one of the most actively and thoroughly investigated topics in modern linguistics, especially within the generative tradition. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that any aspect and property of Italian clitic pronouns has been meticulously (and typically very satisfactorily) scrutinized already. Consequently, one might wonder whether there is anything else worth adding to the query, and question the relevance of yet another extensive study in this field of research. However, a closer look to the relevant literature does reveal a significant gap, namely the absence of systematic

Clitics: a controversial category 7

studies on grammaticalization and lexicalization phenomena pertaining exclusively to the Italian clitics. Berretta (1985a, 1985b, 1989) and SalaGallini (1996) look at some of the changes in the clitic system of Italian making reference to grammaticalization. In several studies, Berruto (1985a, 1985b, 1986, 2004 [1987]) briefly discusses the grammaticalized status of specific clitics but mainly from a sociolinguistic perspective. Grammaticalization is also referred to in Salvi’s (2001) study on early stages in the emergence of Romance clitics from Latin, by Cennamo (1999, 2000) in her analyses of Late Latin and early Italian reflexives, and by Nocentini (2003a, 2003b) in relation to Italian dislocated constructions. These studies unquestionably constitute very valuable contributions to the investigation of important Italian clitic phenomena. Nonetheless, they remain non-inclusive, exploratory remarks with respect to the analysis of grammaticalization, which do not go much beyond reducing the grammaticalization process that the clitic pronouns have undergone to their having become obligatory morphosyntactic elements in certain constructions or inherent lexical material (i.e., obligatory morphemes) with certain verbs. In short, no attempt has been made yet at providing a systematic, comprehensive examination of the overall grammaticalization process that has affected the clitic system of Italian. But, even more importantly, there have not been any attempts at decomposing the general process of grammaticalization, in order to isolate a number of sub/micro-processes, some of which may go on to include lexicalization. As mentioned above, these sub-processes pertain to specific clitics or clusters which completely loose their pronominal function and become fully incorporated into specific verbs. They thus involve both grammaticalization of the clitic pronoun into an obligatory morpheme and lexicalization of the verb-clitic constructions (and, in some cases, additional material such as adjectives or adverbs) into a single lexical unit. These new verbs and verbal periphrases are of the utmost interest since they appear to be gaining preponderance in contemporary Italian but have not received much attention in linguistic research although, to Simone’s (1993) relief, they have finally been given a precise name, verbi procomplementari, by De Mauro (1999–2000).7 Yet, to my knowledge, these remarks have never gone beyond mere acknowledgments of their existence.8 To conclude, an important gap does exist in the research field of Italian clitic phenomena; the present study aims at starting to fill it by offering an inclusive account of the different ways in which grammaticalization has af-

8 Chapter 1: Introduction fected and modified the Italian clitic system and how it led, via lexicalization, to the emergence of the new class of verbi procomplementari.

1.3. Organization and contents The organization of this monograph is as follows: in Chapter 2, I offer a basic overview of the phenomena of grammaticalization and lexicalization. First, I introduce the fundamental theoretical assumptions underlying grammaticalization processes in general, as formulated, discussed, and applied in major studies on the topic, namely Lehmann (1995), Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer (1991), Hopper and Traugott (2003 [1993]), Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca (1994) (§ 2.2). While these scholars may assume slightly or even significantly divergent positions with respect to specific features that characterize grammaticalization, they share a functionalist approach to linguistic analysis (see § 1.1 above), and the grammaticalization framework based on their works can be referred to as ‘functionalist’. Next, I discuss the relation between grammaticalization and lexicalization, mainly Lehmann (2002), Himmelmann (2004), Brinton and Traugott (2005), in order to clarify how the term lexicalization, which remains controversial, will be employed in the present study (§ 2.3). The discussion about lexicalization and its relationship to grammaticalization is crucial in view of the fact that some Italian clitics seem to have undergone lexicalization in specific environments. I conclude the chapter with a brief presentation of the most influential but also controversial positions that have been held vis-à-vis the following issues. These are (a) the role that more general mechanisms of language change like reanalysis and analogy actually play in grammaticalization and lexicalization processes (§ 2.4.1) and (b) the issue of whether grammaticalization can actually be considered an independently motivated phenomenon or instead be reduced to an epiphenomenal process, as argued by Newmeyer (1998) (§ 2.4.2). Chapter 3 begins with the introduction of the inventory of the pronominal clitics found in Contemporary Standard Italian (CSI) (§ 3.2). Next, the synchronic stage of clitic placement and linearization is discussed in detail (§ 3.3) and compared to that of Old Italian (OI, mostly thirteenth and fourteenth centuries) (§ 3.4). In Chapter 4, I first outline the general grammaticalization processes that have taken place in the clitic system of CSI (§ 4.2). I then examine the

Organization and contents 9

phenomenon of clitic allomorphy from a diachronic perspective (§ 4.3) and continue with the examination of more recent developments in the grammaticalization of Italian clitics, such as the neutralization of the gender and number distinction observed at the level of third person indirect clitics (§ 4.4). Chapters 5, 6 and 7, which constitute the core contribution of this study, provide a detailed characterization of the main semantic, pragmatic and, to some extent, structural features of the most common verbi complementari. Thus, they also illustrate the main similarities and the main differences in the grammaticalization or, more precisely, ‘grammaticalization and lexicalization’ trajectories that specific clitics or clitic clusters have followed, namely: ‘partitive’ ne (Chapter 5), personal/locative ci (Chapter 6), and third person feminine direct object la (Chapter 7).9 In Chapter 8, I review some of the evidence offered in favor of the affixal status of Italian clitics by Monachesi (1999), who analyses Italian clitics as lexically attached inflectional affixes. The purpose of this review is to show how the diagnostics employed to discriminate between clitichood and affix-hood are neither incontrovertible nor decisive, particularly if they are considered from a diachronic perspective. Thus, the attribution of clitic status or affixal status to the Italian clitics seems to depend on or even be dictated by the specific aspect(s) of the clitics one wants to investigate and the framework one chooses to adopt, rather that by actual substantive properties of the clitic themselves. The crucial point is, I believe, that even though two main classes of clitics can be identified for Italian in terms of primary morphosyntactic functions, namely anaphoric (pronominal) and discourse pragmatic vs. semantic-pragmatic/lexical or strictly grammatical, Italian clitics cannot be subsumed under a unified morphosyntactic category because the differences between the two major groups of clitics are not sharp but a matter of degree.10 Therefore, I propose that approaching Italian clitics from a grammaticalization perspective allows us to achieve a more precise and comprehensive representation of their morphological status and morphosyntactic functions. In other words, I argue that by embracing a grammaticalization/lexicalization framework, we begin to uncover a composite range of structural and semantic-pragmatic discrepancies between truly pronominal clitics and clitics that retain no anaphoric function, differences which would otherwise remain concealed. Italian clitics, then, constitute a heterogeneous grammatical category, whose distinguishing attribute is the multifunctionality of its members. The multifunctional nature of Italian clitics

10 Chapter 1: Introduction can be adequately accounted for in terms of a grammaticalization continuum, where different functions correspond to different grammaticalization stages reached by individual clitics. Chapter 9 summarizes the main proposals put forward in the book and highlights some issues that deserve further investigation. Before moving on to a short review of some trajectories of change that have been identified as particularly relevant for a characterization of contemporary Italian, I believe I should explain briefly why this study ignores Italian subject clitics. The main reason why I decided to exclude subject clitics is that they do not seem to participate in semantic-pragmatic phenomena comparable to those observed for object clitics. In addition, as far as Italian is concerned, subject clitics are restricted to northern dialects with which I am only minimally familiar. Excellent well-known studies on the topic include Benincà (1999) Poletto (1993, 1999), Benincà and Poletto (2005).11 Space considerations have been a key factor also in my choice of limiting the reference to dialectal variation to a bare minimum. Including a more systematic mention of dialectal differentiation would have involved adopting a comparative and sociolinguistic perspective, which goes beyond the scope of this study. Moreover, I do not presently have access to a body of dialectal data adequate to come up with meaningful observations and generalizations. This is an extremely interesting and productive field of research that certainly deserves more attention, since important claims have been made about the role of dialects in the development and/or diffusion of some innovative phenomena such as, for instance, those pertaining to the clitics gli and ci to be discussed in Chapter 3 (§3.2.2) and Chapter 4 (§ 4.4).

1.4. A concise diachronic sketch of Italian12 At this point the reader will most likely pause a moment, perhaps feeling bemused, wondering how one can come up with the idea of providing a few page long summary of the main changes Italian has undergone from its origins to our times, a time span of about ten centuries. Yet, such a proposition is less ludicrous than it may seem, especially if one aims at putting together an adequate sketch of the fundamental trajectories of change that characterize the evolution of the Italian language. That is, if the objective remains limited to the identification of general trends rather than individual

A concise diachronic sketch of Italian

11

processes, given that Italian has not gone through major catastrophic changes. As Ascoli (1967) remarks “[n]on c’è così un antico italiano da contrapporre al moderno, come al moderno francese si contrappone un antico ... la lingua di Dante è l’italiano che ancor vive e si scrive” (‘there is not an Old Italian that can be juxtaposed to a Modern Italian, like Modern French juxtaposed to Old French ... the language of Dante is the Italian that still lives and is still written’ Ascoli (1967: 59-60) [original emphasis, my translation, CR]), to the extent that the average high-school educated speaker can comprehend fourteenth century texts without too much difficulty. The main purpose of this highly condensed outline is to show how some (if not the majority) of the changes pertaining to individual clitics or the clitic pronoun system nicely conform to and integrate into the global evolutionary scenario. It will also reveal that some of the phenomena that have been attributed to younger stages of the language are not actual innovations; rather, they have since long been alive to some extent and have simply re-emerged, gained strength, and become reinstated (Sabatini 1985, Nencioni 1989; D’Achille 1990). Certainly, no substantial change is observed at the phonetic and phonological levels. We can mention the mid-vowel merger, i.e. the neutralization of the phonemic contrast between open and closed mid vowels: (8)

a. pesca ['p
ska] ‘peach’ ~ pesca ['peska] ‘fishing’ b. botte ['b
tte] ‘blows’ ~ botte ['botte] ‘barrel

The open/close contrast applies only under stress, with unstressed vowels being realized as close. The domain of application of this phonemic contrast is quite restricted because there are very few minimal pairs (Saltarelli 1970; Muljai 1972; Francovich Onesti 1974). Moreover, the open/close distinction is diachronically motivated only in a relatively small number of instances; in the majority of cases, it is completely arbitrary. Therefore, the fact that it would be undergoing neutralization is not so remarkable. Another instance of phonemic contrast neutralization is the loss of the voiceless/voiced contrast that has affected the dental affricates [ts] ~ [dz] (e.g., razza ['ratstsa] ‘race, breed’~ razza ['radzdza] ‘ray-fish’) and the alveolar fricatives [s] ~ [z] (e.g., chiese ‘ask.3SG.past’ ['kj
se] ~ chiese ['kj
ze] ‘churches’). Just like the vocalic contrast, the voice contrast is dis-

12 Chapter 1: Introduction tinctive only in a very small number of cases and its elimination from the language is not unexpected. The most relevant change observed at the morpho-phonological level is the fixation of the distribution of the masculine definite article allomorphs into the pattern illustrated in Table 1. The il/lo alternation did not exist in Old Italian. The original forms of the masculine definite article were lo for the singular and li for the plural; il, l’, and i are novel formations, while gli represents the outcome of li.13 The allomorphy is now restricted to standard Italian and some Tuscan dialects. In all the other Italian dialects we find only one of the two forms, which occurs before all consonants and clusters, and l’, which occurs before vowels and diphthongs. That is, as Vanelli (1992: 29) points out, the Italian dialects are characterized either by a V+l type singular definite article or by an l+V type. Table 1. Modern Italian masculine definite article allomorphy.

ALLOMORPHS il (SG), i (PL) lo (SG), gli (PL)

l’ (SG), gli (PL)

ENVIRONMENT OF OCCURRENCE Consonants other than [],[],[ts],[dz] Plosive, [f] + liquid clusters [[],[],[ts],[dz],[j] /s/ + plosive (+ liquid clusters) /s/ + [f], [v] Restricted clusters: [pt], [ps], [pn]; [kt], [ks], [kn] Vowels and [w]

To illustrate, in Abruzzese (as in Central and Southern dialects in general) we find only two allomorphs for the definite masculine singular: the full allomorph is lu before any consonant or consonant cluster ([lu'kæn] ‘the dog’, [lu'prevt], ‘the priest’, [lu'spos] ‘the groom’, [lu'tsukkr] ‘the sugar’, etc.) and the reduced allomorph l’ before vowels ([l'
mmn] ‘the man’, etc.). Moving to the domain of morphosyntax, we observe a ‘simplification’ within the system of pronouns in the form of loss of the etymological subject forms, which are replaced by the tonic oblique form as shown in Table 2.

A concise diachronic sketch of Italian

13

Table 2. Third person subject pronouns.

P/N 3SG 3PL

G M M

3SG 3PL

F F

OLD(ER) FORMS elli, ei, el; egli; esso elli, eglino/ellino; essi ella; essa elle, elleno; esse

NEW FORM lui lei loro

The use of lui, lei and loro as subject forms, however, is found as early as the thirteenth century (Rohlfs 1966–1969; for frequency data see Boström 1972, but also D’Achille 1990). Although vehemently ostracized by grammarians (D’Achille 1990: 315–319), these forms have increased in frequency by the seventeenth century to the extent that Manzoni chooses to reduce drastically the use of egli and ella in the final edition of I promessi sposi (41 occurrences of egli and only 2 of ella). The third person forms esso/essi, essa/esse have also practically disappeared; their occurrence in contemporary Italian is restricted to highly formal and/or specialized written registers (among others, De Mauro 1976; Berruto 1985b; Cordin and Calabrese 2001). Table 3 reports the occurrences of the subject pronoun forms in LIP. Table 3. Subject pronoun forms in LIP.

FORMS egli ella esso essa essi esse

OCCURRENCES IN LIP 3914 0 12 8 11 0

FORMS lui lei loro

OCCURRENCES IN LIP 225 214 95

We see that ella is totally absent and lui occurs about 6 times more than egli; also, the occurrences are found in more formal discourse types (6 in Type C and 33 in Type D). We can thus conclude that in CSI lui, lei and loro are the only subject pronoun forms to be still alive and “egli è ormai un residuo, è morto” (Renzi 1994: 248; ‘egli is now a vestige, it is dead’ [translation mine, CR]), and so are esso, etc.

14 Chapter 1: Introduction Among the changes that have affected the verbal system, I will mention two cases of weakening, in the sense of falling out of use. The first involves passato remoto ‘remote past’ (the direct continuation of the Latin present perfect) and implies the loss/reduction of the functional opposition between passato remoto and the novel Romance periphrastic form passato prossimo ‘near past’, which is still vital only in central (mainly Florentine and Roman) varieties. In the rest of the peninsula, only one of the two forms is actively used, passato prossimo in the north and passato remoto in the south, while the standard language seems to have opted for passato prossimo, certainly in the spoken register (Gambarara 1994). The use of subjunctive has also been claimed to be in decline, with the use of the indicative increasing in subordinate clauses (9a) and in protases (9b) of conditional structures. (9)

a. E cosa dovrei fare, scrivere testi per depliant, cataloghi, oppure fare redazionali o slogan. È un lavoro creativo. Penso che è bello e stimolante. (CORIS, MON2001_04) “And what should I do, write brochures, catalogues, or slogans? It’s a creative job. I think it’s nice and stimulating.” b. L’altro gli puntò contro l’indice. “Ma è un bel tipo suo zio. Se lo sapevo non sarei venuto.” (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “The other man pointed his finger at him. ‘He’s really a character, your uncle. If I knew I wouldn’t have come.’”

Additionally, the use of the imperfect indicative has become entirely acceptable also in hypothetical (conditional) clauses that denote unrealizable situations where it replaces the imperfect or pluperfect subjunctive in the protasis and the present or past conditional in the apodosis, (10a) vs. (10b). (10) a. Ma se lo sapevo, allora parlavo prima. Se lo sapevo che non andavo in carcere ti raccontavo tutto subito. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “Well, if I had known it, then I would have talked before. Had I known that I would not have gone to jail I would have told you everything right away.” b. Ha continuato a ripetere che voleva tornare insieme a me, che se lo avessi lasciato si sarebbe ucciso. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “He went on repeating that he wanted to get back together, that if I left him he would kill himself.”

A concise diachronic sketch of Italian

15

The passive periphrastic constructions andare ‘go’/venire ‘come’ + past participle (11a–c) are in decline as well. Andare + PP has in fact two functions since it expresses ‘pure’ passive and a deontic (necessity) passive as in (11b) but its use is overall marginal in both connotations (Giacalone Ramat 1995, 2000; Bertinetto 2001). Venire + PP constructions are quite marginal as well, especially in the spoken language, and the most common way of expressing passive voice is now the essere ‘be’ + PP construction (11d). (11) a. Era però pericolosa (perché la pressione elevata del vapore poteva far scoppiare recipienti e tubi) e aveva un basso rendimento (perché il calore del vapore andava perso tutte le volte che si raffreddava il contenitore). (CORIS, PRACCVolum) “But it was dangerous (because the elevated steam pressure could make the containers and pipes explode) and it had a low yield (because the heat from the steam was lost every time the container cooled down).” b. Se quel tratto era così pericoloso e le segnalazioni erano state così tante, di fronte all’indifferenza dell’azienda lo sciopero andava fatto prima del disastro: dopo crea solo disagi a chi viaggia. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “If that tract was so dangerous and if there had been so many reports, given the company’s indifference, the strike should have been held before the disaster; afterward, it only creates discomforts for the people who are traveling.” c. Ferro, rame e alluminio vengono venduti alle industrie siderurgiche, mentre la plastica potrebbe essere riutilizzata nell’industria dei manufatti. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “Iron, copper and aluminum are sold to the iron and steel industry, while plastic could be reused in the manufacturing industry.” d. Vicino c’è un cofanetto pure d’avorio, pettini e uno specchietto d’argento, evidentemente gli oggetti da toilette della bambola. Mai l’esistenza dei giocattoli nel mondo antico era stata dimostrata con tanta evidenza. (CORIS, STAMPASupp) “Nearby there is a casket also made of ivory, combs, and a small silver mirror; clearly the utensils for toilette of the doll. The existence of toys in the ancient world had never before been proven with so much evidence.”

16 Chapter 1: Introduction Except for the definite article allomorphy (which would embody an opposite tendency), all the above tendencies can be interpreted as signs of a general movement towards the elimination of paradigmatic polymorphism; that is, a movement toward a ‘simpler’, communicatively more efficient language. In Chapter 3, we will see how several of the changes that have affected the clitic pronoun system well conform to this same tendency, which is to be linked to the expansion and stabilization of italiano neostandard. This is the current form of standard spoken, but to a very large extent also written, Italian (Berruto 2004) whose distinctive features involve structures that were either not mentioned or not approved by the traditional grammars, being confined to lower and/or regional and dialectal registers (Berruto 2004: 62).

1.5. Sources The analyses put forward here are intended to be maximally data driven since the whole study itself aims at being maximally descriptive. The data I have used have been collected from different sources. Contemporary (twentieth and twenty-first century) data comes mostly from the following on-line corpora: A.

CORIS/CODIS. This is a corpus of written Italian under development at CILTA (Centre for Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, University of Bologna), which presently contains 100 million words. It consists of a collection of authentic and commonly occurring texts in electronic format chosen by virtue of their representativeness of modern Italian and includes an assortment of diverse material, specifically: a. Press (newspapers, periodicals, national and local supplements) 38 million words b. Fiction (novels, short stories) 25 million words c. Academic prose (human sciences, natural sciences, physics, experimental sciences) 12 million words d. Legal and administrative prose (legal, bureaucratic, administrative) 10 million words e. Miscellanea (books on religion, travel, cookery, hobbies, etc.) 10 million words f. Ephemera (letters, leaflets, instructions) 5 million words

Sources 17

B.

Lessico di frequenza dell’italiano parlato (LIP). It is the most important corpus of spoken Italian currently available, collected in 1990– 1992 under the direction of Tullio De Mauro.15 It comprises 496 texts (for a total of about 490,000 words) recorded in Milan, Florence, Rome and Naples, from the following macro-types and subtypes of discourse: c. TYPE A. Bi-directional exchange, face to face, with free turntaking: – Conversations at home, work or at the university – Conversations during recreation or on means of transport d. TYPE B. Bi-directional exchange, not face to face, with free turntaking: – Normal telephone conversations and telephone conversations broadcasted on radio – Messages recorded by telephone answering machines. e. Type C. Bi-directional exchange, face to face, with regulated turntaking: – Legislative assemblies – Cultural discussions – Assemblies at school – Labor union assemblies; meetings of workers – Oral exams in the elementary and secondary school – Oral exams at the university – Interrogations in the courtroom – Interviews on radio or television f. TYPE D. Unidirectional exchange, with the addressee being present: – Lessons in elementary and secondary school – University lectures – Speeches held during party conventions or labor union meetings – Presentations at scientific meetings – Speeches held during electoral campaigns – Sermons – Presentations at non-specialist meetings – Court pleadings g. TYPE E. Distanced unidirectional exchange: – Television and radio programs (De Mauro, Mancini, Vedovelli and Voghera 1993: 35–38)

18 Chapter 1: Introduction Although to a much lesser extent, I also made use of spontaneous spoken data recorded personally from native speakers (mostly colleagues, friends, and family members) in a variety of discourse settings. The choice of relying heavily on corpus data is motivated by the fact that this type of data displays a broad variation of parameters (lexical, syntactic, semantic, and contextual) with regard to the linguistic structure under investigation. Such broad variation allows one to achieve a better identification of the properties which are more relevant for the understanding of the phenomenon in question (Meurers and Müller 2007; also Meurers 2005). The main drawback of using corpus data (for synchronic analysis) lies in the fact that they may lack crucial evidence given that corpora are finite representations of language use; this is precisely why corpus data needs to be complemented by constructed data, evaluated through native speakers’ intuitions. The Old Italian data (thirteenth to fifteenth century) come from the relevant linguistic literature, from direct consultation of the texts listed in Table 4, and from the corpus Tesoro della Lingua Italiana (TLIO), put together by the Istituto Opera del Vocabolario Italiano (OVI), sponsored by Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR, the Italian National Research Foundation). This is an exceptionally precious resource for Italian historical linguistics: it is a fairly search- and reader-friendly database, which at the present time comprises 1, 960 geographically diverse vulgar texts dating from the ninth through the early sixteenth century (although the majority dates between 1200–1400) for a total of about 22 million words (occurrences) and 479,000 entries. My main concern in choosing the written sources for the data collection was to assemble a corpus that would reflect as closely as possible the spoken language, of course within the limits that this is actually conceivable and feasible. It is for this reason that I decided to exclude poetry, with the exception of Dante’s Commedia, which I included because of the invaluable significance that all of Dante’s work has borne to the development of the Italian language. The general criteria I adopted for the selection of OI texts were thus the following: I favored private writings, such as letters, diaries, autobiographies, homilies, collections of popular stories (novella), and scientific/educational treatises (letteratura edificante ‘edifying literature’), basically following D’Achille (1990), to whom the reader interested in a more detailed discussion about the methodological issues related to the assembling of corpora of this type is referred. I disfavored non-Tuscan texts, since I wanted to restrict my synchronic investigation primarily to

Sources 19

standard Italian. Moreover, I decided to disregard pre-thirteenth century material because it consists for the most part of very brief texts or mere fragments. Overall, the same criteria were followed in selecting the modern sources. Table 4. Thirteenth to fifteenth century sources.

DATE c. 1281–1300 Late 13th century 13th century c. 1293 c. 1294–1307 c. 1308–1321 1322–1348 1336–1339 1341–1342 1349–1352; revised 1370– 1371 ?1365–1366 2dn half of 14th century 1385–1392 1433–1441 1450–1475

TITLE Novellino Il libro de’ vizî e delle virtudi La rettorica Vita nova Convivio Commedia Cronica Filocolo Commedia delle ninfe fiorentine Decameron

AUTHOR Anonymous Bono Giamboni Brunetto Latini Dante Alighieri Dante Alighieri Dante Alighieri Giovanni Villani Giovanni Boccaccio Giovanni Boccaccio

Corbaccio Lettere

Giovanni Boccaccio Caterina da Siena

Trecentonovelle Libri della famiglia

Franco Sacchetti Leon Battista Alberti Masuccio Salernitano

Il novellino

Giovanni Boccaccio

The primary sources for the modern Italian (sixteenth to early twentieth century) data are given in Table 5 (the specific editions I refer to and, if available, the web-site links are given in the Reference section).

20 Chapter 1: Introduction Table 5. Sixteenth to early twentieth century sources.

DATE 1513– 1518 1513 1549 1537– 1540 1632 1725 1790 1817 1824 1827 1840 1883 1881 1889 1901 1904 1923

TITLE Il libro del cortegiano

AUTHOR Baldesar Castiglione

Il principe Favola di Belfagor Storia d’Italia

Niccolò Machiavelli Niccolò Machiavelli Francesco Guicciardini Galileo Galilei Giambattista Vico Vittorio Alfieri Ugo Foscolo Giacomo Leopardi

Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi Autobiografia Vita Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis Discorso sopra lo stato presente dei costumi degli italiani Operette morali I promessi sposi Le avventure di Pinocchio I malavoglia Mastro-don Gesualdo L’esclusa Il fu Mattia Pascal La coscienza di Zeno

Giacomo Leopardi Alessandro Manzoni Carlo Collodi Giuseppe Verga Giuseppe Verga Luigi Pirandello Luigi Pirandello Italo Svevo

Finally, I should also mention that, even though not to the point of overcoming the two criteria indicated above, my choices were at times influenced by the on-line availability of the sources since this would imply the possibility to conduct fast automatic searches.

Chapter 2 Grammaticalization, lexicalization, and language change

2.1. Introduction This chapter sets up the theoretical background on which the present study is based. The first section (§ 2.2) provides a general introduction to grammaticalization both as a phenomenon of language change and as a framework for linguistic analysis. As stated in the previous chapter (§ 1.2), in my analysis of the grammaticalization processes that have affected Italian clitic pronouns I follow the theoretical approach to grammaticalization systematically developed in functionalist based studies such as Lehmann (1995), Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer (1991), Hopper and Traugott (2003), and Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca (1994). Since the functionalist approach to grammaticalization chronologically precedes approaches put forward by scholars who embrace the formalist (generative) framework of linguistic analysis (e.g., Roberts 1993; Roberts and Roussou 1999, 2003; van Gelderen 2004), I will refer to the functionalist approach as the traditional approach to grammaticalization. The introductory overview of the key features and mechanism of grammaticalization will also include the discussion of some issues that appear to be particularly relevant to the specific grammaticalization processes to be examined in Chapters 5 to 7, namely pragmatic and context induced inference and cognitive processes, such as metaphor and metonymy. Section 2.3 starts with a sketch of lexicalization (§ 2.3.1). In the literature on grammaticalization and language change in general, the term lexicalization has received various, even somewhat incompatible, interpretations to the extent that it may denote quite different linguistic phenomena.16 Therefore, I find it appropriate to offer a precise characterization of the interpretation that lexicalization receives in this study. The section then continues with a discussion on the points of correspondence and divergence between grammaticalization and lexicalization, which underscores how closely the two phenomena are related (§ 2.3.2). In Section 2.4, I examine two issues that have been the subject of theoretical debate: (a) the relevance (or lack thereof) of two well-known

22 Chapter 2: Grammaticalization, lexicalization, and language change mechanisms of language change, i.e., reanalysis and analogy, vis-à-vis grammaticalization (§ 4.4.1) and (b) whether grammaticalization can be regarded as independently motivated or should be considered an epiphenomenal process (§ 4.4.2).

2.2. General features of grammaticalization 2.2.1. Basic theoretical assumptions within the traditional framework In essence, grammaticalization indicates a general diachronic process of morphosyntactic change by which a linguistic form undergoes a more or less substantial loss of syntactic independence accompanied by a concomitant increase of its grammatical function. Ideally, a grammaticalization process starts by affecting a full lexical item (most typically a noun or a verb), which, through a combination of linguistic changes taking place at different language levels, ends up becoming an affix. The evolution of the Latin noun MENS ‘mind, disposition’ into an adverbial affix in Romance sketched in (1) is extensively cited as a model instance of grammaticalization. (1)

Lat. XADJECTIVE MENT ‘with a X mind’ It. X-mente ‘adverb’

As shown in (2), MENS is an independent noun (in the ablative case) modified by an adjective agreeing in case, gender and number (F, SG). That the noun and adjective are fully autonomous is revealed by the fact that they can occur in inverse orders, (2a) vs. (2b). Moreover, only adjectives semantically compatible with the noun could occur in this construction. (2)

a. Insistam forti mente. follow.1SG.FUT strong.SG.F.ABL mind. SG.F .ABL “I will follow with a strong mind.” (Ovid, Amores III 2 10; English translation by Bishop 2003) b. Sed satine ego animum mente but enough I character.SG.M.ACC mind.SG.F.ABL sincera gero…? true.SG.F.ABL carry.1SG.PI

General features of grammaticalization

23

“But can I really be acting in my right mind…?” (Plautus, Bacchides Act III; English translation by Slavitt and Bovie 1995) In contrast, the Italian examples given in (3) show that in Italian (and in Romance languages in general) -mente has become an adverbial affix, i.e., an invariable bound formative that attaches to the feminine singular form of adjectives to produce a single linguistic unit. Since it has lost its original lexical meaning, the suffix -mente no longer needs to be associated to psychological adjectives, but can attach to practically any adjective. (3)

a. L’isola d’Inghilterra, che la grande Brettagna fu anticamente chiamata. (< antico ‘old, ancient’) (Cronica, I 1) “The island of England that in ancient times was called Great Britain.” b. Gran desiderio universalmente tengon tutte le donne di essere e, quando esser non posson almen di parer, belle. (< universale ‘universal, general’)(Il libro del cortegiano, 1 XL) “Everywhere all women have a great desire of being and, when they canno be at least to appear, beautiful.” c. Perciocché s’ingannano a ogni modo coloro i quali stimano essere primieramente nata l’infelicità umana dall’iniquità e dalle cose commesse contro agli Dei. (< primiero ‘first’) (Operette morali, p. 5) “Therefore, those who believe that human unhappiness is first of all a consequence of iniquity and acts committed against the gods are in any case mistaken.”

Another classic example of grammaticalization is the development of the Romance synthetic future and conditional verb forms from Latin analytic constructions comprising the auxiliary HABERE ‘have’, in the present indicative and the present perfective respectively, and an infinitive.17 (4)

a. Lat. CANTARE HABET  It. canter-à ‘S/he will sing’ b. Lat. CANTARE HABUIT  It. canter-ebbe ‘S/he would sing’

In both cases, we see that an independent lexical item (the noun MENS ‘mind’ and the auxiliary verb HABERE ‘have’) completely loses its linguistic autonomy and becomes a bound morpheme (the derivational adverbial

24 Chapter 2: Grammaticalization, lexicalization, and language change affix –mente and the inflectional affix for future tense). Furthermore, in the grammaticalization development illustrated in (4), we observe that the grammaticalized item undergoes significant physical reduction, which, as it will be discussed in detail shortly, is another characteristic feature of grammaticalization processes. Grammaticalization, however, is normally attributed a wider scope in that the term also refers to an increase of the grammatical function of linguistic units in general. That is, “[w]here a lexical unit or structure assumes a grammatical function, or where a grammatical unit assumes a more grammatical function, we are dealing with grammaticalization.” (Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer 1991: 2 [emphasis mine, CR]) Similarly, Hopper and Traugott (2003) define grammaticalization as “the change whereby lexical items and constructions come into certain linguistic contexts to serve grammatical functions and, once grammaticalized, continue to develop new grammatical functions.” (p. 1 [emphasis mine, CR]) According to Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer (1991), the degree of grammaticalization of a given unit or structure can be measured in reference to the grammatical category it expresses. The parameters in Table 6 are “hypotheses that may serve as a kind of ‘discovery procedure’ for establishing relative degree of conceptual/semantic grammaticalization” (Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer 1991: 156); that is, they are guidelines that can help in assessing the degree of grammaticalization of a given item.

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Table 6. Parameters for establishing degrees of grammaticalization (from Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer 1991: 156–158).

A B C D E F

PARAMETER Etymological derivation Spatial function (presence vs. absence of) Human participant (implication of) Physical dimensions (number of) Logical relation vs. Temporal relation Inclusiveness (degree of)

ASSOCIATED DEVELOPMENT SPATIAL > NON- SPATIAL BENEFACTIVE > PURPOSE > CAUSE; COMITATIVE

> INSTRUMENT SPACE > TIME > MANNER TIME > CAUSE, STATE

> OBJECT (e.g., who is less inclusive than what because ‘who is this? *a car’ but ‘what is this? a boy’).

PERSON

The case functions expressed by the German preposition mit ‘with’ in (5a)–(5c) (as well as by its European counterparts, e.g., Eng. with, Fr. avec, It. con) are characterized by increasing degrees of grammaticalization because they convey increasingly grammaticalized category. Comitative (5a) is attributed the least degree of grammaticalization compared to instrument (5b) and manner (5c) because of the following parameters: A. It is the etymological source, given that whenever diachronic evidence is available, the comitative function always precedes the other two (see Priebsch and Collinson 1968 for Proto-Germanic, quoted in Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer 1991; Heine and Reh 1984 for African languages; Heine and Kuteva 2002). C. It involves a human (or animate) participant. F. It is the least inclusive. (5)

a. Er hat das Geschenk mit seinem he.NOM has the.SG.N present.SG with his.SG.DAT Freund aufgemacht. friend opened “He opened the present with his friend.”

26 Chapter 2: Grammaticalization, lexicalization, and language change b. Er hat das Geschenk mit einem he.NOM has the.SG.N present.SG with a.SG.M.DAT Messe aufgemacht. knife opened “He opened the present with a knife.” c. Er hat das Geschenk mit Freude aufgemacht. he.NOM has the.SG.N present.SG with joy opened “He opened the present with enthusiasm.” It is important to keep in mind though, that besides referring to an actual language phenomenon (i.e., the diachronic process through which linguistic units become more grammatical), grammaticalization is also to be understood as “a research framework within which to account for language phenomena.” (Hopper and Traugott 2003: 1 [emphasis mine, CR]) Thus, grammaticalization can be brought into play to explain the mechanisms that govern the emergence of grammatical structures, and the ways they are used and how they shape language. Across languages, some (classes of) lexical items appear to be favored candidates for grammaticalization. For instance, demonstrative pronouns have often evolved into definite articles or nominal class markers (cf. the evolution of Romance definite articles from Latin distal demonstrative ILLE ‘that’). Furthermore, “[s]ource concepts … are typically derived from the physical state, behavior, or immediate environment of man and are frequently referred to in human thoughts and communication.” (Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer 1991: 33). That is, lexemes that refer to the most basic human experiences, such as human nouns (e.g., Lat. HOMO ‘man’  Fr. impersonal pronoun on), landmarks (Hausa kàsá ‘ground’, kàrkashí ‘lower part’ > kàrkashín ‘under’; Svorou 1994: 81–82), or body parts (Swahili mbele ‘front, noun’ > mbele ‘in front/ahead’; Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer 1991: 131) appear to be common starting points of grammaticalization processes. The decrease in syntactic autonomy brought about by grammaticalization implies some weakening, or loss in phonetic/phonological as well as semantic substance. For example, in the case of the development of Romance definite articles from the Latin demonstrative the physical shape of ILLE is reduced (phonetic erosion) through loss of the initial or final syllable (It. lo, Fr. le, Sp. el ‘the, M SG’) and deictic information is also lost (semantic bleaching). Rumanian has reached an even more advanced stage, since the definite article has become a nominal inflectional suffix (arbor-e-

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le ‘the tree’).18 Comparable (indeed even more drastic) physical and semantic shrinkage characterizes the grammaticalization processes that involve the Latin auxiliary HABERE, illustrated in (4) above. Grammaticalization, then, inevitably leads to loss of the autonomy of linguistic signs. Therefore, as Lehmann (1995: 122) points out, determining the degree of autonomy of a linguistic item is an important step for measuring its degree of grammaticalization. The more structurally and semantically independent a linguistic item is the less it is grammaticalized; vice versa, the more structurally and semantically depleted the more grammaticalized. Lehmann identifies three main aspects to the autonomy of a linguistic sign, which are given in Table 7. Based on the examples considered so far, it is easily inferred that loss of autonomy does not have the same effects on all the parameters in Table 7. Rather, loss of autonomy involves decrease in weight and variability but increase in cohesion. In addition, the three parameters are divided into two distinct sets based on whether “they are related to the fundamental aspects of every linguistic operation, viz. the selection and combination of linguistic signs, … [that is,] the paradigmatic and syntagmatic aspects.” (Lehmann 1995: 123 [original emphasis]) This distinction is summarized in Table 8. Table 7. Principal aspects of linguistic autonomy (Lehmann 1995). ASPECTS OF AUTONOMY WEIGHT COHESION VARIABILITY

FEATURES A property that renders a linguistic sign distinct from the members of its class and endows it with prominence in the syntagm. The extent to which a sign systematically contracts certain relations with other signs. Momentary mobility or shiftability with respect to other signs.

28 Chapter 2: Grammaticalization, lexicalization, and language change Table 8. Lehmann’s parameters of grammaticalization (Lehmann 1995). AUTONOMY WEIGHT

COHESION

VARIABILITY

PARADIGMATIC Integrity: the substantial size of the sign. Paradigmaticity: the degree to which the sign enters, is integrated into, dependent on a paradigm. Paradigmatic variability: the possibility of using other signs in its stead or of omitting it altogether.

SYNTAGMATIC Structural scope: the extent of the constructions the sign enters in or helps to form. Bondedness: the degree to which a sign depends on, or attaches to, such other signs. Syntagmatic variability: the possibility of shifting a sign around in its construction.

Lehmann (1995) views the grammaticalization parameters in Table 8 as variable properties of linguistic signs, which “jointly identify … the grammaticality of a sign, that is, the degree to which it is grammaticalized.” (p. 124) Moreover, he maintains that “mere variation of one of these properties … turns it into a process which affects that sign” so that the above properties can be reformulated in terms of the processes in Table 9. Table 9. Grammaticalization processes (Lehmann 1995). PROCESS ATTRITION PARADIGMATIZATION

OBLIGATORIFICATION CONDENSATION COALESCENCE FIXATION

FEATURES Gradual loss of semantic and phonological substance. Paradigm integration, i.e., leveling out of the differences that originally characterized the members of the paradigm. Shift from optional to obligatory. Overall physical reduction. Loss of physical independence and consequent tendency to affixation. Movement from free to fixed linear order.

Hopper (1991) finds the principles proposed by Lehmann somewhat restricted because, in his opinion, they only pertain to more advanced stages of grammaticalization. He thus proposes the five parameters presented in

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Table 10, which, he argues, characterize earlier stages of grammaticalization as well. Table 10. Hopper’s (1991) principles of grammaticalization. PARAMETER LAYERING DIVERGENCE

SPECIALIZATION PERSISTENCE DE-CATEGORIALIZATION

FEATURES Coexistence of different stages or layers within a broad functional domain. Split of the item/category, so that while one part undergoes grammaticalization, the other maintains its original autonomy. Narrowing of the variety of formal choices available. Retention of the original lexical meaning (i.e., the opposite of bleaching). Loss/neutralization of morphological markers or of syntactic features typical of full category.

The general processes (or tendencies) introduced so far have practical value in that they allow for a ‘breaking down’ of the overall process of simplification entailed by grammaticalization, which may facilitate its description. Clearly, even though they could, the above-mentioned tendencies do not haves to co-occur (at least not to the same extent) within specific instances of grammaticalization. Weakening in its broadest sense, meaning of loss of linguistic substance at any level, has been considered an (indeed, ‘the’) essential feature of grammaticalization processes. Heine and Reh (1984: 15), for instance, define grammaticalization as “an evolution whereby linguistic units lose in semantic complexity, pragmatic significance, syntactic freedom, and phonetic substance.” In view of such a statement, the principle of persistence proposed by Hopper (1991) may seem unsubstantiated. Yet, corroborating evidence has been provided in support of the claim that semantic weakening pertains to later stages of grammaticalization whereas earlier stages are characterized by “a redistribution or shift, not a loss, of meaning.” (Hopper and Traugott 2003: 94 [emphasis mine, CR]; see also Bybee and Pagliuca 1987; Sweetser 1990; Langacker 1990; Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca 1994) In other words, it seems more appropriate to consider semantic weakening as a relative notion, which more properly implies “demotion of some lexical meanings and promotion of others … [wherein the promoted meanings]

30 Chapter 2: Grammaticalization, lexicalization, and language change tend to be relatively abstract … [but also] the ones most salient in the original contexts/formulae within which grammaticalization takes place.” (Hopper and Traugott 2003: 98) As it will be shown in later chapters, this is exactly what happens in the grammaticalization of Italian clitics (especially la), where semantic enrichment in the form of pragmatic strengthening can indeed be observed. Klausenburger (2000) relates weakening to issues of syntactic branching typology (Bauer 1995) and language perception and processing (Hall 1992) in order to account for the fact that, cross-linguistically, grammaticalization appears strongly to favor suffixation over prefixation. Within this view, prefixation is rarely achieved because it stems from right branching (head initial) constructions, which, given the crucial role that initial words and/or segments have for perception, are less likely to undergo more advanced stages of grammaticalization. In other words, the perceptual and informational load carried by the potential prefix is too significant to favor complete assimilation into the second part of the structure.

2.2.2. Grammaticalization continua Grammaticalization is to be viewed as a lengthy, gradual process, an evolutionary continuum, for which different though essentially equivalent metaphors have been proposed. Among the best known are scale (Lehmann 1995), channel (Givón 1979; Heine and Reh 1984), chain (Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer 1991; Heine 1992, 2000), and (grammatical) cline (Hopper and Traugott 2003). As shown in (6), grammaticalization continua can be developed with reference to different aspects of grammar: (6)

General grammaticalization continua a. (discourse) > syntax > morphology > morphophonemics > zero b. lexeme > clitic > derivational affix > inflectional affix > zero

Discourse appears in parentheses in (6b) because it is not unanimously considered a starting point. It is identified as the origin of the grammaticalization cline by Givón (1979), who argues that the endpoint of the continuum is indeed connected to the beginning (i.e., zero > discourse), yielding a cyclical cline, given that complete loss of inflection enforces the options made available to speakers by discourse principles.

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The continuum in (6a) refers to main language components, whereas the continuum in (6b) focuses on the substance of the linguistic units undergoing grammaticalization. Continua that are more specific can also be formulated, as in (7), which refer to individual lexical or functional categories, or to explicit grammatical functions. (7)

Specific grammaticalization continua a. relational noun > secondary adposition > primary adposition > agglutinative case affix > fusional case affix (Lehmann 1985: 304) b. full verb > auxiliary >verbal clitic > verbal affix (Hopper and Traugott 2003: 111) c. object person > object object > object space > object time > space > time > quality (Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer 1991) d. back of body > back part > place behind > time after > behind > after > retarded(Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer 1991: 223)

The continua in (7a, b) are essentially specialized equivalents of (6b). On the other hand, (7c) and its empirical counterpart (7d) are meant to reflect the process of conceptual abstraction driven by metaphor and metonymy, which constitutes the basis of the grammaticalization model elaborated by Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer (1991) and will be discussed in more detail below (§ 2.2.4). It is important to keep in mind that grammaticalization continua cannot be considered ordered sequences of discrete units because the transition from one stage (i.e., one form/function) to another always involves some degree of overlap. Successive stages of grammaticalization cannot be neatly separated and can in fact coexist. Thus, grammaticalization theory cannot accept the notion of discrete linguistic categories (Traugott and König 1991; Hopper and Traugott 2003; Heine 1993): any continuum “requires to be fleshed out by nondiscrete grammatical categories, a specific characteristic of the essence of grammaticalization.” (Klausenburger 2000: 149 [original emphasis]) Finally, it should be pointed out that although grammaticalization processes can reach full completion, they could also end at any point.

32 Chapter 2: Grammaticalization, lexicalization, and language change 2.2.3. Diachronic and synchronic relevance of grammaticalization Another central assumption in grammaticalization studies is that grammaticalization operates both at the synchronic and at the diachronic level. As explained by Lehmann (1985), from a diachronic point of view, grammaticalization can be defined as a process that “turns lexemes into grammatical formatives and makes grammatical formatives still more grammatical.” (p. 303) From a synchronic perspective, grammaticalization is to be viewed as a principle that allows for the ordering (and classification) of subcategories of a given grammatical category. Thus, grammaticalization comprises diachronic change and synchronic variation, where the latter refers to the range of alternatives available to the speaker for expressing certain linguistic structures. Lehmann (1985) exemplifies this point by referring to the range of devices that are available in Latin for the marking of case relations on nominal constituents. (8)

a. Concordi parvae res crescunt. concord.F.SG.ABL small.F .PL.NOM thing.F.PL.NOM grow.3PL.PI “Through concord, small things grow.” b. Multa per avaritiam fecit. many.N.PL.ACC for avarice.F.SG.ACC do.3SG.PPERF “Many things he did out of avarice.” c. Multa fecit amiciti many.N.PL.ACC do.3SG.PPERF friendship.F.SG.ABL caus. cause.F .SG.ABL “Many things he did for the sake of friendship.” (Lehmann 1985: 310)

The examples in (8) illustrate three different strategies to indicate that the referent of a nominal constituent is the cause in an event: bare ablative (8a), subordination to a primary preposition (8b), and subordination to a secondary adposition (8c). A crucial fact to note is that “[v]ariation among these alternatives is not literally free; actually, since they differ in their autonomy, they also differ in the degree of freedom with which they are employed.” (Lehmann: 310 [emphasis mine, CR]) At the synchronic level, then, grammaticalization “is seen primarily as a syntactic, discourse pragmatic phenomenon, to be studied from the point of view of fluid patterns of language use.” (Hopper and Traugott 2003: 2)

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Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer (1991: 248 ff.) adopt an even more radical position with respect to this issue and argue that grammaticalization requires a perspective independent of the diachronic vs. synchronic dichotomy. Grammaticalization “has to be conceived of as a panchronic process that presents both a diachronic perspective, since it involves change, and a synchronic perspective, since it implies variation that can be described as a system without reference to time.” (p. 261 [emphasis mine, CR]) The panchronic view proposed by Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer (1991) is firmly rejected by Newmeyer (1998), who claims that this “need to build diachronic statements into synchronic descriptions … [derives from the fact that] Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer confuse what a grammar of a language has to account for and what a comprehensive theory of language in general has to account for.” (p. 286 [original emphasis]) Newmeyer embraces Joseph and Janda’s (1988) view, according to which any appeal to panchrony must be abandoned in linguistic explanations. The notion of “panchronic or achronic dynamism in language” is unacceptable because it implies that speakers are led to change the language by grammatical principles or mechanisms via a “kind of asocial individual causation of linguistic change” (Joseph and Janda 1988: 184), whereas language change only takes place through cross-generational and cross-lectal transmission. That is, “language change occurs solely via two independently motivated entities: the present (synchrony) and time (a successions of presents, i.e., diachrony).” (Joseph and Janda 1988: 184) According to Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca (1994: 300), “the push for grammaticalization … originates in the need to be more specific, in the tendency to infer as much as possible from the input, and the necessity of interpreting items in context.” Within such an approach, then, grammaticalization processes are linked to language use and communicative factors, which necessarily involve a social dimension, so that the linguistic changes brought about by grammaticalization are no longer associated to “asocial individual causation.” Notice, however, that Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca (1994) reject the idea that grammatical categories develop due to specific needs of the language; that is, they do not believe that grammaticalization per se should be attributed functional motivations. Rather “the processes that lead to grammaticalization occur for their own sakes; it just happens that their cumulative effect is the development of grammar.” (p. 298)

34 Chapter 2: Grammaticalization, lexicalization, and language change 2.2.4. Cognitive and pragmatic factors As mentioned previously, cognitive and pragmatic processes have been identified as driving forces in grammaticalization (Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer 1991; Traugott and Heine 1991; Traugott and König 1991; Hopper and Traugott 2003; Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca 1994). In the following subsections, I provide a basic characterization of the cognitive and pragmatic processes most widely involved in grammaticalization and illustrate how they operate.

2.2.4.1. Metaphor Broadly speaking, metaphor is the cognitive mechanism that projects or “maps” one conceptual domain (the source or donor domain) onto a different conceptual domain (the target or recipient domain). In other words, metaphor indicates a conceptual transfer from a basic, usually concrete, meaning to a more abstract meaning (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Lakoff 1987). Typical examples of metaphorical transfer are the conceptualization of psychological states (more abstract domains) in terms of physical events (more concrete domains). This is illustrated by the use of grasping or seeing to refer to understanding based on the “mind-as-body” metaphor. Another common example is denoting mental/psychological states or time in terms of spatial entities, as in to be on top (of something) or to be ahead in doing something, respectively. The evolution of Ewe megbé ‘back’ from an object noun (body part) into a spatial element and subsequently into an adjective provides a clear illustration of the role metaphor can play in grammaticalization; furthermore, it nicely exemplifies the grammaticalization chain introduced in (7c) above (§ 2.2.2). (9)

Grammaticalization of Ewe megbé ‘back’ (Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer 1991: 65–66, ex. [2]–[5])) a. épé megbé fá OBJECT (person) 3SG.POSS back be.cold “His back is cold.” b. é-le x
á megbé SPACE (adverb) 3SG-be house DEF behind “He is behind the house.”

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c. é-n
megbé SPACE (postposition) 3SG-stay behind “He stays back.” d. é-kú Ie é-megbé TIME 3SG-die be 3SG.POSS-behind “He died after him.” e. é-tsí megbé QUALITY 3SG-remain behind “He is backward/dull.” Another example of how metaphor applies in grammaticalization is given by the development of epistemic modals of possibility and probability from the deontic modality of obligation (Bybee and Pagliuca 1985: 73; also Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca 1994). In this case, the epistemic sense is viewed as a metaphorical extension of the notion of obligation to the truth of a proposition, as sketched in (10). (10) Obligation: X AGENT is obliged to Y  Possibility/Probability: XPROPOSITION is obliged to be true There seems to be general agreement among grammaticalization scholars who follow the traditional approach regarding the importance of metaphor in grammaticalization. However, it has been pointed out that, since analogy is not a leading force in grammaticalization (see § 2.4.1 below) and metaphor is essentially analogical and iconic (e.g., Anttila 1989: 141–142), metaphor cannot be considered the primary process at work in grammaticalization (Hopper and Traugott 2003: 87).

2.2.4.2. Metonymy and pragmatic inference Metonymy is a process of semantic transfer as well, but involves mapping within a single conceptual domain, based on physical, conceptual, or experiential “contiguity” (Taylor 1995: 123–124; Kövecses and Radden 1998: 39; Panther and Radden 1999; Barcelona 2000; Koch 2001, 2004, among others). Thus, metonymy differs from metaphor in that it is indexical rather than analogical and iconic. Among the classic instances of metonymic representations, we find the use of a part or member to refer to the whole entity or category (i.e., synecdoche, as in sail ~ ship), the producer to denote

36 Chapter 2: Grammaticalization, lexicalization, and language change the product (I love Dostoevskij ~ I love Dostoevskij’s works), or the effect to denote the cause (she was all smiles ~ she was happy). In specific relation to grammaticalization, Traugott and König (1991) have proposed that the notion of metonymy is to be extended from traditional, concrete and overt contexts to cognitive and covert contexts, particularly the pragmatic contexts of conversational and conventional inference; that is, from physical and/or conceptual continuity to contiguity in the discourse world. In this case, indexing involves the pointing to relevance entailed by conversational inferences about stereotypical situations, which would otherwise remain covert. This type of metonymic change is considered a strengthening of informativeness and is argued to derive from the search for ways to regulate communication and negotiate speaker-hearer interaction (Traugott and König 1991: 212). An example is the development of the concessive meaning of the connective while (< Old English a hwile e ‘at the time that’), which originally had only a temporal meaning of simultaneity. The semantic shift from co-occurrence (at the same time) to concessive/adversative (general incompatibility, abnormality) is reconstructed as follows: the reduction of a hwile e to the simple conjunction wile brought about the loss of the precise specification of simultaneity carried by the demonstrative so that new conversational inferences could arise. Among these inferences was the (no longer surviving) causal inference that the subordinate clause serves as ground for the matrix clause, rather than as a temporal frame, as shown in (11a), where wile is ambiguous between ‘when’ and ‘because’. Most importantly, however, the inference of surprise about the overlap in time or the relations between event and ground arose, from which the concessive, adversative meaning derived (11b). (11) a. æt lastede a [xix] winter wile Stephne was king. that lasted those 19 winters while Stephen was king “That lasted 19 winters when/because Stephen was king.” (Traugott and König 1991: 201) b. While the object of the people was to free themselves from the yoke, the object of the nobles was merely to find new sources of excitement. (Buckle: 1857; Civiliz. I. x. 608; in OED) One last important thing to mention is that metonymy, as understood within this specific approach, is claimed to lead to the emergence of more subjective meanings, which are meanings “situated in the subjective beliefstate or attitude towards the situation, including the linguistic [situation].”

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(Traugott and König 1991: 213; also Traugott 1995; Traugott and Dasher 2002)

2.2.4.3. Context-induced reinterpretation The evolution of the noun ví ‘child’ into a diminutive suffix discussed in Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer (1991: 81–84) demonstrates quite effectively how the path of grammaticalization processes can be shaped by context. (12) a. útsu ‘man’ b. koklô ‘chicken’ c. kpé ‘stone’ d. súkli ‘sugar’ e. ya ‘wind’

útsu-ví‘boy’ koklô-ví‘chick’ kpé-ví ‘small stone’ súkli-ví ‘sugar cube’ ya-ví ‘breeze’

The examples in (12) show that the suffix –ví covers a semantic domain ranging from diminutive proper (i.e., small in terms of size/age) to ‘qualitative’ diminutive (i.e., weak), which, of course, is linked to metaphorical inference: the more abstract meaning of quality is expressed by means of the more concrete meaning of size. The emergence of the different connotations of –ví, though, is also driven by context-induced reinterpretation because it is the individual context (i.e., linguistic forms) which determines the specific meaning of the suffix. The relevance of context-induced interpretation becomes more clearly apparent when we look at the further development of –ví, illustrated in (13). (13) a. d
y
lá ‘healer, doctor’ b. núfiálá ‘teacher’ c. bu’kulá ‘driver’

d
y
lá-ví ‘apprentice healer’ núfiálá-ví ‘new teacher’ bu’kulá-ví ‘somebody who knows how to drive but does not have a driver license’

In (13) –ví attaches to nouns that indicate professions and comes to express the meaning of ‘inexperienced, unqualified’, which is derived via further abstraction of the notion of weakness in specific appropriate contexts.

38 Chapter 2: Grammaticalization, lexicalization, and language change 2.3. Lexicalization 2.3.1. Defining properties The term lexicalization has been given different and sometimes quite diverging interpretations in the relevant literature. In this section, I review the main definition provided for lexicalization in some recent studies and state how the term is interpreted in the present work.19 Brinton and Traugott (2005) define lexicalization as a change which results in a syntactic construction or a word formation pattern comes, in specific linguistic contexts, being used “as a new contentful form with formal and semantic properties that are not completely derivable or predictable from the constituents of the construction or the word formation pattern.” (p. 96) Lexicalization is thus viewed as a process that creates “a lexical item out of something other than a lexical item.” (Auwera 2002: 21) This definition of lexicalization basically corresponds to the process of univerbation (Lipka 2002;20 see also Himmelmann 2004: 27–28) and, besides implying the adoption of new lexical forms into the lexicon, it entails that the new incorporated item has undergone some substantive changes at both the structural and the semantic level (idiomatization). According to the definition just proposed, the scenarios in Table 11 qualify as instances of lexicalization. Table 11. Instances of lexicalization (Brinton and Traugott 2005: 98). CASE OF LEXICALIZATION Fused syntactic phrases accompanied by idiomatization, sometimes undergoing morphophonological change. Fused compounds. Phonogenesis Phonologization Creation of semantic, non category-changing affixes

EXAMPLE bread-and-butter ‘the necessities of life’ handicap < hand in cap mildew < OE mele ‘honey’ + deaw ‘dew’ handiwork < handgeweork drink/drench –hood < OE had ‘rank’

The output forms of the processes in Table 11 differ from the input forms as follows: semantically, by being more idiomatic; morphophonologically,

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by exhibiting a higher degree of fusion; and in terms of productivity, since their compatibility with host classes becomes restricted. Their unifying defining property is that the output forms are “semantical/contentful/lexical” not “functional/indexical/grammatical.” (Brinton and Traugott 2005: 98)

2.3.2. Grammaticalization and lexicalization During the past decade, a number of studies highlighted the close relationship that exists between grammaticalization and lexicalization (among others, Moreno Cabrera 1998; Lehmann 2002; Himmelmann 2004; Traugott 2005; Brinton and Traugott 2005). For instance, Lehmann (2002: 1) has proposed that A sign is lexicalized if it is withdrawn from analytical access and inventorized. On the other hand, for a sign to be grammaticalized means for it to acquire functions in the analytical formation of more comprehensive signs. Both processes regularly, but not necessarily involve a reductive component. Consequently, grammaticalization is not the mirror image of lexicalization. […] Thus, lexicalization and grammaticalization are processes that have much in common and are, to a certain extent, parallel.

A very important claim made by Lehmann (2002) is that linguistic units per se do not undergo grammaticalization or lexicalization. Rather, “it is the construction of which the element is a constituent that embarks on either course.” (p. 7 [emphasis mine, CR]) This means that the grammaticalization/lexicalization of single units results from the grammaticalization/lexicalization of the constructions in which these single units participate. However, in the case of grammaticalization, a specific constituent of the construction can be more affected than other constituents are, whereas lexicalization always influences the construction as a whole. In addition, grammaticalization makes the internal relations among the members of the construction involved tighter and more constrained, while lexicalization makes them irregular and eventually eliminates them. Grammaticalization and lexicalization are thus seen as orthogonal processes, which can “apply alternatively to a construction, but successively to an item.” (Lehmann 2002: 4) The crucial difference between the two processes is that “[g]rammaticalization involves an analytic access to a unit, [while] lexicalization involves a holistic access to a unit, a renunciation of its internal analysis.” (Lehmann 2002: 13)

40 Chapter 2: Grammaticalization, lexicalization, and language change Comparing grammaticalization and lexicalization, Himmelmann (2004: 36) argues that these two phenomena have in common two main elements. The first is that they both originate from “the spontaneous and productive combination of lexical items in discourse (=(X) An B
Kn)”, where A and B stand for full lexical item classes, and X and K for syntactic and semanticpragmatic contexts respectively. The second is that they both bring about conventional expressions. Once on their way, though, grammaticalization and lexicalization soon start to diverge. First, in the case of the grammaticalization, B begins to form a unit with a set of the A-class element, whereas in the case of the lexicalization, only one member of the A-class item is involved. Second, the syntagmatic context does not need to change in lexicalization, but it is generally expanded in grammaticalization. Finally, the semantic-pragmatic context undergoes a directional expansion in grammaticalization, while in lexicalization the changes that take place at this level are non-directional. According to Himmelmann (2004), the most important difference between grammaticalization and lexicalization, the only parameter of divergence that actually makes them opposite (converse) phenomena, has to do with lexical generality as defined in Bybee (1985). Grammaticalization leads to generality (of the grammatical element) because it affects a set of items. In contrast, lexicalization is maximally nongeneral because it involves specific individual items. In my analysis of the grammaticalization processes that pertain to Italian clitics, I essentially adopt the definition of lexicalization proposed by Lehmann (2002). The term lexicalization will be used primarily in reference to the results of the process of incorporation (or obligatorification) of specific clitics into individual verbs, which results in the creation of new lexical items. That is, the process of lexicalization will be understood as applying to a complex unit, mainly verb + clitic, although it may also involve an adjective or an adverb, i.e. verb + clitic (+ adjective/adverb). More precisely, the constructions in question will be considered grammaticalized when analyzed analytically, with grammaticalization affecting the clitic, which becomes an obligatory grammatical formative. If analyzed holistically, though, the same constructions will be regarded as lexicalized, since they represent independent entries in the lexical inventory (Lehmann 2002: 14). Consequently, the expression ‘lexicalized clitic’ is taken to mean that the clitic has become an obligatory element of the verb or verbadjective/adverb compound, and is considered synonymous to fully grammaticalized clitic.

Controversial issues

41

2.4. Controversial issues in grammaticalization theory 2.4.1. The role of reanalysis and analogy Reanalysis indicates a structural change that affects an expression (or class of expressions) without causing any abrupt or fundamental alteration of the expression’s surface manifestation (Langacker 1977: 58). From a communicative perspective, reanalysis ensues when the listener interprets the structure (and the meaning) of an expression differently from the speaker, which obviously means that (at least) two possible interpretations/analyses are available to the listener. Given that it does not visibly alter the appearance of the form involved, reanalysis itself is a covert phenomenon: it is revealed only “ex post when the construction behaves in ways that presuppose its new structure.” (Lehmann 2004: 162) For instance, the reanalysis of Hamburg+er ‘item (of food) from Hamburg’ as ham+burger becomes overt once forms as cheeseburger, veggieburger, etc. are produced. Reanalysis has been identified as “the dominant mechanism driving [grammaticalization].” (Hopper and Traugott 2003: 69) Yet, it is important to stress that reanalysis does not entail grammaticalization and that there are cases of reanalysis which are not instances of grammaticalization. In compounding, for example, it is not necessarily the case that one of the elements be reanalyzed as a grammatical formative (e.g., meat in sweetmeat, which is a case of lexicalization vs. –hood as in childhood, etc.). As for analogy, it “refers to the attraction of extant forms to already existing constructions” and operates overtly (Hopper and Traugott 2003: 63– 64). The extension of the suffix –hood (< had ‘person, condition, rank’) to contexts that no longer entail a human referent, e.g. falsehood, gives a nice illustration of analogy. Thus, reanalysis leads to linguistic innovation while analogy is responsible for the spread of the innovative features across the linguistic system. More specifically, “reanalysis and analogy involve innovation along different axes. Reanalysis operates along the syntagmatic axis of linear constituent structure. Analogy, by contrast, operates along the paradigmatic axis of options at any one constituent node.” (Hopper and Traugott 2003: 63–64) Reanalysis and analogy are widely (and fairly unanimously) recognized as key mechanisms in language change and, in Hopper and Traugott’s view, although they “do not define grammaticalization, nor are they coextensive with it, … grammaticalization does not occur without them.” (2003: 69 [emphasis mine, CR]) A different, more cautious position is em-

42 Chapter 2: Grammaticalization, lexicalization, and language change braced by Lehmann (2004), according to whom “[f]or many cases of grammaticalization, there is no analogical model that could direct them” (p. 161) and “reanalysis may occur as a component of a grammaticalization process.” (p. 163 [emphasis mine, CR]; cf. also Haspelmath 1998) More precisely, Lehmann claims that analogy may be a driving force in one of the constitutive parameters of grammaticalization, paradigmaticization (see Table 8, this chapter), leading to what he refers to as analogically oriented grammaticalization. He strongly asserts, however, that analogical grammatical change is separate from grammaticalization and that “the proprium of grammaticalization comes out only in pure [not analogically driven, CR] grammaticalization.” (Lehmann 2004: 162)

2.4.2. Grammaticalization as an epiphenomenon Within the traditional approach, grammaticalization has been seen as a challenge to the generative notion of grammar. For instance, Hopper (1987: 148) has claimed: “There is no ‘grammar’ but only ‘grammaticization’ – movements toward structure.” Hopper’s position is strongly criticized by Newmeyer (1998, 2001),21 who maintains that … there is no such thing as grammaticalization, at least in so far as it might be regarded as a distinct grammatical phenomenon requiring a distinct set of principles for its explanation ... the set of phenomena that fall under its label are a simple consequence of principles that any theory – whether formal or functional – would need to posit anyway. (Newmeyer 1998: 226, [original emphasis])

Grammaticalization cannot be considered a distinct process because its component parts can occur independently from each other, whereas “the most distinguishing feature of a distinct process [is] the unfolding of its component parts in a determinate sequence in which one step of the sequence inevitably engenders the following one.” (Newmeyer 1998: 251) Hence, grammaticalization should be regarded merely as an epiphenomenal result of independent processes, “nothing more than a label for the conjunction of certain types of independently occurring linguistic changes.” (Newmeyer 1998: 237) The idea that grammaticalization represents a combination of linguistic changes is by no means contested by advocates of grammaticalization. Even Hopper (1991: 19) acknowledges that “there seems to be no possibility of constructing a typology of grammaticalization, or constructing prin-

Controversial issues

43

ciples that will discriminate between grammaticalization and other types of change.” A similar position is embraced by Lehmann (1995) and also by Giacalone Ramat (1998), who accurately highlights how “grammaticalization is a specific case of language change.” (p. 123 [emphasis mine, CR]) This is certainly not the place to attempt a refutation of the “deconstruction” of grammaticalization put forward by Newmeyer (1998). Insightful criticism of Newmeyer’s view is offered by Haspelmath (2000), to which the reader is referred. The question we may want to ask at this point, though, is if the fact that grammaticalization just amounts to an epiphenomenal process indeed represents a serious problem. In other words, let us assume that grammaticalization is ‘simply’ a particular type of language change, or the conjunction of a number of types of linguistic changes that (might) take place independently of each other (Newmeyer 1998), i.e., that it is in fact an epiphenomenon. Under this assumption, are we to compelled to assume that its epiphenomenal nature makes grammaticalization of lesser value, or perhaps of no value at all for linguistics studies? The answer to this question is, I believe, negative. Haspelmath (2000) points out that grammaticalization has never been claimed to be an independent phenomenon governed by laws that pertain exclusively to it, and remarks that [p]ostulating special “grammaticalization laws” would be completely against the spirit of the functionalist orientation … On the contrary, it would be truly astonishing if anyone claimed seriously that there are “autonomous diachronic processes” that are not epiphenomenal of something else. (Haspelmath 2000: 248)

Why would we want to pursue grammaticalization studies then? Grammaticalization uncovers patterns and mechanisms of language change that apply consistently across different (families of) languages; it “represent[s] the most salient case of a pervasive regularity of language change.” (Haspelmath 2000: 248) The relevance of grammaticalization within a general theory of language change (i.e., a theory of universals of linguistic change) is thus obvious. Moreover, grammaticalization reveals synchronic patterns of structural variation, which have been shown to apply across (unrelated) languages; therefore, grammaticalization studies provide quite useful material for language typology. It can be argued, of course, that the value of grammaticalization is purely descriptive. Yet such a claim does not diminish its significance since ‘theoretical’ (i.e., ‘explanatory’) linguistic analyses depend crucially on language description: we cannot devise theories that would successfully account for linguistic phenomena without having a detailed and comprehensive description of the phenomena themselves. To

44 Chapter 2: Grammaticalization, lexicalization, and language change put it differently, the fact that grammaticalization studies allow us to formulate descriptive generalizations, which can then be tested by theoretical principles of any orientation, would definitely make them worth pursuing. It could be claimed, then, that since grammaticalization processes bring about new structures, grammaticalization feeds formal analyses by providing them with new linguistic material to account for. Indeed, grammaticalization may even challenge linguistic theories by proving them inadequate to explain newly emerged constructions and/or linguistic units. In addition, the fact that a number of grammatical structures can be accounted for by direct reference to diachronic change clearly indicates “the explanatory potential of grammaticalization changes.” (Haspelmath 2000: 250) Grammaticalization analyses and strictly syntactic/morphosyntactic formal analyses, then, are not to be considered incompatible with or exclusive of each other. On the contrary, they can be successfully integrated to some extent. Evidence in favor of such integration comes from Italian clitics. In Chapters 5–7, we will see that, when approached from a grammaticalization perspective, Italian clitics do not constitute a uniform morphosyntactic category because significant differences, which correspond to different grammaticalization stages, can be found between clitics that retain pronominal anaphoric value and clitics that have lost it. In addition, different morphological functions can be attributed to the same clitic. In other words, grammaticalization portrays a complex scenario, which rules out a clear-cut separation of clitics in terms of their morphosyntactic function. After the scenario has been exposed, morphological analyses based on different frameworks can provide different assessments of it. And if a morphological framework exists, which independently predicts an identical or equivalent scenario, such a framework will gain in explanatory power by proving itself adequate to predict new phenomena emergent from grammaticalization. In Italian, the grammaticalization of clitic pronouns and subsequent lexicalization of the verb + clitic complex may affect the argument structure of some verbs, and may lead to the development of new verb classes. In strictly syntactic and strictly synchronic analyses of the language, the status of these new verb classes can be accounted for within different syntactic frameworks. For instance, I give an analysis of the argument structure of the verb volerci ‘be necessary’ (derived from volere ‘want’ via incorporation of the grammaticalized clitic ci), within a generative (Principles and Parameters) framework, suggesting that volerci be classified as a new type of two-argument unaccusative predicate (Russi 2003; see also

Controversial issues

45

Russi 2006b). The emergence of new verb classes can obviously have implications for syntactic theory in that the structural properties of the new verbs may call for revisions of principles relating to different components of the theory. Thus, the connection between grammaticalization and more general, syntactic (or morphological) theories becomes evident. That grammaticalization and generative theory/theories do not necessarily exclude each other has also been shown by Roberts (1993), who provides an account of the grammaticalization of the Romance future within the Principles and Parameters framework and by and Roberts and Roussou (1999, 2003), who analyze a number of grammaticalization phenomena in different language from a Minimalist Program perspective. However, Haspelmath (2000: 250) remarks how “Roberts (1993) clearly falls short in providing a story that can supersede the functionalist accounts.” All he seems to do in his article is to “translate” functionalist analyses of the grammaticalization of the Romance future into a generative framework, without actually highlighting the explanatory value of gram maticalization; and the same criticism can be applied to Roberts and Roussou (1999, 2003). In my opinion, the main problem with generative accounts of grammaticalization processes is that they do not allow for the introduction of cognitive principles and the notion of grammatical continuum. This is simply a matter of general intellectual approach to linguistic analysis and individual temperament, though, and has nothing to do with the soundness and value of specific analyses per se.

2.5. Summary This chapter has provided a basic outline of the main features of grammaticalization and lexicalization as general processes of language change and a review of the core theoretical assumptions of the traditional grammaticalization framework. Furthermore, the definition of lexicalization adopted in this work has been delineated and attention has been drawn to the fact that lexicalization is not taken to constitute a process independent from grammaticalization; on the contrary, the two are to be considered closely interrelated phenomena. Two controversial issues have then been discussed; namely, the role that reanalysis and analogy play vis-à-vis grammaticalization and lexicalization, and the issue of whether grammaticalization can be

46 Chapter 2: Grammaticalization, lexicalization, and language change regarded as an independently motivated phenomenon or it simply represents an epiphenomenal process.

Chapter 3 The Italian clitic system: a brief introduction

3.1. Introduction The primary objective of this chapter is to provide a basic sketch of the Italian pronominal clitic system and a preliminary overview of the most important changes that it has undergone. I begin with introducing the clitic pronouns found in Contemporary Standard Italian (CSI) and illustrating their distribution and their functions (§ 3.2). I then introduce the pronominal clitic system of Old Italian (OI, mainly thirteenth and fourteenth centuries) and compare it to the CSI system, both in terms of the clitics themselves and with respect to clitic placement and linearization (§ 3.3). The diachronic analysis continues in Chapter 4. There, I first provide an outline of the general grammaticalization processes that have affected the clitic pronouns in the course of the evolution from Old to CSI, and then examine whether and how more specific phenomena, such as the clitic allomorphy and the third person indirect object clitic gender/number neutralization, can be accounted for within the grammaticalization framework.

3.2. The clitic system of Contemporary Standard Italian 3.2.1. The clitic pronoun inventory The object clitic pronouns found CSI are listed in Tables 12 and 13 below. As it will be discussed presently, the clitics in Table 13 express a number of morphosyntactic functions and, in some cases, they may indeed lack pronominal properties; here they have been labeled based on their primary function for expository convenience. The forms in parenthesis are allomorphs that occur in clitic sequences, as illustrated in (1). They are not to be confused with the (homonymous) corresponding tonic forms, which are given in Table 14.22

48 Chapter 3: The Italian clitic system Table 12. The personal clitic pronouns of CSI. NUMBER

PERSON

DIRECT OBJECT

INDIRECT OBJECT

SINGULAR

1 2 3 1 2 3

mi ti lo M, la F ci vi li M, le F

mi (me) ti (te) gli M, le F ci (ce) vi (ve) [gli]

PLURAL

Table 13. Other clitic pronouns of CSI. ‘LOCATIVE’ ‘REFLEXIVE’ ‘PARTITIVE’

ci (ce), vi si (se) ne

Table 14. The personal tonic pronouns of CSI. NUMBER

PERSON

FORM

SINGULAR

1 2 3 1 2 3

me te lui M, lei F noi voi loro

PLURAL

(1)

Me l’(=lo) ha dato Carlo. 1SG.IO 3SG.DO M AUX.3SG give.PP Carlo “Carlo gave it to me.”

Final vowel deletion applies regularly in the environment of a following vowel. It has been claimed that deletion of the clitic’s final vowel never applies in the case of li, le, and ne (among others, Calabrese 1985: 127). A preliminary screening of LIP and CORIS/CODIS suggests, however, that the only form that actually disallows deletion is the feminine singular indirect object pronoun le since no instances were found of constructions of the type l’(=le) ho mandato una cartolina ‘I sent her a postcard’.23

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49

3.2.2. Gli as plural indirect object form The third plural indirect object form gli appears in brackets because it holds a somewhat controversial status in the language. Until quite recently, Italian grammars for high-school students (e.g., Marinucci 1996) strongly condemned the choice of gli as third plural indirect object clitic, identifying it as a feature of substandard or nonstandard registers and, following a longstanding traditional prescriptive position, they would recommend the use of the non-clitic form loro, as in (2b).24 (2)

a. Carlo gli presta il libro. b. Carlo presta loro il libro. “Carlo lends them the book.”

It actually appears that the use of gli as a third plural indirect object form is not a phenomenon restricted to more recent stages of the Italian language. Rather, it is widely attested practically throughout its entire history, although it has (apparently) been confined to spoken informal (familiar) registers, while loro has been claimed to represent the preferred form in more formal spoken registers and in the written language (among others, Serianni 1988: 213). More and more studies, however, have come to propose a more realistic scenario, acknowledging that loro as an indirect object form has a very marginal status among speakers of Standard Italian. To mention only a few, Cordin and Calabrese (2001: 551) maintain that “[l]a forma loro per l’ogg[etto] indiretto del pronome di III pers[ona] pl[urale] è usata solo nella lingua colta e nello stile letterario” (‘the form loro as third person plural indirect object pronoun is used only in the educated language and literary style’[my translation, CR]). The same position is taken by Dardano and Trifone (1995: 266), who claim that “[n]ell’italiano d’oggi è sempre più frequente l’uso di gli al posto di loro” (‘in the Italian of today, the use of gli instead of loro is more and more frequent’ [translation mine, CR). Similarly, Adorno (2003: 69) claims that loro tends to be replaced by gli especially in the spoken language, and Cortelazzo (2001) finally identifies the use of gli for all genders and numbers as an accepted phenomenon of neostandard Italian. That the use of gli as a third plural indirect object form is not an exclusive feature of spoken informal Italian had already been pointed out almost half a century ago by Robert Hall (1960). Hall’s claim was supported by

50 Chapter 3: The Italian clitic system empirical evidence gathered from the analysis of a sample of written data collected from newspapers, magazines and books, which showed that [L]’uso di gli invece di loro non è né eccezionale né universale. […] La differenza fra gli e loro, come regime indiretto della 3a persona plurale, risiede principalmente nel loro valore stilistico. Quest’ultimo implica una certa formalità, una certa letterarietà, mentre invece il primo è quotidiano e familiare. (p. 64; ‘The usage of gli instead of loro is neither exceptional nor universal. […] The difference between gli and loro as 3rd person plural indirect object pronoun lies mainly in their stylistic value. The latter implies a certain degree of formality, some literariness, whereas the former is familiar’ [my translation, CR]).

Hall’s findings, which are reported in Table 15, indicate that in the written language loro is still preferred to gli but the difference in rate of occurrence is not so radical: about 40% of gli vs. 60% of loro. Interestingly, Hall found no instances of the type l’ho dato loro ‘I gave it to them’ (p. 59), which suggests that the non-clitic form is more strongly disfavored in the case of clitic clusters (the so-called pronomi doppi constructions). Table 15. Occurrences of 3PL gli and 3PL loro in Hall (1960). NEWSPAPERS MAGAZINES BOOKS

gli 7 1 45

loro 10 4 64

The relative persistence of indirect object loro in the written language, at least in certain varieties as the language of newspapers, is confirmed in Bonomi (1993). Her analysis of a corpus composed of approximately 110 pages of newspapers diversified in terms of circulation and coverage (national vs. local) revealed that the indirect object plural is expressed by both forms in almost equal proportions: 10 occurrences of loro vs. 8 of gli (56% vs. 44%). Table 16 reports the number of occurrences of 3PL gli and loro found in LIP, which, as we recall, is the most important corpus of spoken Italian currently available.

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51

Table 16. Occurrences of 3PL IO loro and gli in LIP.

gli

OCCURRENCES PER DISCOURSE TYPES A B C D E 7 11 6 12 1

loro

1

0

0

3

1

TOTAL OCCURENCES 37 (only proclitic forms) 5

Only five tokens of indirect object loro are found in LIP, four of which occur in the most formal communicative settings (types D and E; specifically, an oral exchange between a university administrative clerk and a student, homilies, and public speeches). In contrast, we find 37 occurrences of gli as third plural indirect object, whose distribution does not appear to be skewed in terms of discourse type. It must be kept in mind, furthermore, that 37 does not represent a conclusive result because only the proclitic forms of gli have been taken into consideration, i.e., the gli Vfinite type but not the Vnon-finite-gli type. Conversely, the 5 occurrences of loro do represent a conclusive result because this form only occurs post-verbally and as a separate form (see § 3.3 for details on clitic placement facts).25

3.2.3. The clitic si The principal morphosyntactic functions carried out by the clitic si (< Lat. S) are illustrated in (3)–(6). (3)

a. E c’è chi, come [Joan Crawford]i, sii lava così poco che gli inservienti della lavanderia prendono i suoi vestiti con un bastone. REFLEXIVE (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “Then there are people who, like Joan Crawford, wash themselves so little that the cleaner’s staff handles their clothes with a stick.” b. Quando [i due innamorati virtuali]i sii incontrano e scoprono di essere molto dissimili rispetto ai loro sogni, è inevitabile l’addio. RECIPROCAL (CORIS, PRACCVolum) “When the two virtual dates meet and realize that they are very different from what they’d dreamed, the goodbye is inevitable.”

Si corresponds to a third person singular and plural reflexive or reciprocal pronoun (i.e., a direct object pronoun co-referential with the subject) in (3a)

52 Chapter 3: The Italian clitic system and (3b) respectively. As shown in (4), reflexive/reciprocal si can also function as indirect object pronoun: (4)

a. Mi sono dato alcune regole di comportamento e una di queste prevede di non accettare regali di valore da ditte private. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “I gave myself some rules of behavior and one of them is not to accept valuable gifts from private firms.” b. Noi quest’anno, in famiglia, ci siamo regalati l’auto nuova. (CORIS, NARRATVarri) “This year, our family, we gave ourselves a new car as a present.”

Notice that the first and second person forms of the reflexive/reciprocal clitic are the same as the non-reflexive/reciprocal forms: (5)

a. mi lavo, ti lavi, ci laviamo, vi lavate “I wash myself, you wash yourself, we wash ourselves, you wash yourselves” b. ci aiutiamo, vi aiutate “we help each other, you help each other”

The si found in (6) and (7), on the other hand, is an invariable form, which functions as a generic subject (i.e., ‘one’, ‘people’, ‘we’) in (6) and as a passive marker in (7). (6)

Oggi si muore come si vive: da soli e in modo spiccio. IMPERSONAL (CORIS, STAMPAPeri) “Nowadays, one dies like one lives: alone and quickly.”

(7)

Oppure si catturano e si allevano coccodrillini appena nati. PASSIVE (CORIS, PRACCRivis) “Or new-born crocodiles are captured and raised.”

The si of structures like (6) has also been referred to as middle si (e.g., Monachesi 1999) based on the assumption that, although these constructions have passive semantics, they differ from standard (i.e., si-less) passive constructions in being incompatible with a prepositional agentive phrase:

The clitic system of CSI

(8)

53

a. Le fragole si mangiano spesso *dai bambini. b. Le fragole sono mangiate spesso dai bambini. “Strawberries are often eaten.” (Monachesi 1999: 92)

Since the term “middle reflexive” has also been applied to reflexive constructions that involve so-called verbs of grooming (e.g., lavarsi ‘wash oneself’, etc.; Kemmer 1993; Klaiman 1992; Maldonado 2000, among others) and, furthermore, since the core meaning of the two sentences in (8) is the same, I prefer to use the term passive for the sake of simplicity. At most, a distinction might be drawn between impersonal (8a) and personal (8b) passive. In the examples given in (3)–(6), si stands for an argument of the verb, whereas the si found in (7) does not carry pronominal value and functions as a morphosyntactic marker of passive voice. Another instance of nonpronominal si is the so-called ergative (or intransitive) si found in verbs such as svegliarsi ‘to wake up’, spaventarsi ‘to get/become scared’, etc., illustrated in (9), which have a transitive (causative) counterpart without si, as shown in (10). (9)

a. Non sono una persona che si spaventa alla vista del sangue. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “I am not a person who gets scared seeing blood.” b. Sorrise. Non posso parlare più forte. Altrimenti mamma e papà si svegliano. (CORIS, NARRATTrRo) “He smiled. I can’t speak louder; otherwise mom and dad will wake up.”

(10) a. Spino si è alzato in fretta e il suo movimento brusco ha spaventato il gabbiano che ha spiccato un volo sbieco ed è andato a planare sull’altro quadrato, vicino alla scalinata. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “Spino stood up quickly and his sudden movement scared the seagull, which flew off sideways and landed on the other square by the steps.” b. Due violente detonazioni hanno svegliato nel cuore della notte gli abitanti di Skopje. (CORIS, MON2001_04) “Two violent detonations woke the residents of Skopje in the middle of the night.”

54 Chapter 3: The Italian clitic system That the si in (9) does not have argumental (hence pronominal) status is trivially shown by the fact that neither spaventarsi nor svegliarsi can be interpreted reflexively as ‘scare/wake oneself’. In (9) the subject referent can only be interpreted as the experiencer of a given (change of) state, not as the causer of the event of scaring or waking, as in (10). The causative reflexive interpretation can only be obtained by means of the complex pronominal se stesso, e.g., ha stupito se stessa ‘she astonished herself’. Finally, si characterizes so-called ‘inherently reflexive’ verbs, that is, verbs that lack a non-reflexive counterpart (e.g., arrabbiarsi ‘to get angry’ vs. *arrabbiare). In this case, no actual morphosyntactic function can be attributed to si and it seems to represent a lexical marker.26 The constructions with si illustrated above have received considerable attention and a number of detailed and accurate analyses of the syntactic and semantic properties of si have been offered, although mainly within the generative framework (among the best-known, Castelfranchi and Parisi 1976; Napoli 1976; Burzio 1986; Manzini 1986; Rosen 1988). In quite general terms, these analyses are primarily concerned with proposing a unifying account of the different syntactic properties of si. That is, their goal is to argue for one single lexical entry for si and derive the different types of si illustrated in (3)–(7) in terms of syntactic rules.27 I would like to conclude this section by briefly pointing out how an aspectual completive function can be attributed to si. This function has been assigned to the Spanish equivalent of si (se) in transitive constructions involving verbs of consumption, both physical (e.g., comer ‘eat’, beber ‘drink’) and psychological (e.g., leer ‘read’; Strozer 1976; Arce 1989; Nishida 1994; Zagona 1996; Kempchinsky 2003), such as those in (11). (11) El niño (se) comió la manzana. the child REFLX eat.3SG.PERF the apple “The child ate the apple (up).” (Zagona 1996: 475) In this environment, se is interpreted as an aspectual marker signaling “the culmination, or endpoint, of the event represented by the predicate.” (Zagona 1996: 475). The example in (12) indicates that the aspectual function can be attributed to si as well. 28 (12) a. E stamattina, a colazione, … si è mangiato sei uova. (CORIS, NARRATTrRo) “And for breakfast this morning, he ate up six eggs.”

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55

b. Cara signora Bonomi, sono una delle poche persone che si è letta veramente e per intero i due libri scritti dalla nuova scrittrice Romina Power. (CORIS, EPHEMOpusc) “Dear Mrs. Bonomi, I am one of the few people who really read entirely the two books written by the new author Romina Power.” Evidence for the aspectual function of si in constructions involving verbs of consumption comes from the following facts: (i)

The object must be bounded (Langacker 1987), as shown by the ungrammaticality of (13a) where the object is unbounded (a bare plural) (ii) Modifiers that suspend the completion of the event are disallowed (13b) (iii) The sentence can be modified only by adverbials that express how long the event took to be complete (13c) (13) a. *Carlo si è mangiato mele. “Carlo ate apples.” b. *Carlo si è mangiato la mela ma non l’ha finita. “Carlo ate the apple but he didn’t finish it.” c. Carlo si è mangiato la mela in un minuto/*per dieci minuti. “Carlo ate the apple in a minute/for ten minutes.” Regarding the compatibility of si with temporal adverbials, though, it must pointed out that verbs of psychological consumption are not totally incompatible with durational modifiers, as shown by the fact that (14a) is generally considered acceptable (% indicates that the construction is not unconditionally accepted). (14) a. %Si è letto il giornale per dieci minuti. “He read the newspaper for ten minutes.” b. Si è letto il giornale in dieci minuti. “He read the newspaper in ten minutes” The difference between (14a) and (14b) is the following: (14b) entails an accomplishment interpretation, i.e., it presupposes that the entire newspaper has been read. In contrast, (14a) only entails that the event itself is bounded; that is, it only presupposes that the event of reading went on and was completed within the given amount of time. This contrast highlights a

56 Chapter 3: The Italian clitic system difference between verbs of physical and psychological consumption with respect to the aspectual function of si and suggests that viewing aspectual si as a marker of quantitatively delimited situations in time or space is perhaps more accurate (Nishida 1994). It could be argued that in constructions with consumption predicates, si actually functions as an indirect object pronoun (see example [4]), which receives a benefactive connotation. This would imply the interpretation of ‘consuming something for one’s own pleasure and/or benefit’, which is compatible with the interpretation the reflexive receives in constructions of the type prepararsi qualcosa ‘prepare something for oneself’, comprarsi qualcosa ‘buy something for oneself’, etc., as in (15).29 (15) a. Caterina, infatti, si è preparata la cioccolata, perché con la cioccolata si pensa meglio. “Caterina, in fact, had made herself some hot chocolate because with hot chocolate one can think better.” (CORIS, NARRATTrRo) b. Mi ha chiamato come faceva sempre e per parlare con noi più spesso si era comprato pure un telefonino, l’unica spesa che aveva fatto per lui. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “He called me like he always did and to be able to talk with us more often he had bought himself a cell-phone, the only purchase he had made for himself.” Evidence against the benefactive interpretation, however, comes from the fact that, in order to obtain an unquestionably, truly benefactive reading with verbs of consumption, it is necessary to add explicit phrases, as for instance per il proprio bene ‘for one’s own good’. Furthermore, notice the contrast between (16) and (17): (16) a. Carloi l’ha comprato per sé/per se stesso/per luii. b. Carloi se l’ è comprato per sé/per se stesso/ per luii. “Carlo bought it for himself.” (17) a. *Carloi l’ha mangiato per sé/per se stesso/per luii. b. *Carloi se l’è mangiato per sé/per se stesso/per luii. “Carlo ate it up it for himself.” The fact that verbs of consumption are totally incompatible with the reflexive pronominal expressions per sé/per se stesso/ per lui ‘for himself’,

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which unquestionably carry benefactive value, may be taken as evidence for the aspectual function of si in this context. Finally, additional evidence against a reflexive benefactive function comes from (18a), which show that a construal involving a non co-referential benefactive participant is possible. (18) a. Me lo mangio/leggo per te. “I eat/read it for you (i.e., to please you).” b. *Me lo preparo per te. “I prepare it for myself to please you.” Quite interestingly, this use of the reflexive appears to be quite old: (19) a. Il topo si nascose tra la farina e la gatta si mangiò la crostata e, quand’ella aperse, il topo ne saltò fuori. E la gatta, perch’era satolla, non lo prese. (Novellino, XCII 6–8) “The mouse hid itself in the flour and the cat ate up the pie and, when she [the woman] opened [the cupboard door], the mouse jumped out. But the cat did not catch it because she was too full.” b. Consegrato il corpo e ‘l sangue di Cristo e mostratolo al popolo, come l’ebbe posto giù in sull’altare, di súbito venne da cielo una colomba bianca come neve, e messo il becco nel calice, tutto il sangue si bevve.(Passavanti, Lo specchio della vera penitenza (1335), dist. 5, ch. 4; from OVI) “Having consecrated the body and blood of Christ and having shown it to the people, as soon as he put it down on the altar, a dove as white as snow came down from the heavens, stuck its beak in the chalice and drank all the blood.”

3.2.4. The clitics ci and vi The locative clitics ci (< Lat. HINC ‘from here’; Loporcaro 1995) and vi (< Lat. IBI ‘there’) no longer carry any deictic reference (ci ‘here’ ~ vi ‘there’; see [20c]) in CSI; they have become fully synonymous and function as both locative of state (20) and of motion to/from/by/across a place (21). (20) a. Ieri sono stato al giardino botanicoi, [...], cii ho passato tutta la giornata. (CORIS, NARRATRoma)

58 Chapter 3: The Italian clitic system “Yesterday, I was at the botanical garden, […]; I spent the entire day there.” b. Ho una fattoria in Provenzai, cii vivo quando posso. (CORIS, NARRATRacc) “I have a farm in Provence; I live there whenever I can.” c. Prima missione è l’Americai: insieme al poeta jiddish Itzik Fefer nel ’43 partono e vii rimangono sette mesi. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “The first mission is America: he and the Yiddish poet Itzik Fefer leave together in1943 and remain there seven months.” (21) a. Sulla ferrovia Firenze-Prato c’era una fabbrica diroccatai, cii passavo davanti tutti i giorni quando andavo a scuola. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “There was a factory in ruins along the railroad Firenze-Prato; I passed by it every day on my way to school.” b. «Ma nessuno va su quegli isolottii: sono isolotti sperduti.» - «I pescatori ci vanno. Potremmo prendere una barca e una mezz’ora più tardi vii sbarcheremmo.» (CORIS, NARRATrRo) “‘But nobody goes on those small islands: they are remote’ – ‘Fishermen do go there. We could get a boat and we would get there in half an hour’.” c. Le dune di Merzougai sono meta di escursioni per i locali , che vii si recano per effettuare sabbiature terapeutiche nei mesi estivi. (CORIS, MISCDocume) “The dunes of Merzouga are the destination of the excursions of the natives, who go there to get therapeutic sand treatments during the summer months.” Vi, however, has an extremely marginal status in contemporary Italian. It is characterized by a very low frequency of occurrence and its use is restricted to highly formal, essentially written, registers. Table 17 reports the occurrences of non-personal vi found in LIP. The number is definitely small; additionally, it should be noted that 7 out of 27 occurrences (practically 1:4) are from the same speaker. The marginal status of vi emerges in full when we look at the number of occurrences of locative ci, which is 4,761. These also include occurrences of lexicalized ci (to be discussed in Chapter 6), but overall the contrast is indicative, also because it shows that

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between the two pronouns only ci embarks into lexicalization, which is certainly a consequence of the fact that it is better established in the language. Table 17. Occurrences of non-personal vi in LIP sorted by city and discourse type. City Type Tokens

City Type Tokens

Florence C D E 4 3 0 2spk

A 0

B 0

A 0

Naples B C D E 0 1 3 2 2spk

A 0

A 0

Milan B C D E 0 0 6 7 1spk 1spk Rome B C D 0 0 1

E 0

Another function of ci (vi) is that of pronominalizing prepositional phrases headed by the prepositions a, in, su, i.e., the so-called complementi di argomento ‘topic/subject matter complements’. This type of complement is typically selected by verbs that also select a direct object complement, such as pensare qualcosa/a qualcosa ‘think something/about something’, credere qualcosa/a qualcosa ‘believe something/in something’; or by predicates like fare affidamento su qualcosa ‘rely on something’, aderire a qualcosa ‘agree to/comply with something’; etc., illustrated in (22). (22) a. E a Letizia Berdinii, ci hai pensato, in questi giorni? Cii ho pensato, sì, cii ho pensato tanto. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “And what about L.B., have you think about her in these days? Yes, I have, I have thought about her a lot.” b. La serie Ai è ancora a portata di mano, o meglio: se cii spera il Genoa cii possiamo sperare anche noi. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “Well, for now nobody believes in early elections, but Rifondazione already has its slogan ready.” c. Non so che farmene della vita dell’eroei, non vii aderisco, non cii credo in alcun modo.(CORIS, MON2001_04) “I don’t know what to do with the life of a hero, I don’t accept it, I don’t believe in it at all.”

60 Chapter 3: The Italian clitic system d. Dopo Kant, gli argomenti trascendentalii hanno avuto alterne fortune; ma è indubbio che i filosofi hanno continuato a farci affidamentoi. (CORIS, MON2001_04) “Since Kant, transcendental arguments have had ups and downs; but there is no doubt that philosophers have continued to rely on them.” Furthermore, ci pronominalizes comitative (23a), instrument (23b), and matter complements (23c), which are headed by the preposition con ‘with’. (23) a. Quella sera lei ci era uscita. (CORIS, MON2001_04) “That night, she had gone out with him.” b. Le forbici sono sporchei, cii ho tagliato il basilico. “The scissors are dirty, I used them to cut basil.” c. Con tutto questo bel legname stagionatoi mi cii faccio i mobili, mi cii faccio, e risparmio la spesa del falegname. (CORIS, NARRATRacc) “With all this nice seasoned wood, I’m going to make myself some furniture, I am, and I’m going to save the money for the carpenter.” Lastly, ci and vi have replaced the original (etymological) first and second plural personal clitics no (< Lat. NOS ) and vo (< Lat. VOS), as well as their earlier variants ne/ni and ve shown in (24), possibly due to a process of analogical leveling triggered by the corresponding singular forms mi and ti (see Chapter 4, § 4.2.1). (24) a. No diono dare. 1PL.IO must.3SG.PI give.INF “They must give us.” (Libro di conti di banchieri fiorentini, 13th century; from Castellani 1982: 23) b. È-nne dolce così fatto scemo, perché be.3SG.PI-1PL.IO sweet so make.PP fool because il ben nostro in questo ben s’affina the goodness our in this goodness get.refined.3SG.PI “And sweet to us is such a deprivation, because our good in this good becomes even better.” (Commedia, Paradiso XX 136–137) c. Mo vo dico d’ Efimiano. now 2PL.IO tell.1SG.PI of Efimiano

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“Now I will tell you about Efimiano.” (Ritmo di sant’Alessio, 13th century; from Contini 1995: 17)

3.2.5. The clitic ne Traditionally, the clitic pronoun ne (< Lat. INDE ‘from there’) is attributed three main functions (Burzio 1986: 72, fn. 3; cf. also Cordin 2001): it pronominalizes quantified nominal expressions as in (25), adnominal complements as in (26), and other prepositional complements also introduced by di ‘of’ as in (27). (25) a. Forse ho le pulcii - risponde Caterina. - Se nei ho duei, ne vorresti una? (CORIS, NARRATTrRo) “Maybe I have fleas – Caterina answers. – If I have two, World you like one?” b. Ho cominciato nel ‘96 con un solo podio e oggi ne ho presi settei. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “I started in ’96 with one podium and today I got seven.” (26) a. Ho visto diamanti da 30 caratii, nei capisco il valore, osservo con attenzione peso, colore, purezza e taglio. (CORIS, MON2001_04) “I’ve seen 30 carat diamonds, I understand their value, I carefully observe their weigh, color, pureness, and cut.” b. Sorseggiò con lei il ‘jus-de-pommesi’, fresco e dorato, anche se nei ignorava il sapore. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “In her company, he sipped the jus-de-pomme, fresh and golden, even though he didn’t know its taste.”

(27) a. E invece di rallegrarsi di quei salutii, pareva che nei soffrisse. (De Amicis, Cuore, 1886) “And instead of rejoicing in those greetings, it seemed that he would suffer because of them.” b. A lui di tutto questoi non importava niente. Secondo me, anzi, se nei vergognava. Pensa un po’, disse infine ridacchiando, Vergognarsi di terra e alberi, piante e animali ...(CORIS, NARRATRoma)

62 Chapter 3: The Italian clitic system “He didn’t care about all of this. On the contrary, I think, he was ashamed of it. ‘Well’, he finally said chuckling, ‘Being ashamed of the land and trees, plants and animals …’” In addition, ne pronominalizes prepositional phrases introduced by da ‘from’, such as elative complements (28) or causal complements in a restricted number of passive constructions comprising essere ‘be’, rimanere, restare ‘remain’, venire ‘come’ and the past participle form of verbs like affascinare ‘fascinate’, colpire ‘strike’, impressionare ‘impress’, scioccato ‘shock’; etc., as shown in (29). (28) a. È entrata nello spogliatoioi, nei è uscita e si è tuffata. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “She went into the locker room, came out of it and dived in.” b. Rio è entrato [nella villai] e è rimasto una decina di minuti: nei è uscito terreo in volto urlando: aiuto, aiuto, sono morti tutti! (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “Rio went inside [the villa] and stayed inside about ten minutes: he came out terrified, screaming: help, help, they are all dead!” (29) a. Ho letto le tue osservazioni sulla situazione in Iraqi. Nei sono rimasto colpito. (CORIS, MON2001_04) “I read your observations about Iran; I was struck by them.” b. A vent’anni era uno studente modello di Odontoiatria alla New York University, ma dopo aver letto I cacciatori di microbii di Paul de Kruif nei rimase affascinato tanto da cambiare facoltà. (CORIS, PRACCRivis) “When he was twenty years old, he was a model student of dentistry at NYU, but after he read Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruif, he was so fascinated by it that he changed major.” Locative ne as in (28) does not have a widespread use in contemporary Italian. It occurs almost exclusively in combination with the clitic si, in verbs such as andarsene ‘go away, leave’ and venirsene ‘come away’, venirne fuori ‘come out’ where, as it will be shown in Chapter 5, ne must be considered a fully grammaticalized element.

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3.3. Clitic linearization in Contemporary Standard Italian Italian clitic pronouns are obligatorily contiguous to a verb host (but see note 4). As mentioned in Chapter 1, Italian clitics can occur either immediately before their host (proclisis) or immediately after it (enclisis), depending on the form of the verb. In the case of enclisis, the clitic attaches to its host orthographically, as shown in (30a) vs. (30b). (30) a. Ho appena finito di legger-lo. “I just finished reading it.” b. L’ho letto con molto interesse. “I read it with much interest.” The fact that clitic pronouns alternate between enclitic and proclitic position sharply distinguishes them from the rest of Italian inflectional as well as derivational morphemes, which, in contrast, are characterized by a strictly fixed position (see Chapter 8 for a more detailed discussion). The partial generalization in (31) can be drawn concerning the rules of clitic linearization in CSI: (31) Clitic position with respect to the host in CSI a. Proclisis occurs in the environment of finite verb forms b. Enclisis occurs with nonfinite verb forms: infinitives (30a), present and past gerunds (32), and present and past participles in absolute constructions (33)30 (32) a. Il romanzo postumo di Goffredo Parise, già dal titolo si annuncia minaccioso.E infatti leggendo-lo si vien presi da un senso di allarme. PRESENT GERUND (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “Goffredo Parise’s posthumous novel sounds menacing from the very title. And, in fact, in reading it one is overcome by a feeling of alarm.” b. Questo * Manuale della politica estera italiana * che mi accingo a recensire avendo-lo letto con la curiosità del neofita. PAST GERUND (CORIS, PRACCRivis) “I am about to review this ‘Manual of Italian foreign politics’ having read it with the curiosity of a neophyte.”

64 Chapter 3: The Italian clitic system (33) a. Sia in quanto facente-si ognor più remoto. PRESENT PARTICIPLE (CORIS, PRACCVolum) “And also because it becomes more and more distant.” b. Ma invece sembra che, letto-lo, abbia detto: “Non so se questo Balthus sono io.” PAST PARTICIPLE (CORIS, EPHEMLette) “However it seems that, after he read it, he said: ‘I don’t know if this Balthus it’s me’.” The generalization in (31) is only partial because the linearization pattern becomes inconsistent in the case of imperative forms. Given that imperatives are finite forms, we would expect proclisis in this environment but we observe a peculiar mixed pattern instead: (34) Clitic placement in imperative constructions a. Enclisis with affirmative informal forms (35) b. Proclisis with formal affirmative and negative forms (36) c. Proclisis and enclisis with singular informal negative forms (37) (35) a. Leggi-lo! /Leggete-lo! /Leggiamo-lo! read.2SG.IMP -/read.2PL .IMP -/read.1SG.IMP-3SG.DO M “Read it!/Let’s read it!” b. *Lo leggi!/*Lo leggete!/*Lo leggiamo (36) a. (Non) lo legga!/(Non) lo leggano! “(Don’t) read it!” b. (Non) *legga-lo!/(Non) *leggano-lo! (37) a. Non legger-lo!/Non leggiamo-lo! b. Non lo leggere!/Non lo leggiamo! “Don’t read it!/Let’s not read it!” The fact that formal imperatives require proclisis may be considered unproblematic because Italian lacks an independent paradigm for this category and the formal imperative is actually expressed by means of present subjunctive forms. The generalization in (31), then, would still apply in this case. What invalidates it is the behavior of the informal negative imperative. Notice that the negative informal 2SG imperative is expressed by the infinitive preceded by the negative particle non. However, the free alternation be-

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tween proclisis and enclisis must be considered a distinctive feature of the imperative because, as shown in (38), it does not apply to ‘true’ infinitives. (38) Tra la folla ho notato Sergio, il mio ex grande amore. Ho fatto finta di non vederlo (*lo vedere). (CORIS, STAMPAPeri) “In the crowd I noticed Sergio, my ex great love. I pretended I didn’t see him.” To summarize, in CSI the position of clitic pronouns with respect to their host is governed overall by the morphosyntactic identity of the host (i.e., finite vs. non finite) but this generalization fails to account for the more complex and seemingly arbitrary behavior of the negative informal imperative, which allows both enclisis and proclisis.

3.4. The clitic system of Old Italian Except for the first and second plural no and vo, the pronominal clitic system of OI is practically identical to that of CSI, which is illustrated in Tables 12 and 13 above (§ 3.2.1). Significant differences are found, however, between the two systems concerning the placement of the clitic pronouns. The first point to make is that in OI clitic linearization is much less dependent on the morphosyntactic features of the host. The position of the clitics with respect to their host is relatively free in OI and the major constraint to clitic placement is of a syntactic/structural nature; precisely, it relates to clausal configuration. This constraint, which is known as the Tobler-Mussafia Law, indicates that clitic pronouns were banned after a surface clause boundary; in other words, clitics could not occur in clause initial position.31 In OI, then, enclisis was obligatory at the beginning of a clause, regardless of the morphosyntactic features of the verb host. Two other important differences between OI and CSI concerning clitic placement, which are in part a consequence of the Tobler-Mussafia Law, are the following: (i) a greater number of enclitic constructions is found in OI with finite verb forms and (ii) proclisis occurred with affirmative imperatives. Common to both OI and CSI, on the other hand, is the obligatoriness of enclisis with non-finite verb forms. Some examples that illustrate clitic placement in OI are given in (39) and (40).

66 Chapter 3: The Italian clitic system (39) Enclisis with finite verb forms a. El Greco la prese, e mise-la-si theGreek 3SG.DO F take.3SG.PR and put.3SG.PR-3SG.DO F-RFLX nella palma, e strinse e in.the palm and squeeze.3SG.PR and all’ orecchie. puose-la-si put.3SG.PR-3SG.DO F -RFLX at.the ears “The Greek took it and put it in his hand, and squeezed [it] and put it to his ear.”(Novellino, III 35–36) b. Madonna Aldrua […] lo vide passare, e lady Aldrua 3.SG.DO M see.3SG.PR pass.INF and chiamo-llo, e mostrò-gli una call.3SG.PR-3.SG.DO M and show.3SG.PR-3SG.IO M one delle […] figliole, e disse-li: of.the daughters and say.3SG.PR-3SG.IO M “Lady Aldrua […] saw him pass by and called him, and showed him one of the […] daughters and said to him:” (Dino Compagni Cronica I 2) c. Dicero-l-ti molto breve. say.1SG.FUT-3SG.DO-2SG.IO very brief. “I will tell you very briefly.” (Commedia, Inferno III 45) (40) Proclisis with imperative forms a. Or mi dì, donna: enverso qual parte tenea now 1SG.IO tell.2SG.IMP lady toward which side keep.3SG.II volta sua coda? turned its tail “Now tell me, lady: towards which side did it keep its tail turned?” (Novellino, XXXIII 20–21) b. Or te guarda dal Nimico, […]: non glie now 2SG.RFLX watch from.the enemy NEG 3SG.IO credere a l’ inico. believe.INF to the enemy “Now watch yourself from the enemy, […]: don’t believe the enemy.” (Jacopone da Todi, Laudi VI 3–5, 13th century; from Contini 1995: 71)

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Examples (39a) and (39b) provide a nice illustration of the ToblerMussafia Law. In (39a), proclisis occurs in the first clause due to the presence of the subject NP el Greco ‘the Greek’; in contrast, enclisis is found in the second and fourth clause because of the absence of an overt subject (the conjunction e ‘and’ does not count as a sentence initial blocking element). Likewise, enclisis does not occur in the first clause of (39b) because the verb vide ‘(she) saw’ is preceded by abundant lexical material. Another interesting fact can be perceived in (39a) and (39c) regarding the order of occurrence of the two clitics, namely that the third person direct object la precedes the reflexive si and the direct object clitic lo precedes the second singular indirect object ti. Sequences of this type indicate that clitic ordering was unconstrained in OI. These sequences, on the other hand, are no longer acceptable in CSI, where, as it will be discussed in detail in Chapter 8 (§ 8.2.2), the order of clitic sequences has become rigorously fixed. The examples in (41) show that the Tobler-Mussafia Law had started to weaken as early as the thirteenth century, at least in main clauses found in second position within the sentence as, for instance, in matrix clauses following subordinate clauses, as in (41a), and after protases of if-clauses, as in (41b) (Ramsden 1963; Wanner 1981, 1987; Rollo 1993; Maiden 1995). (41) a. Papirio veggendo la voluntà della madre, si pensò Papirio see.GER the wish of.the mother RFLX think.3SG.PR una bella bugia. a beautiful lie “Seeing his mother’s wish, Papirio thought of a good lie.” (Novellino, LXVII 9–10) b. Se tanto scendi, là i (=li) potrai if much descend.2SG.PI there 3PL.DO M be able to.2SG.FUT vedere. see.INF “If you descend that much, you will be able to see them.” (Commedia, Inferno VI 87) Enclisis with non-finite predicates is also attested in relatively early texts and it is probably a direct consequence of the fact that non-finite forms often occur at the beginning of their clause because they represent clausal constituents themselves (Warner 1981, 1987). Interestingly, although a preceding negative particle enables proclisis in an otherwise

68 Chapter 3: The Italian clitic system clause initial predicate, it remains ineffective if the verb is in a non-finite form. (42) … tegnendola di die incantenata al suo descho e guardandosi di non mettervi alchuno danaio. (Capitoli della Compagnia della Madonna d'Orsammichele 1297; from Castellani 1982: 667) “… keeping it chained to his desk during the day and refraining from putting any money in it.” It can therefore be concluded that morphology was already playing some role in OI clitic linearization.

3.5. Summary To recapitulate, the syntactic constraints that governed clitic placement in OI were already unstable as early as the thirteenth century. The weakest constraint appears to be the ban on proclisis in clause initial position, which is observed in the environment of matrix clauses following their subordinate clause. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, clitic placement advances further in the process of loosening itself from the syntactic constraints comprised in the Tobler-Mussafia Law. Enclisis becomes increasingly restricted to the same environments where it is found in CSI, i.e., all nonfinite and imperative forms. The persistence of enclisis with these verb forms might be explained by the fact that both non-finite forms in absolute constructions and imperatives most frequently occur in clause initial position, although according to Wanner (1981, 1987) the reanalysis of enclisis as an inherent property of imperatives was much slower. By the sixteenth century, the Tobler-Mussafia Law had lost most of its strength and the morphosyntactic shape of the verb host had become the prominent factor in determining the placement of clitic pronouns in Italian, with the exception of the extremely conservative Florentine dialect. Enclisis with finite verbs did not disappear abruptly and, even though it gradually became less common and increasingly restricted to written, literary and specialized (mainly bureaucratic) registers, it continued to survive in the language at least until the nineteenth century. Examples can be found

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also in relatively less formal texts, particularly of the type shown in (43a, b), i.e., in the context of an imperfect indicative verb and si. (43) a. Questo mio nuovo compagno era di un umore assai lieto e loquace, onde con vicendevole soddisfazione io taceva e ascoltava, egli parlava e lodavasi, essendo egli fortemente innamorato di sé. (Vita, Epoca terza VI) “This new companion of mine had a very joyful disposition and was quite talkative; therefore I was happy to listen to him in silence, while he enjoyed talking and praising himself, since he was very much in love with himself.” b. Questo Frammento, […], è tratto da un codice a penna che trovasi alcuni anni sono, e forse ancora si trova, nella libreria dei monaci del monte Athos. (Operette morali, p. 176) “This Fragment, […], is taken from a manuscript that was a few years ago, and maybe still is, in the library of the monks of Mount Athos.” c. Io mi ricordo molto bene che da fanciullo mi piaceva effettivamente e parevami di buon sapore tutto quello che […] m’era lodato per buono da chi mi dava da mangiare. (Zibaldone, p. 1663) “I remember very well that as a child I really liked and found tasty every food that […] was praised as food to me by those who fed me.” Remnants of enclisis with finite predicates are still found in CSI in highly specific and contextually constrained impersonal/passive constructions, such those in (44) and (45): (44) a. Se passi per le stradine del centro, ogni giorno c’è un cartello nuovo: Vendesi esercizio. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “If you go by the downtown alley, you’ll see a new sign everyday: Business for sale.” b. Con un cartello all’ingresso. Dice “Affittasi”. Ma “Solo a referenziati”. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “With a sign in the entrance. It says ‘For rent’. But ‘Must have references’.”

70 Chapter 3: The Italian clitic system (45) a. I Kula Shaker [...] hanno realizzato uno dei migliori album d’esordio. Infarcito però (come volevasi dimostrare) di echi che provengono inequivocabilmente dagli anni Sessanta. (CORIS, STAMPASupp) “The Kula Shaker [...] produced one of the best debut albums but stuffed (as we wanted to prove) with echoes that unmistakably come from the Sixties.” b. Trattavasi, a suo parere, di una scelta del pilota di natura tecnica motivata dalle avverse condizioni meteorologiche. (CORIS, PRGAMMRivi) “According to him, it was a technical choice of the pilot due to adverse meteorological conditions.” It should be noticed, though, that the constructions in (44) and (45) exhibit extremely limited no or productivity and are more properly analyzed as fixed (lexicalized) constructions. To conclude, we have seen that overall the Italian clitic system has undergone no radical, truly revolutionary change, which, incidentally, nicely corroborates the observations made in Chapter 1 (§ 1.4) regarding the fundamentally conservative nature of the Italian language. The most significant changes are observed at the level of clitic placement with respect to the host and to each other (i.e., the structure of clitic clusters). These changes are related to grammaticalization so they will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter.

Chapter 4 Grammaticalization of the clitic pronouns

4.1. Introduction This chapter has two main goals. First, it reviews the general grammaticalization processes that are linked to the emergence and further development of the Italian clitic pronoun system (§ 4.2). Second, it investigates the more specific phenomena of clitic allomorphy (§ 4.3) and gender and number neutralization in the third person indirect object clitic (§ 4.4) in order to determine to what extent and how they can be accounted for within the grammaticalization framework. We will see that the major, most significant phase of grammaticalization ended quite early, given that by the end of the fourteenth century the clitic pronoun system had essentially reached its modern state. The only considerable change that took place afterwards pertains to the ordering of the clitic pronouns, both with respect to the verb (enclisis vs. proclisis) and with respect to each other in the environment of clitic sequences. In addition, it will be shown that some linguistic forms or usages that have been considered innovative though ‘degenerative’ trends have in fact characterized the language since its oldest stages. That is, after undertaking what D’Achille (1990) has called “un percorso carsico” ‘a Karstic journey’, old stigmatized forms have re-emerged and finally freed themselves from negative connotation that had been hovering around over them for centuries.

4.2. The general process 4.2.1. The initial phases As mentioned at the beginning of the previous chapter (§ 3.2.1), Italian clitic pronouns derive from several sources: Latin personal pronouns, different forms of the Latin distal demonstrative ILLE, and adverbial forms (HINC, IBI, and INDE).32 In the preceding chapter, we also saw that by the thirteenth century the Italian clitic pronouns had acquired their definitive final shape. Although some forms (especially third person forms) may still

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have variants, as shown in Tables 18 and 19, by such an early time all the pronominal clitic forms present in CSI had already developed. Table 18. Allomorphy in OI third person clitic pronouns. FEMININE

MASCULINE 3SG 3PL

DO

IO

DO

IO

il, ’l, l’, (l) lo i, (l)li, gli

gli, lgli, (l)i, l’ i, li

(l)la, (l)l’ le, l’

le, li, l’ i, li

Table 19. Allomorphy in OI first and second person plural clitic pronouns. 1PL 2PL

DO & IO (n)ne, (n)no, n’, ci vi, v’

The initial (and crucial) stages of the grammaticalization process that led to the emergence of the clitic pronouns remain mostly unattested because the very few pre-thirteen century Italian documents available to us display the same clitic system found in later documents. In additions, the reconstruction of these early stages of the language is very difficult and bound to remain uncertain due to the fact that the pronominal forms found in Late Latin (early Romance) texts show only a minimal deviation from the pronominal system of Classical Latin, which is most likely due to the high degree of purism practiced by medieval writers and copyists (Wanner 1981: 341). In this section, I assess the role that the grammaticalization processes introduced in Chapter 2 (see Tables 6–10) played in the development of the Italian clitic pronouns and in the shaping of the clitic pronoun system as a whole. Attrition is the first phenomenon we observe when taking into account the parameter of weigh. It first affects the Latin source items in the form of erosion of phonetic substance. It seems unquestionable that the process of grammaticalization had already reached quite an advanced stage in OI since by then most forms had undergone some degree of physical shrinkage (condensation), having lost either one entire syllable or one segment. The second most apparent sign of loss of weight is the neutralization of the direct vs. indirect object distinction, which survives only at the level of

The general process 73

the third person pronouns, and can be interpreted as an instance of semantic-morphosyntactic bleaching in the form of loss of case distinction. Semantic weakening also manifests itself in terms of loss of deictic distal meaning, given that the clitic pronouns do not necessarily relate to referents spatially away from the speaker and/or listener (e.g., A: Dov’è l’ultimo numero del ‘New Yorker’ ‘Where is the last issue of The New Yorker?’ – B: Lo sto leggendo ‘I’m reading it’). Another important, distinctive trait of grammaticalization that is already visible during these early stages is increase of bondedness. First, we notice coalescence because the clitic pronouns, in contrast to the Latin demonstratives and tonic pronouns from which they derive, have lost a considerable amount of structural independence and have become bound forms, totally depended on the verb. In fact, by the late thirteenth century, instances of interrupted clitic–verb sequences as in (1) have become quite rare. In addition, they have become highly constrained with respect to the types of elements that can intervene between the verb and the pronoun, which essentially amount to two items: pur(e) ‘also; nonetheless’, and se/si ‘if’. (1)

a. Chè come ’l toro che nonn- à giogo, sì è bisognio che lo pur abbia, et così non posso vivere né con teco né senza te. (Andrea da Grosseto, 1268; from OVI) “Because just like the bull that does not have a yoke but needs to have one, I cannot live either with you or without you.” b. Uno s’andò a confessare al prete suo, et intra l’altre cose li disse: «I’ ho una mia cognata, e ’l mio fratello è lontano; e, quando io torno in casa, ella, per grande dimestichezza, mi si pur pone a sedere in grembo. Come debbo fare?” – Rispuose il prete: “A me il (=lo) si facesse ella! Ch’io la ne pagherei bene!” (Novellino, LXXXVII 1–8) “A guy went to confess to his priest, and among other things he said to him: ‘I have a sister-in-law, and my brother is away; and when I go back home, she shows great friendliness and even sits down onto my lap. What should I do?’ – And the priest answered ‘If only she did it to me! I’d pay her very well for it!’”

Orthographical attachment of enclitic forms will eventually become obligatory indicating an even higher degree of syntagmatic coalescence, affixation. Strictly speaking, though, it would be somewhat inaccurate to claim that enclitic forms are more tightly bonded to the verb than the pro-

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clitic ones, from a phonological and morphosyntactic standpoint, that is. The difference in spelling may only be a reflection of the tendency to obey general orthographic conventions of the language, since enclitic material is consistently attached orthographically (see below examples [5] and [6]; cf. also preposizioni articolate, e.g., di + il = del ‘of the SG M’). Second, we note a decrease of paradigmatic variability given that the option of choosing among several variants of the first and second plural pronouns is lost. The clitic system goes through a process of paradigmatization, a re-arrangement of the paradigm of the clitic pronouns that leads to paradigmatic integration, i.e., to an increase in the ‘formal homogeneity’ of its members. This leveling out of formal heterogeneity manifests itself via the replacement of the original (etymological) first and second plural forms no and vo with the locative forms ci and vi, whose physical substance nicely matches the corresponding singular forms mi and ti. From a strictly linguistic (i.e., language internal) perspective, this phenomenon can be explained in terms of analogical leveling triggered by the singular clitics mi and ti, and, to some degree, the third person IO and DO sets, which are characterized by several allomorphs of the type Clateral-i (see Table 18). From a cognitive (i.e., language external) perspective though, this replacement does not appear to adhere to the universal metaphorical trajectory of change captured by the grammaticalization chain given in (11c) in Chapter 2 and repeated here in (2) for convenience, which Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer (1991) view as the ultimate trigger of grammaticalization processes. (2)

PERSON

> OBJECT > SPACE > TIME > QUALITY

The replacement of personal pronouns by spatial (locative) pronouns seems to proceed in the opposite direction of what stated in (2), because it reflects a movement from the more abstract domain of space to the more concrete domain of person. Nonetheless, we should keep in mind that what we have in this case is not an actual process of evolution through which a landmark noun becomes a personal referent. In other words, it is not the case that a nominal element like earth, for example, develops into a personal pronoun or a personal marker, as hypothetically sketched in (3) as opposed to (4), which illustrates an actual development. (3)

a. SPACE OBJECT (NOUN) > PERSON (PRONOUN) b. mountain > 2sg formal

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(4)

a. PERSON OBJECT (NOUN) > b. Lat. FRONS ‘forehead’ >

SPACE (PREPOSITION) It. di fronte (a) ‘in front (of)’

Strictly speaking, we do not even have an instance of evolutive process, i.e. an actual dynamic change: ci and vi do not go through any further changes at the structural level, nor do they appear to experience an increase of grammatical function, unless we consider the grammatical relations of direct and indirect object more grammatical than those of alocative object. Rather, we seem to have a case of replacement (a static change), which makes us question whether this is indeed a grammaticalization phenomenon. In any case, the use of a locative adverbial to express personal pronouns, although perhaps not extremely widespread across languages, is certainly not restricted to Italian. It is found, for instance, in Chinese (Huojia dialect), where ZHER ‘here’ > ‘we’, ‘us (Heine and Kuteva 2001: 173). It is also found in Japanese, where kotira ‘here’ can be used to refer to the speaker. And it occurs in Vietnamese, where
ây ‘here’ and
ây/
ó ‘there’ can mean ‘I’ and ‘you’ respectively in order to elude the hierarchical and affective connotations that personal pronouns typically carry in these languages (Hagège 1993: 216–217; cited in Heine and Kuteva 2002: 173– 174). Heine and Kuteva (2002) include this phenomenon in their extensive typological sample of grammaticalization processes under the heading HERE > PERS–PRON (which comprises four developments), providing only the examples given above. However, they correctly acknowledge that it is not a clear example of grammaticalization and that further research is needed to establish “the significance and exact nature of this process.” (p. 174 [emphasis mine, CR]) Thus, it seems that, in essence, this specific replacement simply consists in the reinterpretation (re-conceptualization) of personal deixis in terms of spatial deixis. Reference to the main discourse participants, the speaker and the addressee, comes to be identified by (translated into) reference to the spatial domains they occupy; i.e., here and there, respectively. After all, this could be viewed as an instance of conceptualizing a more abstract cognitive domain (that of personal reference and address) by means of a more concrete one (spatial location). As already mentioned, though, it remains unclear whether we have a genuine case of grammaticalization or simply an instance of analogical change (leveling), without grammaticalization.

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4.2.2. Moving forward The first considerable advancement in the grammaticalization of the Italian clitic pronouns relates to the parameter of syntagmatic variability. It occurs at the level of clitic linearization, that is, the position in which clitics can surface with respect to their host. This happens when fixation of proclisis takes place in the environment of finite predicates, an environment where enclisis and proclisis had previously been in free variation (see Chapter 3, § 3.4). Fixation also comes to affect the order of the pronouns in clitic sequences. As we recall from Chapter 3 (§ 3.4), clitic sequences were generally unconstrained in OI with respect to the order in which the members of the sequences could occur. The IO–DO order has been identified as the preferred order in many dialects including Old Tuscan (Wanner 1974; Tekavi 1980). However, evidence can be found also in some dialects, for instance Old Florentine (Rohlfs 1966–1969: 170–177), which indicates that the inverse (DO– IO) order was the most widespread order, so that overall the hypothesis of free variation can be perceived as valid. In contrast, CSI allows only the IO–DO linearization (additional constraints that apply to clitic sequences in CSI are discussed in Chapter 8). The examples in (5) show us that in OI clitic pronouns were able to attach to complex prepositions, such as incontro a ‘toward’, a lato/allato di ‘at the side of’, after the second/last preposition had been dropped. Combinations of this type are no longer possible in CSI, which allows only tonic pronouns in this environment (6). (5)

a. Essendosi adunche posti a tavola, il detto gonfaloniere in capo di tavola, e ’l maestro Dino allatogli. (Trecentonovelle, LXXXVII 10) “Having seated themselves at the table, the aforementioned gonfalonier at the head of the table, and Master Dino to his side.” b. Alla quale come Andreuccio fu presso, essa incontrogli da tre gradi discese con le braccia aperte.(Decameron, II 5) “As Andreuccio approached her, she went toward him with open arms descending three steps.”

(6)

Mi feci incontro a lei sorridendo e anche lei mi sorrise. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “I went toward her smiling and she smiled back at me.”

The general process 77

As shown by the examples in (7)–(9), other elements besides verbs and complex prepositions could host clitic pronouns, particularly the third person forms; these items are the negation non (7), the conjunction che (8), and subject pronouns (8). (7)

a. Dimmi sicuramente il vero e, se nol mi dirai, io ti farò di mala morte morire. (Novellino, III 52–53) “Tell me the real truth; and if you won’t tell it to me, I will make you die a terrible death.” b. Il prossimo tuo non ucciderai e nol fedirai e no li farai in persona alcuno rincrescimento. (Libro de’ vizî e delle virtudi, XVII 24) “You will not kill your neighbor nor will you wound him, and you will not make any personal offence to him.”

(8)

a. Ecco l’uomo: esaminatelo sicuramente, ché ’l troverete ben perfetto, e degno di vostra compagnia. (Libro de’ vizî e delle virtudi, XVI 11–12) “Here is the man: examine him, that you will find him perfect and worthy of your company.” b. Aiuta e consiglia l’amico tuo in su’ bisogni, acciò che ’l possi ritenere e vogliati bene. (Libro de’ vizî e delle virtudi, V 23) “Help and give advice to your friend when he is in need, so that you may be able keep him and that he may love you.”

(9)

a. E la moglie rispuose: “Ai, disleale traditore! Tu ’l fai per non farmi mia cotta!’” (Novellino, XXVI 22–24) “And the wife answered: ‘Ah, disloyal traitor! You do it so you don’t have to buy me a dress.” b. Disse Ferrantino: - Io ’l farò; chi è questo messer Francesco? (Trecentonovelle, XXXIV 47–48) “Ferrantino said: – I’ll do it. Who is this Messer Francesco?”

The reduction of the class of items to which the clitics could attach relates to the parameter of structural scope, which decreases because the host class becomes smaller by losing all its members except the verb (and of course ecco, see note 4). Table 20 summarizes the main traits of the first major wave of grammaticalization that affected the Italian clitics, along with the concrete consequences they had for both the clitic system as a whole and the individual

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forms directly affected. The process involving the extension of locative ci and vi to the personal domain is shadowed because it is considered unresolved. Table 20. Grammaticalization of Italian clitics. PROCESS

A

WEAKENING

COALESCENCE B AFFIXATION

C

Paradi gma tization

D

FIXATION

MANIFESTATIONS Loss of physical substance Loss of demonstrative meaning Loss of case distinction Loss of syntactic and phonological independence Orthographical attachment to the host Analo nalo gical leveling Loss of enclisis Loss of DO–IO order

AFFECTED FORMS All forms All forms 1st and 2nd personal pronouns All forms

Enclitic forms 1st an d 2nd pe rsonal pro noun s Finite verb forms Clitic clusters

4.2.2.1. Fixation of the clitic–verb linearization In the previous section, attention was drawn to the fact that the major change in the linearization of clitics pronouns with respect to their host consisted in a substantial shrinkage of the domain in which enclisis was allowed. Put it in different words, the domain of application of enclisis underwent significant reduction in the evolution of Italian. As discussed in Chapter 2, in OI enclisis was always obligatory with non-finite verb forms, as well as with finite verbs in clause initial position. These were practically the only two constraints on clitic linearization in OI; otherwise, proclisis and enclisis alternated freely. In CSI, on the other hand, enclisis is obligatory only with non-finite verb forms and affirmative informal imperatives (see Chapter 3, item [31]) so that proclisis has become the dominant pattern, i.e., the unmarked pattern both in terms of domains of application and

The general process 79

raw frequency of occurrence, given that finite forms are more frequent than non-finite ones. To recapitulate, the main differences between Old and Modern Italian with respect to clitic linearization are therefore the following: (i) OI showed a (significantly) greater number of enclitic constructions with finite verb forms and (ii) OI allowed proclisis with affirmative informal imperatives. Wanner (1981, 1987), who perhaps provides the most comprehensive treatment of the evolution of clitic placement in Italian, summarizes it as follows: [it] implies that syntactic change is not primarily guided by the parameters of syntactic naturalness, generality, and simplification; rather, potential syntactic motivation remains unrealized and becomes replaced with localized morpho-syntactic governance. (Wanner 1981: 331)

In essence, then, the evolution of clitic placement from Old to Modern Italian is governed by the morphologization of a syntactic rule. The following questions arise at this point: (i) What caused the ‘reinforcement’ of proclisis? (ii) How do we explain the consolidation of enclisis in non-finite and imperative forms? Providing a systematic answer to these questions would go beyond the scope of the present study. I will simply point out that the persistence of enclisis in the environment of imperatives can be related to the fact that imperatives occur mainly in sentence initial position. In other words, the reanalysis of the syntactic conditioning on clitic linearization as a morphological one, thanks to which proclisis came to be associated to finite verbs and enclisis to non-finite verbs, failed to involve imperative forms because it was preceded by the fossilization of enclisis (i.e., fossilization of the structural constraint) in this specific environment.

4.2.2.2. Fixation of the order of clitic sequences As mentioned before, at some point in the evolution of Italian fixation took place in the ordering of clitic sequences, so that the DO–IO order, which although not obligatory was the most prominent order in Old Florentine, was

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eventually replaced by the reverse order, IO-DO (see also [33a] and [33c] in Chapter 3). (10) a. Elli no’l ti torrà nel tuo tempo. (Novellino, VII 9–10) “He will not take it away from you in your lifetime.” b. “E dunque” disse T. “mi renderete voi la damigiella dell'Agua dela Spina? E sse voi no la mi volete rendere, io v’apello ala battaglia”. (Il Tristano Riccardiano, 1300, p. 85; from OVI) “‘So then’ T. said ‘will you give milady Agua dela Spina back to me? And if you will not give her back to me, I will to battle’.” c. E priego quelli iddii, i quali, vinti da’ molti prieghi, graziosamente ti ci donarono, che essi ti guardino e conservino sempre. (Filoloco, III 73) “And I pray to those gods who, conquered by many prayers, kindly gave you to us, that they always look over you and protect you.” Why did fixation take place? Which are the crucial factors that led to the prevalence of one order over the other? Giving adequate answers to these questions is by no means an easy task. Rohlfs (1966–1969: 178) proposes that IO–DO order had started to become dominant already in Late Latin and that the reverse order arose in Old Florentine due to prosodic factors. This new DO–IO order took over becoming the prevalent one for some time and was acquired by other dialects as well, but it was ultimately abandoned in favor of the ‘original’ Late Latin order. Tekavi (1980) draws attention to Sardinian IO-DO sequences found in Privilegio lugodorese (c. 1080), such as dono-lisIO-lu DO ‘I grant them it’ and argues that, in view of the extremely conservative nature of Sardinian, such sequences provide strong evidence in support of the claim that IO–DO characterized Late Latin too. In agreement with Rohlfs, Tekavi sees the reversal of clitic sequence order (i.e., from Old Florentine DO–IO to Modern Italian IO-DO) as triggered and driven by the tendency to re-establish the original Late Latin order. However, Tekavi (1980) rejects Rohlfs hypothesis about the origin of the ‘new’ Old Florentine order and (convincingly) points out that it is not clear how prosody could have been responsible for the switching of the order since “che differenza ritmica ci può essere stata tra lò mi dái e mè lo dái?” (‘What rhythmic difference could there have been between lò mi dái e mè lo dái?’; Tekavi 1980: 193 [translation mine, CR]).

The general process 81

In any case, it is quite difficult to find strong evidence in support of the hypothesis that the change in the order of clitic sequences (or, more accurately, the fixation of the IO-DO order) arose from the tendency to conform to an original Late Latin order because the body of Late Latin attestation containing clitic sequences is very restricted. Wanner (1974) suggests that the order change might have been driven by the ambiguity of OI (early thirteenth century) sequences illustrated by the examples in (11). (11) a. Puccio Boninsengne delli Abrussciati ne de dare IIIJ fiorini d’oroDO in k. ottobre, li quali prestai a monna Santa sua mollieIO, li quali io Bene le le diedi in sua mano a chasa sua in presenzia di Sengna Iachoppo Ruggieri delli Abrussciati. [li = 3PL .DO M; li = 3SG.IO F] (Libricciolo di crediti di Bene Bencivenni, 1296; from OVI) “P. B. of the Abrussciati family has to give us IIIJ gold florins this October that I lent to his wife Lady Santa, which I, Bene, gave to her in her own house in the presence of S. I. R. of the Abrussciati.” b. E de dare, in ka. marzo anno LXXXXIIIJ, V fio. d’oroDO per Donato suo fratello, ke li le avavamo prestati in Orvieto quand’eli=io vi stete kon noi. [li = 3PL .DO M; le = 3SG.IO M] (Lapo di Riccomanni, Libro del dare e dell’avere, e di varie ricordanze, 1297; from OVI) “And he has to give this March 1294, five gold florins for his brother D., which we had lent him in Orvieto, when he stayed with us.” c. Anco ti mandrà Baronto da PisaIO, che li li mandai io, due lectereDO del commune di Siena al Papa e a’ Re, molte belle e strecte per noi. [le = 3PL.DO F; le = 3SG.IO M] (Carteggio dei Lazzari, Lettere pistoiesi, 1320–1322; from OVI) “Also B. da Pisa will send you two letters from the city of Siena to the Pope and the King, which I sent to him, and are very beautiful and important to us.” According to Wanner (1974), the homonymy of the direct and indirect form shown in (12a) and (12b), combined with their merging into an invariable sequence as in (12c), would have led to an indirect–direct interpretation. Then, the extension of the reverse order to variable sequences could be explained in terms of analogy.

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(12) a. masc. li li (li le), fem. le le  b. (g)lie-le (invariable, reinterpreted as IO–DO) c. glie-lo (variable)



But Wanner (1974: 162) also claims that this explanation is contradicted by the historical data, which show that the first, still very sporadic, signs of reinterpretation and replacement of the invariable gliele with the variable forms glielo, etc. emerge only in the fifteenth century and that the glielo type becomes assessed around 1500. On the other hand, mi/me lo type sequences are attested as early as the end of the thirteen century. This indicates that the reinterpretation must have proceeded in the reverse direction; that is, gliele was first a DO–IO sequence and then was reinterpreted as IO– DO, after a order reversal in forms other than those of the third person had taken place. In other words, historical data suggest the scenario in (13). (13) a. lo mi/me ~ mi/me lo 3SG.DO.M 1SG.IO 1SG.IO 3SG.DO.M b. mi/me lo vs. * lo mi/me c. 3DO 3IO  3IO 3DO Thus, it was the fixation of the order of clitic sequences that did not involve a third person indirect object which triggered the reinterpretation illustrated in (13c), not vice versa. As mentioned previously, the change from (13a) to (13b) could be attributed to an attempt at re-establishing an older, ‘more Latin’ (therefore, ‘more proper’) order, but the number of Late Latin/Early Romance attestations of clitic sequences is too limited to corroborate this hypothesis. Even if we were to overlook the scarcity of actual data, though, we would still be left with the question of why the ‘original’ IO–DO order changed into DO-IO in the first place, which brings us back to the very beginning. Maiden (1995: 176–177) links the reversal of the order of clitic sequences to (i) the rise of predominant proclisis in finite verb forms and (ii) the fact that the direct object represents a more central argument of the verb than the indirect object, since the direct object is directly affected by the action expressed by the predicate while the indirect object is not. Placing the direct object pronoun closer to the verb than the ‘peripheral’ indirect object would thus highlight its greater ‘centrality’. In other words, Maiden is proposing an iconic explanation: the conceptualization of the event in terms of relevance of the participants (direct and indirect object referents) is re-

The general process 83

flected in the structure employed to convey it (cf. also Bybee 1985 for the notion of relevance vis-à-vis the position of morphological affixes). When enclisis was the predominant linearization, the order DO–IO was predominant because it allowed the direct object to be immediately adjacent to the verb (e.g., porti-loDO-miIO ‘you bring it to me’). Under proclisis, on the other hand, the indirect object would separate the direct object from the verb, disrupting iconicity (loDO miIO porti), but the frequency of proclisis was supposedly too low to represent a problem. With the increase of proclisis, however, the disruption of the parallelism between syntactic adjacency (a structural feature) and semantic centrality (a conceptual feature) did become a problem so that the parallelism was eventually restored by inverting the order to IO–DO. As we know from Chapter 3 (§ 3.3), non-finite verbal forms and informal imperatives require enclisis in CSI. Yet the order of enclitic sequences is the same as the order of proclitic clusters, which means that syntactic adjacency does not match semantic centrality in this environment. (14) a. Carlo non vuole prestar-te -la/ *-la-ti. “Carlo doesn’t want to lend it to you.” b. Carlo non te la presta. “Carlo will not lend it to you.” The ‘disruptive’ order of enclitic sequences might be claimed to represent a problem for Maiden’s argument that the reversal of the order of clitic sequences is to be interpreted as a device to correct “the discrepancy between syntactic ‘peripheralness’ and semantic ‘centrality’, resulting from proclitic positioning of the DO.” (Maiden 1995: 176) And the question might arise of why enclisis does not trigger a further reversal of the clitic sequence (i.e., proclisis : IO–DO ~ enclisis : DO–IO). In other words, what prevents the parallelism between syntactic structure and conceptual structure from applying to the enclitic linearization? That is, why does formal representation win over conceptualization? We could assume that the disruption of the syntax–semantics parallelism becomes irrelevant when the verb is in a non-finite or imperative form but such an assumption would be implausible because utterly unmotivated. A much more plausible solution to the problem is to hypothesize that once the IO–DO order became the canonical (unmarked) order for clitic sequences as a result of the predominance of proclisis, it was consequently extended to the more marginal enclitic sequences. The discrepancy be-

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tween syntactic peripheralness and semantic centrality was overshadowed by the preceding fixation of the IO–DO order, accompanied by an increased perception of the clitic sequence as one single unit. In other words, the IO– DO order was sufficiently entrenched to prevent the reverse order found in enclitic environments from becoming a disruption. This view is based on the idea that frequency plays a role in language change and that linguistic representations are schema, i.e., “organizational patterns” that emerge from the way(s) in which forms are associated to one another in a vast network of phonological, semantic, and sequential connections (Bybee 1985, 2001). It could be remarked that the syntax–semantic parallelism hypothesis is unappealing overall because, as already mentioned, the IO–DO order had been the predominant order at some stage of Late Latin (remember the Sardinian example dono-lisIO-lu DO ‘I give them it’; see also note 8) but was later superceded by DO-IO. If such a scenario of double reversal (i.e., from IO-DO to DO–IO and back again to IO–DO) is assumed, it becomes necessary (or certainly desirable) to establish why the parallelism between syntactic peripheralness and semantic centrality ceased at some point to be a significant factor in the grammar of OI but then regained its significance at some later stage of the language. But did the syntax–semantic parallelism truly die away? That is, do we actually have enough evidence to make strong claims in favor of the predominance of the DO–IO order in early Italian? Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, can we truly claim that the DO– IO pattern was the predominant pattern in Old Florentine? And how tight and steady was the correspondence between DO–IO pattern and enclisis? A preliminary screening of the sequences involving 1/2IO and 3DO clitics found in OVI gave the results in Tables 21, 22 and 23. Table 21. Frequency of DO–IO and IO–DO in Old Florentine.* **

IO FORM

1SG 2SG 1PL 2PL TOTAL *

3DO–IO 59 31 22 45 157

IO–3DO

17 5 2 9 32

Query specifications: time range: 900–1300; geographical area: Florentine; 119 documents. ** Both –e and –i allomorphs were considered (e.g., lo mi/me, mi/me lo).

The general process 85

Table 21 reports the number of 3DO–1/2IO and 1/2IO–3DO combinations found in 900–1300 texts classified as Florentine in OVI. The number of DO–IO sequences is unquestionably higher than the number of IO–DO sequences (a ratio of about 5:1). Nevertheless, the results in Table 21 indicate that Wanner’s claim that “lo mi is the only order found up to the end of the 13th century” is not entirely accurate (1974: 162 [emphasis mine, CR]). In addition, the results reported in Tables 22 and 23, which are conflated in Table 24, do not seem to corroborate the strong claim that the type mi lo is found “sporadically at the end of the 13th century.” (Wanner 1974: 162) Table 22. Frequency of DO–IO and IO–DO in Old Tuscan.* IO FORM

1SG 2SG 1PL 2PL TOTAL *

3DO–IO 25 8 2 19 54

IO–3DO

22 15 1 6 44

Query specifications: time range: 900–1300; geographical area: Tuscany; 122 documents.

Table 23. Frequency of DO–IO and IO–DO in Old Italian.* IO FORM

1SG 2SG 1PL 2PL TOTAL *

3DO–IO 91 61 20 71 243

IO–3DO

116 66 17 57 257

Query specifications: time range: 900–1300; geographical area: none; 557 documents.

The occurrence rates gathered through OVI thus suggest that outside the domain of Florentine the two orders were practically equivalent even at the early stages of the language.

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Table 24. Summary of the distribution of 1/2IO–3DO sequences in Old Italian (tenth– thirteenth centuries). lo mi type (3DO–1/2SG IO) Florentine Tuscan Geographically unrestricted Non-Tuscan, non-Florentine

157 54 243 32

mi lo type (1/2 SG IO–3DO) Florentine Tuscan Geographically unrestricted Non-Tuscan, non-Florentine

32 44 257 181

Wanner’s observation that the type mi lo type occurs “rarely in the first half, and increasingly in the second half [of the fourteenth century, CR]” (1974: 162) is not fully supported by the data from OVI either. Table 25. Distribution of 1/2IO–3DO sequences in the first and second half of the fourteenth century. First half of 14th century (1301–1350) Florentine Tuscan Geographically unrestricted Non-Tuscan, non-Florentine

166 112 688 410

Second half of 14th century (1351–1400) Florentine 287 Tuscan 130 Geographically unrestricted 715 Non-Tuscan, non-Florentine 298

Table 26. Distribution of 3DO–1/2IO sequences in the first and second half of the fourteenth century. First half of 14th century (1301–1350) Florentine Tuscan Geographically unrestricted Non-Tuscan, non-Florentine

408 69 547 70

Second half of 14th century (1351–1400) Florentine 142 Tuscan 45 Geographically unrestricted 205 Non-Tuscan, non-Florentine 18

The numbers in Tables 25 and 26 suggest that during the first half of the fourteenth century the DO–IO order was essentially a Florentine phenomenon. In Florentine texts, the number of occurrences of DO–IO sequences is about 2.5 times higher than the number of occurrences of IO–DO sequences (408 DO–IO tokens vs. 166 IO–DO tokens). Tuscan texts, on the other hand,

The general process 87

yield a higher occurrence rate for the IO–DO order (112 IO–DO tokens vs. 69 tokens). Finally, in non-Florentine, non-Tuscan texts we find only 70 occurrences of DO–IO sequences vs. 410 occurrences of IO–DO sequences, for a remarkable ratio of approximately 1:6. The scenario that our data portray for the second half of the fourteenth century is characterized by a general and overall significant decline in the frequency of DO–IO sequences. In Florentine, IO–DO sequences outnumber DO–IO sequences about 1:2 (142 IO– DO tokens vs. 287 DO–IO tokens). For Tuscan, we observe a ratio of approximately 1:3 (45 IO–DO tokens vs. 130 DO–IO tokens). Finally, when we look at non-Florentine non-Tuscan texts, the frequency rate discrepancy becomes a striking 1:16.5 in favor of the IO– DO sequences (18 IO–DO tokens vs. 298 DO–IO tokens). Of course, it is by no means my intention to question the validity of Wanner’s specific study. The different results simply have to be attributed to the fact that different sources were used.33 Moreover, it must be keep in mind that the results discussed above remain provisional because, since enclitic sequences cannot be retrieved automatically, only proclitic sequences were considered. The same change that took place in Italian in the order of clitic clusters occurred also in other Romance languages (i.e. Catalan, Provençal, Old French34). On the contrary, none of the Romance languages or dialects shows the opposite development; that is, no Romance language/dialect, which was at some point characterized by both DO-IO and IO-DO orders, eliminated the latter in favor of the former. Thus, although the same change apparently took place independently and progressed at a different pace in each language/dialect (Rohlfs 1966–1969; Wanner 1974, 1987; Tekavi 1980), the evolution of clitic order was a unidirectional and pan-romance development. It is well possible that further research will lead to a better understanding of the factors involved in this phenomenon and, consequently, to the formulation of sounder accounts. Speculating on what kinds of avenues would be worth pursuing in order to achieve successful results goes beyond the scope of the present work. Nevertheless, I would like to suggest that the taking into account the following observations might be helpful: DO–IO

If a clitic account is to make sense in terms of language and the particular language under investigation it must be very powerful because the relevant data cannot be subsumed under one easy heading. The price for the versatility of the theoretical apparatus is the dilution of its meaning as a psychologically valid and scientifically sound model. I suggest here in lieu of a

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Chapter 4: Grammaticalization of the clitic pronouns positive conclusion that clitic order as such is not a suitable topic since clitics are not autonomous in the grammar. They are embedded in the grammar and they are actively part of it; thus they must be accounted for in terms of the grammar as a whole. (Wanner 1974: 174 [emphasis mine, CR])

New insights on the fixation of the order of clitic sequences might come from relating it to the evolution of word order and possibly to language processing facts. Furthermore, we should keep in mind that, as already mentioned at the beginning of this section, for a number of OI dialects, among which is the highly prestigious Sienese, the modern IO-DO order is either the only order attested or the significantly preferred one. Therefore, the role of dialectal borrowing might have been of some relevance in the process (see also Maiden 1995). To summarize, the only uncontroversial fact we can observe regarding the order of clitic sequence in Italian is a diachronic trajectory characterized by a considerable reduction of the syntagmatic variability of the clitic pronouns. The ease and flexibility with which the clitic pronouns could move around in their environment of occurrence is greatly reduced with consequent fixation of a specific pattern over another and in perfect accordance with grammaticalization. As for establishing the forces that may have triggered fixation, all we seem to be able to achieve is a number of (equally) reasonable hypotheses. I would like to conclude by underscoring Wanner’s (1974: 174) insightful remarks on how challenging it is to develop principled accounts which will fully and satisfactorily explain the (evolution of) clitic systems of any Romance language without also resorting to a number of what he names “corrective assumptions” to fill up the lacunae left open by overgeneralizing theories. Wanner’s pessimism is shared by Maiden (1995: 174), who maintains that “the morphology and order of concatenations of clitic pronouns constitutes one of the most intricate chapters in the history of Italian.” Is this ‘inconclusiveness’, though, really (so great) a problem? I believe it is not if we accept the idea that (some degree of) arbitrariness is an intrinsic feature of language.

4.3. The allomorphy in clitic sequences In this section I will discuss the issue of the allomorphy (i.e., -i ~ -e alternation) that affects indirect object clitics when they occur in IO–3DO (15b) and IO–ne (15c) clitic clusters.

The allomorphy in clitic sequences 89

(15) a. Mi presteresti [dieci euro]i? “Would you lend ten euro?” b. Me li i presteresti? “Would you lend them to me?” c. Me ne i presteresti venti? “Would you lend me twenty?” This phenomenon has been treated as a morphological idiosyncrasy, which characterizes “clitics ending in -i [which] have their ending changed into -e if they are followed by another clitic which begins with l- or n-” (Monachesi 1999: 28, among many others), and has been taken as crucial evidence in favor of the affixal status of Italian clitics. Considering the /i/~/e/ alternation as the result of a morphophonological process of vowel lowering triggered by the following /l/ and /n/ is a longstanding position within Italian linguistics. I would like to emphasize, though, that it is quite difficult to justify the alternation between forms in –i and forms in -e in strictly phonological terms. It is somewhat hard, in fact, to establish which feature(s) of /l/ and /n/ could possibly trigger lowering of the vowel. That lowering may be triggered by these two segments is disproved also by the fact that it does not take place when indirect object clitics are followed by verbs beginning in /l/ and /n/, as shown in (16). (16) a. Ci leggeva (*ce leggeva) quasi come una favola le leggi finanziarie. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “He would read the financial laws almost as if they were fairy tales.” b. Quale colpa ho commesso perché mia sorella mi neghi (*me neghi) la sua fiducia? (CORIS, NARRATTrRo) “What wrong did I do to make my sister deny me her trust?” Were /i/  /e/ a ‘true’ (i.e., phonological) case of vowel lowering, we would expect it to apply independently of the lexical category of the word that contains the trigger, namely initial /l/, /n/. In other words, lowering should occur consistently whenever the environment is met, just like, for instance, final vowel deletion in the environment of a following vowel, or voice assimilation under prefixation (e.g., [sf] s-favorire ‘disfavor’, sfavorevole ‘unfavorable’ vs. [zg] s-gradire ‘dislike’, s-gradevole ‘unpleasant’). At best, a phonological account would have to make use of a specific morphologically conditioned rule (see Kaisse 1985).

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The occurrence of allomorphs in –e in clitic clusters is easily accounted for if we adopt a diachronic perspective; within such an approach, the allomorphy is simply the result of the historical change reconstructed (in a simplified manner) in (17). (17)

CL a. MIHI LLUM  b. TIBI LLUM  c. SIBI LLUM 

SL *mi ello  *ti ello  *si ello 

It. me lo te lo se lo

(CL = Classical Latin; SL = Spoken Latin (Romance); *= reconstructed)

The first step of the process in (17) is the change from CL to SL. It involves loss of the initial syllable of the dative pronouns (MIHI, TIBI, SIBI) and lowering of / / to /e/, which comes as a consequence of the shift from the quantity based vowel system of CL to the quality based vowel system of SL/Romance (among many others, Meyer-Lübke 1919, 1955; Rohlfs 1966-69; Tekavi 1980; Tagliavini 1959, 1962). The second step is the change from SL to Italian and can be interpreted as loss of the first syllable of ello, which occurred after the final /i/ of the indirect pronoun had become /e/ due to assimilation. Alternatively, and perhaps more plausibly, it can be interpreted as fusion of the two forms, which resulted in the merger of the two vowels and degemination of /l/, with the two items kept separate simply as consequence of orthographic convention. In either case, it is clear that the process is strictly related to the grammaticalization of the Latin demonstrative. Diachronic evolution also accounts for the fact that the allomorphy occurs in IO-ne sequences but does not take place in IO-ci/vi/si sequences. (18)

CL a. MIHI INDE b. MIHI HINCE c. MIHI IBI d. MIHI SE

   

SL *mi enne *mi ci *mi vi *mi si

   

It. me ne mi ci mi vi mi si

A scenario analogous to the one proposed in (17) will account for (18a), while for (18b) and (18c) the assumption is that vowel merger did not take place because forms like *e(c)ci, *evi are unattested. Finally, (18d) is selfexplanatory.

The allomorphy in clitic sequences 91

Sequences like mi lo are also attested in OI but they should not be considered problematic because they simply reflect a transitional stage and/or dialectal variation. Moreover, according to Rohlfs (1966–1969) the allomorphs in –e appear quite early, they are predominant in Dante’s Vita nova and Commedia, and they are the only ones attested in Novellino.35 Table 27. Distribution of me/te-3DO vs. mi/ti-3DO pattern in OVI (chronologically unrestricted).* me te TOT

l 234 167 401

lV 458 230 688

gli 27 23 50

mel/tel 156 178 334

mi ti TOT

l 19 10 29

lV 37 24 61

gli 2 0 2

mil/til 5 4 9

* l stands for ’l and l’; lV represents lo, la, li, le.

Tables 27 and 28 report the results from a screening of OVI limited to clitic sequences involving 1/2SG IO. They indicate that the pattern in me was by far the most widespread. The strength of the allomorphs in –e becomes especially apparent in the case of fused clusters (i.e., mel and tel vs. mil and til) since they register a striking occurrence rate: 97.4% and 91.1%. Table 28. Distribution of me/te-3DO vs. mi/ti-3DO pattern in OVI geographically separated and chronologically constrained (900-1300). -i O FL. O TUSC. O IT. -e O FL. O TUSC. O IT.

mi l 5 1

mi lV 4 1

mi *l 0 0

7 me l 2 5

6 me lV 5 9

0 me *l 0 0

45

55

3

mil

ti l

0 0

0 me glV 0 0

2 mel

1

mi glV 0 0

0 0

ti lV 3 1

ti *l 0 0

1 6

1 te l 1 4

4 te lV 1 1

0 te *l 0 0

26

33

28

0

ti glV 0 0

til

TOT

0 0

12 3

0 te glV 0 0

1 tel

21 TOT

0 9

10 34

1

25

214

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In summary, the alleged idiosyncrasy of the allomorphy that characterizes clitic clusters is not an idiosyncrasy after all but simply the outcome of diachronic evolution: the change –i to –e takes place only before the outcomes of LLU(M) and NDE, which begun in /e/ in OI (Rohlfs 1966–1969: 158–159). To make a last remark on this issue, I would like to point out that if we posit that, due to grammaticalization in the form of fixation of the order, IO-DO strings are eventually perceived (i.e., accessed to) as single units, it could be claimed that allomorphy does not exist after all. Rather than mi ~ me, etc. alternations, we only have indirect clitics (the -i forms) opposed to composite (complex) IO-DO clitic units.

4.4. Neutralization processes in the third person clitic 4.4.1. Gender and number neutralization When we compare older stages of Italian to more recent ones, we notice that the process of grammaticalization appears to have moved forward. The first advancement to notice besides the shift to a morphosyntacticallyconstrained linearization of the clitic pronouns is an increase in semantic weakening, which has affected the third singular indirect object clitics. In the modern language, unquestionably at the spoken level but also increasingly extensively in written (not necessarily informal) registers, the gender distinction is practically neutralized in favor of the masculine form gli. The feminine le survives only in very careful or formal speech when speakers want to maintain what is perceived to be a higher standard. In addition, as already discussed in Chapter 3 (§ 3.2.2), gli is increasingly used in place of non-clitic third plural indirect object loro. In fact, if we compare the frequency of occurrence of the 3SG IO feminine le and the occurrence of loro, we find that the form loro occurs even more sporadically and the use of loro is generally viewed as a sign of affectation more so than the use of le. From a sociolinguistic perspective, it may be interesting to point out that the use of gli for le seems to remain a ‘sub-conscious’ phenomenon for many speakers, especially speakers with a higher level of education. This happens despite the fact that the use of gli for le is well acknowledged in the current relevant literature and it is overall well integrated into the grammatical standard, to the extent that it is mentioned in some textbooks

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for both Italian and foreign students. It is not rare at all, in fact, to come across native speakers who, when asked about this issue, maintain that they consistently use le to express the third singular feminine indirect objects and are quite surprised when presented with evidence that contradicts their claim; that is, when they are caught using gli instead of le. This may simply be an indication of the fact the change is still on-going, though it could also be interpreted as the manifestation of a tendency to conform to a linguistic norm perceived as more adequate because more typical of the standard language, which may be stronger in specific discourse settings and among certain categories of speakers. It should be noted that the extension of gli to the oblique third plural implies elimination from the clitic paradigm of the only non-clitic form (see note 24 about the controversial clitic status of loro). This balancing out of forms as well as the gender and number neutralization related to it represent a step forward in the process of grammaticalization, in the form of increase in paradigmaticity. The size of the clitic paradigm is reduced but, most importantly, the reduction of the paradigm leads to increased homogeneity thanks to the elimination of two ill-fitted members: (i) The morphologically and categorially anomalous member loro, bisyllabic and stressed (ii) The over-specified le, which carries a specification (gender) that is marginal for the indirect objects because it applies only to the 3SG pronouns and was bleached out in clitic sequences at all registers as early as the fourteenth century Moreover, the clitic paradigm becomes more homogenous even in terms of phonetic shape since all the members now conform to a Ci pattern. In CSI, gender/number specification never applies in the environment of clitic sequences, where orthographic attachment of the two pronouns takes place (e.g., glielo diamo ‘we give it to him/her/them’ ~ te lo diamo ‘we give it to you’). This, however, is a long-standing phenomenon; as we recall from the discussion on clitic ordering facts (§ 4.2.2.2), there is general agreement on the fact that OI sequences involving third person clitics were not marked rigorously or consistently for gender and number. Specifically, it has been claimed that the combination 3DO-3IO was characterized by “special morphological manifestations […] as lili for a masculine dative, and as lele for a feminine dative” (Wanner 1974: 162), where the first syllable stands for any form of 3DO (masculine or feminine, singular or plural). Around 1250, lili is apparently replaced by lile, so that the gender dis-

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tinction in the 3IO is lost as well; and when lile and lele both evolve into (g)liele around the end of thirteenth century, we have a completely unspecified combination, which starts to show occasional signs gender/number specification in the fifteenth century. Data from OVI indicate that ‘variable’ gliele (i.e., forms showing gender/number agreement in the direct object) had appeared already by the end of the thirteenth century. As shown in Table 29, the following forms are found: 2 occurrences of glielo (no instances of (g)lilo or (g)li lo); 1 occurrence of glila and 3 occurrences of gliela (no (g)li la); and 1 occurrence of glieli, given in (19), which seems to refer to a masculine direct object (danari ‘money’): (19) Quando egli è pazzo te la domanda; tu saresti peccatore se tu gliela rendessi, ed è virtude se tu non rendi nulla. E se quegli che t’ha dato a guardare danarii, comincia guerra con tuo paese non glielii rendere. (Tesoro di Brunetto Latini volgarizzato da Bono Giamboni 1300; from OVI) “When he is mad and asks you for it, you would be a sinner if you gave it back to him, but virtuous if you don’t give back anything. And if the one who gave you money to keep for him, were to start war against your country, don’t give the money back to him.” Table 29. Variable and invariable gli(e)-DO in Old Florentine (900–1300; 119 documents). INVARIABLE gli(e)-DO gliele 12 glile 13 gliel 5 gli le 9 TOTAL 39

VARIABLE gli(e)-DO glielo 2 gliela 3 glila 1 glieli 1 TOTAL 7

On the other hand, a total of 39 occurrences of invariable gli(e)-DO are found: 12 gliele, 13 glile, 9 gli le and 5 gliel (no glili or gli li). As reported in Table 30, the number of occurrences of variable gli(e)DO sequences appears to have increased notably in the fourteenth century although invariable gli(e)le continues to hold quite well, given that we have a ratio of roughly 1 to 7. It must be observed that these results are far from

Neutralization processes in the third person clitic

95

being conclusive. The body of fourteenth century documents may in fact be larger than the body of thirteenth century ones in terms of word tokens and it has not been determined how many of the occurrences of gli(e)le are actually gli(e)-F/PL. Still, our data reveal that (g)lie-DO starts to carry gender/number specification (and not in an occasional fashion) already during the fourteenth century. Table 30. Variable and invariable gli(e)-DO in Old Florentine (1301–1400; 334 documents). VARIABLE gli(e)-DO glielo 20 gli lo 12 glie lo 1 gliela 13 gli la 8 glie la 2 glieli 7 gli li 1 glie li 0 TOTAL 64

INVARIABLE gli(e)-DO gliele

392

gli le

15

glie le

16

TOTAL

424

To conclude, the historical data gathered from OVI suggest that gender and number marking in the third person indirect object was overall a marginal phenomenon in OI, and it was lost very early as a consequence of the reversal of the order of clitic sequences. This makes us wonder whether the opposition gli ~ le ~ loro might be an artificial fact, a normative imposition sanctioned by prescriptivism, rather than a natural linguistic phenomenon. If this is the case, gender and number neutralization are part of the first grammaticalization wave. Grammaticalization has been stalling in the real language, while the ‘norm’ was being set arbitrarily, and all we have is a return to the original pattern of under-specification, made possible by the decline of prescriptivism and the consequent assessment of italiano neostandard (see Berruto 2004). Of course, this is mere speculation at this point. A thorough analysis of OI third person indirect object data is certainly the first step to take, looking at individual third person indirect object forms. This is a massive enterprise, though, which is not greatly aided by

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the opportunity of accessing data electronically because it is not always possible to separate automatically clitic pronouns from definite articles.

4.4.2. Ci as third person indirect object An interesting development, linked to the process of paradigmatic simplification that has been seen at work at the level of indirect object clitics, has been observed in several studies and also in grammars of Italian (Berretta 1985a; Berruto 1985, 2004; Calabrese and Cordin 2001, to name only the best-known) and is addressed in some length by Berretta (1985b). This development consists in the merger of gli, le, and loro into 1PL ci, as shown in (20), where the referent of ci is a male individual other than the addressee. (20) Che ce la dareste voi vostra nipote Mena? (I Malavoglia, p. 17) “Why, would you give her to him, your niece Mena?” The findings emerged from the examination of a corpus of spoken Italian led Berretta (1985b) to restrict the overextension of indirect object ci to third person singular and plural to lower register spoken popular Italian (italiano popolare) of the central and southern regions. As Berretta herself acknowledges (1985b: 118), the geographical and social homogeneity of her corpus, which comprises exclusively utterances collected from northern Italian educated speakers, sets considerable limitations on the conclusions and generalizations to be drawn with respect to this phenomenon. In fact, Palazzi (1959: 147) claims that “in alcune regioni dell’Italia settentrionale è commune l’uso di ci per a lui, a lei, a loro” (‘in some regions of northern Italy it is common to use ci for ‘to him’, ‘to her’, ‘to them’ [translation mine, CR]). Similarly, Calabrese and Cordin (2001: 576) observe that the use of ci as third singular indirect object characterizes both northern and southern varieties.36 It would thus seem that Berretta’s (1985a, 1985b) remarks on the geographical restrictedness of this phenomenon are too strong and that more extensive empirical research is needed in order to make valid claims. Personally, I would be even more cautious about the socio-cultural characterization proposed by Berretta and I would certainly prefer viewing the use of ci as third person indirect object pronoun as a general tendency of spoken

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97

informal (italiano familiare, or colloquiale, if we wish) Italian, rather than consider it restricted to lower substandard (italiano popolare) and/or dialectal registers. The examples in (21) may be illustrative in this respect since they represent actual utterances by speakers who could not be claimed to use substandard Italian as their natural language variety. (21) a. Non dai un bacetto al nonno? E daccelo, sù! “Won’t you give a little kiss to grandpa? Give him one, come on!” b. Ma prova a chiederglielo tu, no. – No, io non ce lo posso chiedere. “But try to ask her yourself.” – “No, I can’t (ask her).” Example (21a) may be relevant for establishing the adequateness of the claim that 3SG IO ci is a substandard feature because it is taken from an exchange between a higher middle class grandfather and his ten-year-old grand-daughter who is not a native speaker of Italian but has a high level of oral proficiency. Given the specific linguistic background of the granddaughter, in order to ensure effective communication, the grandfather accurately and consistently monitors his speech, carefully avoiding even those traits that are regarded as non-substandard features of italiano regionale.37 In this kind of discourse context, then, the use of substandard language would be unwarranted. The use of ci for gli should not be considered a slip of the tongue in this specific case because no auto-correction ensued and it does not represent an isolated instance. Item (21b) is indicative of a comparable scenario since it is an excerpt from a conversation between two sisters, both with university level education and, more importantly, very limited dialect proficiency (the referent of ci is their mother). Additional evidence against the characterization of ci for gli as feature of substandard spoken Italian comes from the fact that, even though marginally, it is also present in the written language. Bonomi (1993: 187, fn. 23) reports the following instance from Il Messaggero, one of the Italian daily newspapers with highest circulation (which, however, is published in Rome): (22) Decide di intraprendere un viaggio per arrivare alla casa di campagna di Gianni e finalmente parlarci. “He decides to take a trip to arrive to Gianni’s country house and finally talk to him.”

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The extension of the referential domain of ci to third person or, if we wish, the merger of third person and first person plural forms, is by no means an odd development. It can be easily understood if we take into consideration the fact that the use of ci as the third person indirect clitic used to express oblique human and/or animate objects other than datives, i.e., prepositional phrases headed by the preposition a ‘to, at’, shown in (23) is utterly uncontroversial. (23) a. Hai parlato a papà? – No, non ci/(gli) ho ancora parlato. “Have you talked to/with dad?” – No, I haven’t talked to/with him yet.” b. Ma, Antonio Bargone, sottosegretario ai Lavori pubblici, a D’Alemai cii crede senza riserve. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “But Antonio Bargone, deputy-minister of public works, believes D’Alema without reserve.” Of course in (23a) con papà could be interpreted as a comitative, which would then warrant the use of ci (cf. Marisa esce con Carloi “Marisa goes out with Carlo’ ~ cii esce ‘she goes with him’), although it would entail a different profiling of the event: quite roughly, unidirectional (a papà) vs. bidirectional, interactive (con papà). As for (23b), the presence of ci is most likely arising from interpreting the sentence as ‘believe to what Carlo says/does’ or as ‘believe in him’, rather than as ‘believe him’. Moreover, ci replaces gli in the case of inanimate datives (recipients) as in (24a) vs. (24b). (24) a. La porta é rotta perché Carlo ci ha dato un calcio. “The door is broken because Carlo kicked it.” b. Vuole sapere perché un compagno a scuola gli ha dato un calcio. (CORIS, STAMPAPeri) “He wants to know why a school mate kicked him.” Establishing with more accuracy to what extent the facts just discussed may have had (be having) a role in the extension of ci to human datives is an issue that requires further investigation. Positing the existence of some connection is certainly reasonable and the phenomenon could be viewed as an additional manifestation of weakening, in the form of the elimination of the human/animate vs. inanimate opposition. However, I would like to remark that I have not been able to find empirical evidence in support of the

99

Neutralization processes in the third person clitic

contrast in (24). Quite the contrary, data gathered from CORIS/CODIS suggest the opposite tendency, i.e., overextension of gli to inanimate referents, as exemplified by the items in (25). (25) a. Sembrava uno di quei vecchi televisorii a valvole che funzionano perché qualcuno glii ha dato un calcio, ma che smettono per sempre di vivere se finiscono nelle mani di un tecnico specializzato. (CORIS, NARRATVari) “It looked like one of those old television sets that work because someone kicked them, but stop living forever if they end up in the hands of a specialized technician.” b. Vide un pallonei rossastro venirgli incontro. In preda a una rabbia impotente glii diede un calcio. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “He saw a reddish ball come toward him. In a fit of impotent rage, he kicked it.” c. Finché [quella persona] non raggiunge questa fragolai e la prende, glii dà un morso e dice: ‘Mah, veramente molto buona!’ (CORIS, MON2001_04) “Until [that person] reaches this strawberry and takes it, gives it a bite and says: ‘Well, it’s really delicious!’” The (more recent?) grammaticalization developments observed at the level of third person indirect object clitic are summarized in Table 31. Table 31. Grammaticalization developments involving third person indirect object. PHENOMENON

Loss of number distinction

INPUT

OUTCOME

gli, le

gli ((ccii))

loro Loss of gender distinction

gli

gli

le Loss of dative ~ oblique opposition (possibly register-restricted)

gli, le, loro prep. + lui, lei, loro

ci

100 Chapter 4: Grammaticalization of the clitic pronouns As mentioned at the beginning of this section, Berretta (1985b) restricts the overextension of the indirect object ci to 3SG and 3PL to lower and/or dialectal registers based on the absence of instances of third person indirect object ci in the corpus of spoken Italian she analyzed. Furthermore, she claims that this phenomenon is typical of central and southern Italy only; for northern areas, she only posits the loss of gender and number distinction, that is, the extension of gli to third singular feminine le and third plural loro, which we have seen to be empirically confirmed. Berretta (1985b) then accounts for the two different trends in terms of morphological naturalness principles by adopting the Natural Morphology framework (put forward in works like Dressler 1985, Mayerthaler 1988, Wurzel 1989). She predicts that the overgeneralization of the indirect object clitic ci will be less successful than the overgeneralization of gli and proposes the following as the two crucial reasons responsible for the higher success of gli: (i) Ci is characterized by a very high degree of homonymy and polysemy because it expresses the first plural direct and indirect pronouns, as well as the locative clitic pronoun (see Chapter 3, Tables 12 and 13). Due to its high degree of homonymy and polysemy, ci is less likely to become the ‘natural’ outcome of the ongoing process of simplification that appears to be taking place at the level of third person indirect object clitics. (ii) Third person masculine singular gli is the most unmarked form within the Italian clitic pronoun system. Hence, it is the favored natural result of the simplification process. Based on these markedness facts, Berretta 1985b) predicts that the third person indirect object ci will eventually disappear from the pronominal system. Ci will either be replaced (more accurately, re-replaced) by gli, which, according to the results of her study, is what seems to be happening in northern Italian. Alternatively, the polysemy of ci will be eliminated by adding supplementary case marking. Precisely, the prepositional phrase a noi ‘to us’ to signal first plural indirect object (e.g., ce lo presta a noi ‘s/he lends it to us’ vs. ce lo presta ‘s/he lends it to him/her/them’) or the locative adverbs qui/qua ‘here’ or lì/lá ‘there’ to express locative function (e.g., ci veniamo qui ‘we come here’, ci andiamo lì ‘we go there’). If based only on general principles of naturalness economy, a prediction about the foreseeable and, to some extent, unavoidable disappearance of a given member from the paradigm in which it partakes should be taken with hesitation. Although it is fairly uncontroversial that ci is not the favored

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form in terms of morphological naturalness, it is also true that establishing to what extent languages can tolerate homonymy and polysemy is not an easily settled issue. However, as Berretta (1985b: 127) accurately points out, the generalization of ci to third person indirect object would result in an instance of homonymy that is highly marked morphologically and, in fact, typologically rare. That is, the merger of ci and gli would lead to homonymy of first and third person, and consequently suppress the deictic opposition discourse present (i.e., discourse participants) vs. discourse absent, which is a fundamental feature of pronominal systems crosslinguistically (Ingram 1978).

4.5. Conclusion This chapter has provided a detailed review of the grammaticalization processes that came into play in the emergence and development of CSI clitic pronouns system. It has been shown that the grammaticalization of the Italian clitics had reached an advanced stage and, in fact, had perhaps completed its cycle, as early as the end of the thirteenth century. By this time, the clitic system had undergone extensive attrition both at the phonetic level (erosion) and at the semantic-morphosyntactic level (loss of demonstrative function and loss of case distinction). In addition, the original first and second plural pronouns no/ne and vo had been replaced by ci and vi respectively, possibly due to analogy to the corresponding singular forms mi and ti (paradigmatization). Finally, the structural scope of the clitics had considerably reduced, leaving only one possible host, the verb. Regarding the placement of the clitic with respect to the host, the main evolution to be recorded for CSI is the disappearance of the syntactic constraint against clause-initial proclisis (loss of the Tobler-Mussafia Law) so that in CSI the enclisis ~ proclisis alternation depends essentially (although not categorically) on the morphosyntactic shape of the verb host. This leads to loss of the free enclisis ~ proclisis alternation in environments unconstrained by the Tobler-Mussafia Law and, consequently, to the fixation of clitic linearization with enclisis restricted to non-finite verb forms and imperatives and proclisis restricted to finite verbs. Fixation has also affected the order of clitic sequences, since IO-DO became the only possible order. Finally, two manifestations of the general process of erosion that has affected the paradigm of Italian pronominal clitic have been examined, namely neutralization of the gender and number distinctions (i.e., loss of

102 Chapter 4: Grammaticalization of the clitic pronouns semantic and grammatical information) in the third person indirect object clitic. This phenomenon constitutes an instance of paradigmatization; that is, an integration of the third person members of the clitic paradigm resulting from the leveling out of the semantico-grammatical differences that originally pertained to these forms. Other, more recent developments in the evolution of Italian clitic pronouns are discussed in the following chapters.

Chapter 5 Verbs in ne

5.1. Introduction This is the first of three chapters I devote to sketching and discussing developments that pertain to individual clitics, precisely: ne (the present Chapter), ci (Chapter 6), and la (Chapter 7). It will be shown that, in respect to these specific clitics, grammaticalization has in some cases in reached a very advanced stage, in the sense that the clitic has become a strictly obligatory component of the verb even though it apparently carries neither truly pronominal nor grammatical function. In other words, it is shown that in many instances, although its physical and configurational properties remain unchanged, the clitic has become fully incorporated into the verb, from which it is indivisible from both a semantic-pragmatic and a strictly structural standpoint. The clitic, or in some cases a clitic sequence, and the verb (with at times an additional adverbial or nominal modifier), have come to form a single lexical item through a process that involves both grammaticalization of the clitic pronoun into an obligatory morphological marker, and lexicalization of the verb + clitic (+ adverb/NP) construction. This process of obligatorification can be related to idiomaticization because many of these complex verbs bear idiomatic meanings. However, a strong idiomaticization hypothesis should not be favored in light of the fact that in several instances the meaning of the complex predicate is still relatable to the source verb. More significantly, it is possible to derive the new meaning by reconstructing a process of gradual development from a true pronoun (a non-obligatory referential element) to a lexical marker (an obligatory morpheme), which is driven by the cognitive and discourse forces that have been shown to drive grammaticalization in general. Because of this process, the obligatory element inherits semantic, pragmatic, and grammatical features of the pronoun and its referent. This inherited information is then absorbed by the constructions and provides a crucial contribution to its meaning, so that overall the meaning of the lexicalized construction can be derived compositionally. This chapter, as well as the following three, is meant to be to be strictly descriptive. Its main objective is to characterize the lexicalized verbs and

104 Chapter 5: Verbs in ne constructions, primarily in terms of their semantic and discourse pragmatic domains although some of their morphosyntactic properties will be examined at times. The semantic-pragmatic domains of the predicates are elaborated strictly on the basis of attested data, mainly from written contemporary Italian, although both spoken attested data and data from different, older stages of the language are brought in whenever available and applicable.

5.2. Obligatory ne The main morphosyntactic functions of the clitic ne were discussed in Chapter 3 (§ 3.2.5); they are re-illustrated for convenience through the examples in (1). (1)

a. Un pacchetto di sicurezzai – il NetRangeri – così efficiente che Pentagono nei ha già ordinato 32 copie. PARTITIVE (CODIS, MISCEL_4) “A security package – the NetRanger – so efficient that the Pentagon has already ordered 32 copies (of it).” b. «Io evito di toccare qualsiasi tastoi, perchè non nei conosco la funzione» asserisce Carlo Taormina riferendosi al computer. ADNOMINAL (CODIS, MISCEL_4) “‘I avoid touching any key, because I don’t know their function’ Carlo Taormina claims referring to the computer.” c. ... questo terremotoi. In questi giorni anche radio e televisione nei hanno parlato molto. DI-NP COMPLEMENT (CODIS, EPHEM_1b) “This earthquake. These days TV and radio have also spoken much about it.” d. Teme di subire un’altra condanna e d’essere nuovamente chiuso in prigionei. Nei è uscito, di recente, in semilibertà. LOCATIVE (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “He is afraid that he’ll be convicted once more and locked in prison again. He came out recently, on probation.” e. Si riprese e mise in opera uno sforzo meritorio per pronunciare le poche frasi di inglese imparate nelle tre settimane di soggiorno a Bangkoki, […]. L’interlocutore, comunque, nei sembrò incantato. CAUSAL DA-NP COMPLEMENT (CODIS, NARRAT_13)

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“She collected herself and made a praiseworthy effort to utter the few English phrases she had learned during the three weeks in Bangkok, […]. The interlocutor, however, seemed to be enchanted by them.” In all the sentences in (1), ne has an actual, full pronominal function since it refers to a nominal or prepositional phrase constituent previously introduced in the discourse. Nevertheless, it will be shown shortly that in connection to a group of verbs and verbal periphrases, ne does not represent a true pronominal element. Rather, it has to be considered an obligatory formative of the verb or verbal periphrasis, which may carry different functions or no apparent function at all depending on the structural properties and the semantics of the host verb itself. Sala-Gallini (1996) offers a nice overview of the status of ne in presentday Italian and accurately points out how in some cases ne is better analyzed as an obligatory verbal marker, which he calls marca flessionale ‘inflectional marker’.38 This has happened in verbs such as fregarsene ‘not care; be indifferent’ and its numerous regional and/or register-dependent variants (see Table 32 on page 107 and Table 33 on page 119), volerne ‘resent somebody’, andarsene ‘go (away), leave’, venirsene ‘go (away)’, and the synonymous verbal periphrases averne abbastanza and non poterne più ‘have had enough’, which are illustrated in (2). (2)

a. E così parlano di rum, di mulatte, scimmiottano il realismo magico alla Garcia Marquez. Se ne fregano del valore letterario. E la qualità della letteratura precipita. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “And so they talk of rum, mulatto girls, they ape magical realism à la Garcia Marquez. They don’t care about literary value; and the quality of literature comes to a head.” b. Sì ma l’ho finito grazie al cielo cioè com’è è nun me ne fotte proprio. (LIP N A 3 3 A) “Yes, but I finished it thank God, well no matter how it turned out I really don’t give a damn.” (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) c. Quando vedo le sue foto piango ancora. Ma non gliene voglio, perché so che quando partì non lo fece per una sua libera scelta. “I still cry when I see his photos. But I don’t resent him, because I know that when he left it wasn’t his own free choice.”

106 Chapter 5: Verbs in ne d. Ne ho avuto abbastanza di Daria, di mia moglie, dei figli che non abbiamo avuto. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “I’ve had enough of Daria, of my wife, of the children we never had.” e. Me ne sono andato quando non ne ho potuto più: quando mi sono accorto che la sua onestà, la sua fedeltà, la sua abnegazione , erano una forma di vendetta. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “I left when I couldn’t take it any more: when I realized that his honesty, his faithfulness, his abnegation were forms of revenge.” The non-optional status of ne in the examples in (2) is trivially proved by the fact that leaving it out would lead to grammatically unacceptable structures, as (3b)–(3g) below. Table 32 (page 107) lists the ne verbs and verbal periphrases found in contemporary Italian. With the exception of (re)starsene, partirsene, and uscirsene (which are examined in more detail in Section 5.5), all the verbs and verbal periphrases listed in Table 32 are included in De Mauro (19992000, 2001). The verbs are listed as independent entries and labeled verbi procomplementari (see definition in note 7). Notice that averne abbastanza has a ‘basic’ variant where the adverb abbastanza ‘enough’ is replaced by the noun phrase le tasche piene, literally ‘the pockets full’. I refer to this variant as basic since the noun tasche can be substituted by nouns like scatole ‘boxes’, palle ‘balls’ and other less or non-euphemistic (and typically quite coarse) terms for the male genitalia (e.g., Ne aveva i coglioni pieni di quegli odori ‘He’d had enough of those smells’ (CODIS, NARRAT_7); coglioni ‘testicles’). Intendersene appears in brackets because it differs somewhat from the other verbs with respect to the degree of obligatoriness of ne. As we see in (3a), omission of ne does not necessarily lead to unacceptable structures, whereas it does in the case of all the other verbs (3b)–(3g). (3)

a. Guarda, quelli del Comitato si intendono di selvaggina come io mi intendo di lingua giapponese. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “Look, the committee members know about game as much as I know Japanese.” b. *Mi infischio/frego/fotto/sbatto di quello che dice la gente.39 “I don’t care about what people say.” c. *Si è comportato molto male ma sono passati tanti anni e non gli voglio.

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“He acted very badly but many years have passed and I no longer have hard feelings for him.” d. *Mi sono (re)stato in silenzio. “I remained silent.” e. *Mi sono andato/venuto a casa presto. “I went home early.” f. *Mi sono partito senza dirlo a nessuno. “I left without telling anybody.” g. *Ho abbastanza/*Non posso più di questa storia. “I’ve had enough of this story.” Table 32. Italian verbs and verbal periphrases in ne.* VERB/PERIPHRASIS

GLOSS

FIRST ATTESTED

infischiarsene (common; colloquial*) fregarsene (common; informal, familiar) fottersene (common; vulgar) sbattersene (common; vulgar) [intendersene] (common) volerne (common) (re)starsene andarsene (common) venirsene (common)
uscirsene


averne abbastanza
non poterne più

1869 ‘not care about something/somebody’

‘have knowledge/expertise of something’ ‘resent, have hard feelings for somebody’ ‘stay, remain’

1849 1872 1964 mid 13th cent. 1949

1294 ‘go (away); leave’ –‘come out with something odd/unusual’ –‘be crazy/out of one’s mind’ ‘have had enough of something/somebody’

*Frequency and register connotations, and date of first attestation come from De Mauro (1999–2000); ‘common’ (It. comune) indicates that the item is used and understood by any speaker with a high-school education, independently of regional and/or social extraction. The symbol
indicates that the item is not found (independently listed) in De Mauro (1999–2000).

108 Chapter 5: Verbs in ne In the case of intendersene, then, ne has not yet reached complete obligatoriness. Furthermore, intendersene differs considerably from the other verbs with respect to its degree of idiomaticization. I will return to these points in Section 5.4, where idiomaticization is examined, and Section 5.5, which looks at other cases of non-fully obligatory ne. That ne cannot be attributed pronominal functions when it occurs with verbs and constructions as those in (2) is evinced by the fact that cooccurrence of ne and its referring expression is not only allowed but in fact obligatory. In the case of the verbs and periphrases listed in Table 32, ne and its referring expression do not necessarily stand in complementary (i.e., mutually exclusive) distribution, whereas true clitic pronouns and their referring expressions do, as we see in (4). (4)

a. Quanti fratellii hai? – Nei ho due vs. *Nei ho due (di) fratellii. “How many brothers do you have?” – “I have two.” b. Ti hanno mai parlato di Carloi? – Me nei hanno parlato spesso. vs. *Me nei hanno parlato spesso di Carloi/di luii. “Have they ever talked to you about Carlo? – They’ve spoken often about him.” c. Mi sono piaciuti molto i tuoii, nei sono rimasta affascinata. vs. * nei sono rimasta affascinata dai tuoii/da loroi. “I liked your parents very much, I was fascinated by them.”

In the examples in (4), co-occurrence of ne and its corresponding referent is ruled out under a discourse unmarked reading exactly because ne carries out pronominal function. Co-occurrence of a clitic pronoun and its corresponding referring expression is allowed in Italian only in the environment of dislocation (or detachment), a structural context in which it seems indeed to be required.40 (5)

a. Nei ho DUE, di fratellii. RIGHT-DISLOCATION “I have two (of them), brothers.” b. Di fratellii, nei ho DUE. LEFT-DISLOCATION “Brothers, I have two (of them).”

The answer part of (4a) is semantically equivalent to (5a) and (5b) because all three sentences convey identical propositional content, namely that a given individual (the speaker) has two brothers. However, they differ crucially as for appropriateness conditions hence they cannot be considered

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equivalent in terms of communicative function. The sentences in (5a) and (5b) represent instances of right-dislocation (RD) and left-dislocation (LD), respectively. They are pragmatically ‘marked’ structures, in the sense that they fulfill specific discourse functions, traditionally grouped under the more general function of topic-marking (Lambrecht 1994; 2001). Crosslinguistically, dislocated structures are distinctively characterized by the structural features listed in (6) (adapted from Lambrecht 2001: 1050). (6)

Properties of dislocated constructions a. The relevant constituent is placed in extra-clausal position, that is, outside the boundaries of the clause containing the predicate, either to the left (LD) or to the right (RD). Clause boundaries are conventionally indicated by a comma, which, however, does not necessarily indicate a pause b. The relevant constituent shows a possible alternative intra-clausal position c. A pronominal element construed as co-referential to the dislocated constituent appears within the clause (co-indexation, conventionally indicated by subscripts) d. Distinctive prosody

Concerning (6c), it should be noted that in Italian the co-referential pronominal element can be absent in LD if the dislocated constituent is an indirect object NPs (7a), or in the case of some types of prepositional complements (7b); ne, on the other hand, can never be omitted (7c). More accurately, in the case of (7a) and (7b), either the preposition or the clitic can be left out (e.g., Giacomo, Maddalena gli regalerà un osacchiotto is also possible), whereas only the preposition is optional in (7c). (7)

a. (A) Giacomo, Maddalena (gli) regalerà un orsacchiotto. “(To) Giacomo, Maddalena will give him a teddy bear.” b. (In) America, Alice (ci) andrà l’anno prossimo. “(To) America, Alice will go there next year.” c. (Di) passeggiate, Martina *(ne) fa molte. “Walks, Martina takes a lot of them.” (Benincà, Salvi and Frisoni 2001: 144)

110 Chapter 5: Verbs in ne With the exception of ne, then, the structural connection between the leftdislocated constituent and the rest of the sentence is signaled by the preposition, by the clitic, or by both elements. In RD, the pronoun appears also to be optional if the dislocated phrase is a direct object, but ne remains obligatory in quantified noun phrases and preferred in other cases. (8)

a. (Lo) porto domani, il dolce. “I’ll bring it tomorrow, the dessert.” b. Giorgio (gli/le) ha regalato un braccialetto, a Maria. “Giorgio gave a bracelet to her, Maria.” c. (Ci) andiamo domani, dalla nonna. “We’ll go there tomorrow, to grandma’s house.” (Adapted from Benincà, Salvi and Frison 2001: 160–161) d. *(Ne) ha quattro, di moto. “He has four of them, motorcycles.” e. ??(Ne) sono rimasta affascinata, dai tuoi genitori. “I was fascinated by them, your parents.”

As for (6d), it is important to point out that in Italian an LD construction need not be intonationally distinct from the canonical corresponding construction, so that it must be stressed that the comma simply represents the traditional orthographic practice of marking the clause boundary, and it is not meant to denote a pause. For RD constructions, on the contrary, it has been claimed that they cannot be uttered as a single intonation unit if the pronominal element is present (Benincà, Salvi and Frisoni 2001); a pause appears to be required before the dislocated constituent, conventionally indicated by a comma in (9b). (9)

a.*Lo porto domani il DOLCE . b. Lo porto DOMANI, il dolce.

Yet, according Berruto (1986: 58) (9’a) is not only totally acceptable, indeed it represents dislocation proper, whereas (9’b) is an instance of ripensamento ‘afterthought’ (cf. also Cinque 1977). (9’) a. Le mangio LE MELE. RD b. Le MANGIO, le mele. RIPENSAMENTO “I eat them, apples.” (Berruto 1986: 58)

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The dislocated constructions in (5) and their canonical (i.e., nondislocated) corresponding construction in (4a) cannot be used interchangeably. They are subject to precise appropriateness conditions that are linked to (conditioned by) the discourse functions they fulfill. Dislocation will result in inappropriate constructions in focus-marking contexts, and dislocated constituents are necessarily non-focal sentence elements (Lambrecht 2001: 1072). Therefore, the sentences in (5) can be appropriate answers to the questions in (10). (10) a. Quanti fratelli hai? “How many brothers do you have?” b. Hai fratelli? “Do you have brothers?” The constituent (di) fratelli ‘(of) brothers’ can be dislocated because it is not providing new information, i.e., the information required by the whelement quanti ‘how many’ (10a) or simply whether the addressee has any brothers at all (10b). On the other hand, they would not work as answers to the question Hai fratelli o sorelle? ‘Do you have siblings?’ (literally, ‘Do you have brothers or sisters’) because in this case fratelli constitutes focal information. The presence of the clitic corresponding to the dislocated element is then a distinctive feature of Italian dislocated constructions, potentially in combination with the appropriate prosodic features, namely a specific intonation pattern and stress prominence on the focal element, indicated by small caps in the examples above. Hence, in the specific environment of dislocation, clitic pronouns can be interpreted as morphopragmatic markers. This function cannot be extended, at least not tout court, to the ne of verbs like fregarsene because here the presence/absence of ne is not determined exclusively by discourse pragmatics. On the contrary, as already pointed out with respect to (3b)–(3g), omission of ne produces structurally and semantically deficient sentences, not pragmatically unacceptable or inappropriate ones. Presumably, fregarsene and the other verbi procomplementari in ne can still occur in dislocated constructions. These, however, will not take a second clitic and will be marked as such simply by means of prosody, as shown by the contrast in intonation pattern between the dislocated constructions in (11) and their corresponding non-dislocated counterparts in (12).

112 Chapter 5: Verbs in ne (11) a. Del piacere degli handicappati, se ne fregano TUTTI/tutti SE NE FREGANO. (CORIS, NARRATTrRo) “The pleasure of the disabled, NOBODY cares/nobody CARES about it.” b. Se ne fregano TUTTI/Tutti SE NE FREGANO, del piacere degli handicappati. “NOBODY cares/Nobody CARES about it, the pleasure of the disabled.” (12) Se ne fregano DEL PIACERE DEGLI HANDICAPPATI. “Nobody cares about the pleasure of the disabled.” Thus, the crucial factor in determining whether a construction involving a ne-verb or verbal periphrasis is an instance of dislocation or not is the identification of the locus of focal (sentence) stress. If focal stress falls on the di-NP complement of the verb as in (12), we have a canonical nondislocated structure. If, on the other hand, focal stress falls on a different constituent, we have dislocation. In (11) whether focal stress is assigned to the subject constituent, to the indefinite pronoun tutti ‘everybody, all’ or to the verb, depends on which constituent constitutes the focal denotatum. Put differently, (12) would be the appropriate answer to the question in (13a) but neither (11a) nor (11b) would be appropriate; vice versa, (11a) and (11b) would be appropriate answers to questions like (13b), if tutti receives focal stress, and (13c), if focal stress is assigned to the verb. (13) a. Di che cosa se ne fregano tutti? (DEL PIACERE DEGLI HANDICAPPATI) “About what does nobody care?” b. Chi se ne frega del piacere degli handicappati? (TUTTI) “Who doesn’t care about the pleasure of the disabled?” c. Che fanno a proposito del piacere degli handicappati? (SE NE FREGANO) “What do they do about the pleasure of the disabled?” To conclude, in this section we have seen that some verbs and verbal periphrases require the obligatory presence of the clitic ne in order to produce grammatically and semantically acceptable sentences. That is, ne and the verb (or verbal periphrasis) have merged to form an individual lexical item through a process that involves the grammaticalization of the clitic pronoun into an obligatory morpheme, which no longer functions simply as

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pronominal element or as a pragmatic marker signaling dislocation. This process, though, also involves lexicalization, understood here as introduction into the lexicon of the verb + clitic (+ adverb/nominal) sequence as an independent item.

5.3. Function(s) of lexicalized ne The discussion so far has revealed that the ne of fregarsene and similar items is no longer analyzable as a true pronominal element because it must accompany the predicate even when its corresponding referential expression is overtly expressed, and outside the specific environment of dislocation. Likewise, it seems that this ne cannot be attributed actual pragmatic value; that is, it cannot be considered a distinctive marker of dislocated constructions because it is obligatory also in canonical non-dislocated constructions. Why, then, is ne there? What exactly is the function that ne fulfills in such cases? How has ne acquired it? Sala-Gallini (1996: 87) also regards this ne as fully lexicalized, i.e., as an integral component of the verb. He claims that in this case ne has entirely lost its pragmatic function and has become a strictly grammatical element, a case marker that signals the type of complement selected by the verb, namely accusativo genitivale ‘genitival accusative’ (di + NP object). Given that lexicalized ne also refers to another type of complements, specifically locative complements, da + NP complements (see the examples in [1] in this Chapter, and Chapter 3, § 3.2.5), I believe that it would be more accurate to attribute this lexicalized ne the function of indicating that the object of the verb need not be overtly expressed. In other words, we are dealing with the phenomenon of null-object instantiation. In the case of verbs and verbal periphrases with lexicalized ne, overt instantiation of the complement is subject to constraints comparable to the constraints that regulate overt expression of subject pronouns, which is required in Italian only in specific contexts, for instance to express emphasis or contrast (i.e., it is a pragmatically marked option). The precise nature of the complement, for instance a locative source (motion away from a place) in andarsene ‘leave, go away’ or di + X in fregarsene ‘not care’ (where X can stand for either an NP or an infinitive), is made identifiable by the presence of ne and the lexical meaning of the predicate itself. As for the co-referential expression of ne, its overt or covert realization in the discourse is determined by

114 Chapter 5: Verbs in ne the discourse participants’ specific communicative needs, which are not, however, necessarily linked to the communicative function of dislocation. (14) a. Vive a Austin. “S/he lives in Austin.” (Null subject; referent known but pragmatically ‘neutral’) b. Lui/Carlo vive a Austin, (non lei/Marisa). “HE/CARLO lives in Austin, (not SHE/MARISA)” (Pronominal/nominal subject; referent known but pragmatically salient, i.e., contrastive or emphatic) c. Carlo, lui vive a Austin. “Carlo, he lives in Austin.” (Nominal overt LD dislocated subject; referent known but pragmatically salient) d. Vive a Austin, Carlo. “He lives in Austin, Carlo.” (Nominal overt RD dislocated subject; referent known but pragmatically salient) (15) a. Io ho rinnegato me stessa: ora mi odio, anzi me ne frego Ø. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “I repudiated myself: I hate myself now, in fact, I don’t care.” (Null complement; referent implied because previously mentioned, and pragmatically ‘neutral’) b. Ho voglia di trasgredire e me ne frego della mia immagine. (CORIS, NARRATVari) “I want to be transgressive and I don’t care about my image.” (Overt complement; referent either unknown/unrecoverable from the context or pragmatically salient (RD), depending on intonational structure) c. «Questo sarebbe un albero di Natale?» «Non vedo come la cosa possa interessarle.» «Infatti me ne frego dell’albero. Sono qui per te.» (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “This would be a Christmas tree? – I don’t see how this may concern you. – In fact, I don’t care about the tree, I’m here for you.” (Overt complement; referent known but pragmatically salient, RD) In (14b) overt expression of the nominative pronoun lui ‘he’ is required despite the fact that the subject referent of the verb is known or identifiable,

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because lui is directly contrasted with another referent, lei ‘she’.42 The presence of an overt complement in (15b) indicates that its referent is unknown or unidentifiable, or communicatively relevant. In (15c), it is dictated by pragmatic purposes only, like in (14c). Ne, however, can also lack a specific definite referent, in which case the object will acquire a generic reference and the predicate will receive an absolute interpretation. (16) a. “Me ne importa, mi sta a cuore.” È il contrario esatto del motto fascista.“Me ne frego”. (CORIS, EPHEMLette) “‘I care, I mind.’ It’s the exact opposite of the fascist motto ‘I don’t care’.” b. E adesso che farai? – Spero un pó di giorni di vacanza in Francia. Non ne posso proprio più. Devo rilassarmi, tornare a vivere nella normalità. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “What will you do now? – “I hope I’ll go on vacation in France for a few days. I can’t go on like this. I need to relax and go back to living a normal life.” In the examples in (16), fregarsene and non poterne più exhibit a behavior comparable to that of transitive verbs like mangiare ‘eat’, ballare ‘dance’, etc. These are verbs that can participate in both transitive and intransitive constructions; that is verbs with a semantic valence of 2 but a syntactic valence of either 1 or 2 (Van Valin and La Polla 1997; Van Valin 2005, among others). When they are constructed as transitive, these verbs are characterized by precise restrictions on the semantics of the object. If, on the other hand, they are constructed intransitively (i.e., without an overt direct object complement), they entail a lexically determined inherent object. For instance, mangiare entails a meal in (17a), where it can in fact be replaced by pranzare ‘have lunch’ or cenare ‘dine; have dinner/supper’ (the latter, in the given context), or simply food in general in (17b). (17) a. No, grazie, ho già mangiato – dico loro; semmai accetterei del caffè. (CORIS, MON2001_4) “No thank you, I already ate (had dinner); if anything I would accept a cup of coffee.” b. Monica si è appesantita […]. Mangia troppo e male. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “Monica has become heavier […]. She eats too much and badly.”

116 Chapter 5: Verbs in ne The lexically determined (the ‘default’) object of fregarsene and its synonyms, as well as of the periphrasis non poterne più, appears to be maximally general and inclusive: everything/everybody. In fact, it could be argued that, given the appropriate context, these predicates may denote a (temporary) property of the subject: (18) a. “Ma lei perché crede che tanta gente muoia?” E perché? Per ignoranza? “Sbattimento”. Cioè? “Gente che se ne frega.” (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “But why do you think that so many people die? – Why? Is it because of ignorance? – Indifference – What do you mean? – People who don’t care.” b. Senza neanche accorgermi ho cominciato a bere. Sapevo e non sapevo di farlo, in ogni modo mi ripetevo: “E un caso diverso da mio padre. Lui beve perché è un fallito, io ho solo bisogno di un aiuto per conoscermi meglio.” (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “Without even realizing it, I started drinking. I was partly aware of it but I kept repeating to myself: It is different from my father’s case. He drinks because he is a failure; me, I only need some help to understand myself better.” In (18b) the clause lui beve denotes the state of being an alcoholic not an actual action of drinking; similarly, in (18a) che se ne frega expresses a quality of the subject referent gente ‘people’, namely indifference, rather than referring to a specific instance of feeling indifference for something. Before concluding this section, I would like to go back to verbs of motion like andarsene, venirsene (via) ‘go (away)’, partirsene ‘leave’ and draw attention to two points. First, I would like to point out that in the case of this verb class, overt expression of the source locative complement becomes even more restricted because, due to the intrinsic deictic feature of the verbs, it is always inferable as the starting point or origin of motion. Second, I would like to propose that in the case of these verbs, ne can be attributed yet another function, namely that of profiling both the source and the target of the movement trajectory, rather than simply the function of profiling the directionality inherently expressed by (i.e., lexically specified in) the verb. More precisely, both andare and andarsene profile the same path, i.e., motion to a place, but they differ with respect to the section of the trajectory they foreground.

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As sketched in Figure 1, andare foregrounds the target destination; that is, the verb’s inherent directionality is profiled. In contrast, andarsene foregrounds the starting point; that is, the opposite of the verb’s inherent directionality is profiled, or possibly the entire path of movement away from the source.

T

S andare

S

T andarsene

Figure 1. Andare vs. andarsene.

To recapitulate, the conceptual frame andarsene evokes is different from that evoked by andare. The former focuses on the place of departure and/or the entire event itself, whereas the latter focuses solely on the (place of) arrival.43 This difference in focus is possibly responsible for the ‘stronger’ connotation of andarsene, which is shown by the appropriateness contrast illustrated in (19) and (20). It should be pointed out, though, that the presence of si with aspectual value might have a role as well, given that the obligatory morpheme is actually –sene (*andarsi). (19) a. Non sei ancora andato a comprare il pane? “Haven’t you gone to buy bread yet?” b. #Me ne sto andando, me ne vado, un attimo! c. Sto andando, vado, un attimo! “I am going, I’m going; just a moment!” (20) Ma te ne vuoi andare (vs. #vuoi andare)? strillava lei subito però dominando la voce. Chi t’ha chiesto niente. Via. Via. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “So, are you going away or what? – she screamed, though immediately controlling her voice. Who asked you for anything! Go, go.” The sentence in (19b) is not an appropriate answer to (19a) because it conveys the message that the speaker is not coming back, or at least intends not

118 Chapter 5: Verbs in ne to come back, which is unwarranted in the present context. The use of andare in place of andarsene in (20) is inappropriate because it would mitigate if not eliminate the imperativeness of the speaker’s request that the addressee leave. An analogous intensifying property can be ascribed to the ne of (re)starsene ‘stay, remain’. Obviously, ne does not express directionality in this case but it foregrounds the stativity of the predicate and the durative or even stationary nature of the event expressed in the sentence. Ne acquires a temporal connotation and serves to put emphasis on the extending in time but at the same time static nature of the described state of affairs. In a sense, we observe an instance of metaphorical extension from the spatial dimension (locative ne) to the temporal dimension of prolonged fixation in time, which matches the metaphorical cline by Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer (1991) introduced previously (see Chapter 2, § 2.2.2). (21) a. Mentre me ne stavo in camera a leggere, mi giunse dal corridojo […] una voce. (Il fu Mattia Pascal, p. 78) “While I was in my room reading, a voice came to me from the corridor.” b. C’è da rimettere in piedi il partito, e lei se ne resta a Roma a lavorare. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “The party needs to be put back together and you remain in Rome working.” Eliminating ne – actually the sequence si + ne, which forms an inseparable unit given (re)starsene ~ (re)stare vs. *(re)starsi – from the sentences in (21) does not make them ungrammatical or odd but it does alter their meaning, by preventing specific inferences to arise. First, the nuance of stationariness, in the sense of fixed in space and time, disappears. Second, it seems that using (re)stare cancels, or at least considerably weakens, the inference of a causal relationship between the event/state of affairs described in the sentence containing ne and the remaining discourse. For instance, if restare replaces restarsene in (21b), the utterance is understood as simply denoting a sequence of two temporally linked events. No inference emerges about the fact that, in the speaker’s view, the remaining in Rome of the subject referent of restarsene has harmful consequences for the enterprise of rebuilding of the political party, which is, on the contrary, a key inference in the given sentence.

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5.4. Idiomaticization and fixation 5.4.1. Degrees of idiomatic value The predicates discussed above show different degrees of idiomatic meaning. With respect to this parameter, they cover a broad semantic range, at one end of which we find verbs and constructions that are the most semantically opaque (highly idiomatic) because the meaning of the ‘target’ constituent cannot be (or is not easily) inferred compositionally from the meaning of the individual components of the ‘source’ entity. Table 33. Sources of fregarsene and its synonyms. SOURCE

GLOSS

*infischiare fischiare fregarea

fregareb

fottere

sbattere

‘whistle’ –‘rub, scrub, scour’ –‘pinch, nick’ (lower/informal register) –‘cheat’ (lower/informal register) –‘fuck’ –‘ruin someone by cheating’ –‘steal’

–‘knock, bang, slam’ –‘shake, toss’ –‘fuck’

SOURCE + SI ?infischiarsi *fischiarsi

fregarsi

fottersi

sbattersi

GLOSS

low usage variant of infischiarsene (De Mauro 2000) –reflexive/reciprocal of fregarea –‘pinch for oneself’ (reflexive benefactive of fregareb) –‘damage (not physically) oneself’ –variant of fottersene (De Mauro 2000) –‘damage/ruin oneself’ (reflexive/reciprocal of fottereb) –‘steal for oneself’ (reflexive benefactive of fotterec) –‘rush around’ –‘fuck’

This is what happens, for instance, in the case of fregarsene and all its synonyms, listed in Table 33, which remain considerably opaque even when they are broken down, or actually cannot be decomposed at all, like

120 Chapter 5: Verbs in ne infischiarsene. At the other end of the continuum, we find fairly transparent verbs like andarsene ‘leave’, venirsene ‘come’, and (re)starsene ‘stay, remain’, and the periphrasis averne abbastanza ‘have had enough’, whose core lexical meaning remains essentially unchanged (e.g., andarsene where what is gained is possibly an aspectual specification). Complex predicates whose meaning can be derived compositionally from the meanings of their parts, perhaps with a little help from metaphorical conceptualization, are located at this end of the continuum as well. In the central region of the idiomaticization continuum, we find verbs like usciresene ‘come out with something odd, unusual, inappropriate’, ‘be out of one’s mind’ and volerne ‘resent, have hard feelings for somebody’. (22) a. Più tardi, uscendo dall’aula, Andreotti se ne è uscito con un’altra battuta. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “Later, coming out of the lecture hall, Andreotti came out with another quip.” b. Al contrario, si sentiva profondamente ferita. La mamma se n’era uscita con delle accuse che non potevano venire cancellate. (CORIS, NARRATTrRo) “On the contrary, she felt deeply hurt. Her mom had come out with some accusations that could not be erased.” c. Gli studiosi della Mac Arthur Foundation, una fondazione che che studia dall’89 l’evoluzione psicologica nell’invecchiamento, se ne sono usciti con una conclusione che ha spiazzato molti luoghi comuni. (CORIS, STAMPAPeri) “Scientists at the Mac Arthur Foundation, a foundation that has been researching on psychological evolution during aging, came out with a conclusion that has wrong-footed many clichés.” d. Carlo se n’è uscito (di testa/di mente). “Carlo is out of is mind.” (23) a. Non ne dico male, né gliene voglio: ne siete testimoni. (L’esclusa, p. 5) “I don’t bad-mouth her nor do I resent her: you are my witnesses.” b. Mi domandavo se me ne avrebbero voluto per il fatto che ero ebreo. (CORIS, NARRATTrRo) “I wondered whether they would resent me for being a Jew.”

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Uscirsene (di testa/mente) suggests a straightforward case of metaphorical extension, quite similarly to its English equivalent ‘get/be out of one’s mind’. The original schema evoked by the source verb is of a concrete nature, namely physical movement outward. That is, physical self-transfer from one spatial region into a different one of some entity, animate or made capable of autonomous motion because of some physical force or law (e.g., substances like air, water, lava, etc.). The source schema remains fundamentally unaltered except for the fact that the movement becomes abstract, i.e., metaphorical. In uscirsene (di testa/mente) neither the subject nor the subject’s mind, for that matter, are physically exiting from a spatial region. Rather, the subject/experiencer is going out of a state of mental normality or evading some socio-culturally agreed-upon parameters of conventionality. Uscirsene con typically involves the subject producing an utterance, as in (22a, b), but also a gesture or even an act, which is perceived by the speaker as having some kind of impact on the given situation. What we have in this case, then, is also metaphorical abstraction: the more concrete schema of spatial representation becomes the means by which to express a state of affairs more abstract than physical movement, such as the emergence of an unexpected and/or unconventional situation or behavior, which is coded by means of a comitative structure (con ‘with’ NP). This process of metaphoricization appears to have affected uscirsense to a significant extent since this verb tends to occur less frequently in its literal sense (i.e., referring to physical motion), which is exemplified in (24). (24) a. Volò via dal letto, si rivestì, si infilò le scarpe nere, tacco a spillo, e se ne uscì, senza dire nulla. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “She flew out of bed, got dressed, put on her black stiletto-heeled shoes, and went out without saying a word.” b. Aveva un fratello che si chiamava Jasper, che di tanto in tanto, nel cuore della notte, se ne usciva in giardino per guardare la luna. (CORIS, NARRATTrRo) “He had a brother named Jasper, who occasionally would go out in the garden in the middle of the night to look at the moon.” c. E se ne uscì dalla cucina con aria offesa e con il volto paonazzo. (CORIS, MON2001_04) “And she went out of the kitchen offended and all red in the face.”

122 Chapter 5: Verbs in ne The search for third person forms of uscirsene in CORIS/CODIS yielded the results in Table 34, which show a considerable discrepancy in frequency between the two uses. Table 34. Occurrences of uscirsene in the third person form in CORIS/CODIS. Uscirsene Idiomatic Non-idiomatic

NUMBER OF OCCURRENCES 129 48

% 72.9% 27.1%

In the previous section, I suggested that the main difference between andare and andarsene relates to a shift in focus: andare focuses on the target destination while andarsene focuses on the abandonment of the source destination or possibly on the entire trajectory of movement. This assumption cannot be extended to the pair uscire/uscirsene (lit.) because the source of motion is inherently profiled by uscire and the target destination is not entailed (esco dal cinema ‘I come out from the movies’ vs. *esco al cinema ‘I go to the movies’). Hence, it appears that the cluster –sene acts simply as an emphatic element. A superficial survey suggests that -sene can be applied to any verb of motion. (25) a. Et Gianmatteo, che ne seppe più che il diavolo, se ne ritornò tutto lieto a casa. (Favola di Belfagor, p. 10) “And Gianmatteo, who had one-upped the devil, went back home all happy.” b. Ciò detto distese le ali e, infilata la finestra che era aperta, se ne volò via a perdita d’occhio. (Le avventure di Pinocchio, p. 15) “Having said that, it [= a chick] spread out its wings and flew off far away through the open window.” c. Le chiese di rimanere per curare le ammalate, e, per tagliar corto, salì nel suo calesse e se ne partì mentre quella insisteva nel dire che doveva tornarsene a casa per accudire alle faccende domestiche. (CORIS, NARRATTrVa) “He asked her to stay and tend the sick women and, to cut it short, he climbed on the gig and took off while she protested saying that she had to go back home herself to take care of the house chores.”

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Depending on the type of inherently specified directionality of the source verb, the derived verb will behave like uscirsene, becoming an emphatic version of its source, or it will pattern like andarsene. The presence of ne in volerne ‘resent, have hard feelings for somebody’ is fairly obscure because, as a lexical verb, volere ‘want, desire’ is a transitive verb that takes direct object complements (nominal or clausal) not prepositional complements that are pronominailzed by ne (see Chapter 6 for more details on the selectional properties of volere). Ne can be related to volere only in its partitive function (e.g., voglio due gatti ‘I want two cats’ ~ ne voglio due ‘I want two’). Given the (quite specific) meaning of volerne, it can be inferred that ne must have come to associate with volere in the highly restricted, very precise context of a quantified nominal complement; that is, something along the line of (26). (26) Volere ‘want, whish’ Q N[feeling, negative] a qualcuno ‘to somebody’ In (26) Q indicates a quantificational element, such as molto ‘much’ and N denotes a general concept of ‘negative feeling’. It is quite plausible to assume that the nominal complement must have occurred overtly at some point in the history of the language, to be gradually effaced after transmitting its semantic content to the clitic. This scenario, which is not much dissimilar to the one posited for the verbs in la discussed in Chapter 7, may be interpreted as a communicative strategy that allows the language to avoid overt realization of strongly negative connotations by exploiting the referential nature of the clitic pronouns. In other words, idiomaticization can be viewed in this case as a euphemization strategy (Koch 2003).

5.4.2. Fixed and semi-fixed locutions Several verbs in ne have advanced further in the process of fixation and/or idiomaticization. Fregarsene and its synonyms appear to be among the most affected. (27) a. Tira una brutta aria, anche in cielo coi nuvoloni che arrivano. Ma chi se ne frega, ormai sono in centro e ci resto. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot)

124 Chapter 5: Verbs in ne “There’s a bad atmosphere, even in the sky with those big clouds coming. Well, who cares, I’m downtown now and I’m going to stay here.” b. Il quotidiano è stato tempestato dalle lettere di lettori scandalizzati: “è una delle voci più belle del nostro tempo, chi se ne frega della presenza sul palco”. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “The newspaper was bombarded by letters from outraged readers: ‘he is one of the most beautiful voices of our times; who cares about stage presence’.” c. È troppo facile dire ‘e chi se ne fotte?’ quando devi vivere tutte le sere in mezzo a gente che non ti giudica esattamente come Santa Rosalia. (CORIS, NARRATRacc) “It’s too easy to say ‘and who cares?’ when every single night you have to live among people who don’t exactly judge you as St. Rosalia.” The examples in (27) illustrate the construction chi se ne X; that is, a whinterrogative with fregarsene or any of its variants in the third singular present indicative form. 44 However, this is not a true interrogative structure, in the sense that, in its most widespread usage, it is not interpreted as a question that calls for an informative answer; in fact, it does not receive the intonation pattern of interrogatives. Rather, this construction has specific pragmatic, communicative functions: it conveys the speaker’s attitude of absolute indifference towards a (typically) disappointing or unpleasant situation, as illustrated for instance in (27a). Or it can be used to point at the irrelevance of some fact, as in (27b), where chi se ne frega is meant to highlight the fact that being physically unattractive is utterly irrelevant to vocal virtuosity. The expressions in (28) resemble chi se ne frega in terms of communicative function in that they too are not real questions that the speaker asks in order to actually receive an informative reply. Rather, when the pronoun is first person (28a), they are intended to state the speaker’s disregard and/or contempt towards some matter or situation; and when the pronouns is second (28b) or third person (28c), they express the speaker’s belief about the addressee’s or a third participant’s indifference toward some matter that, on the contrary, does concern the speaker. (28) a. Scusa se a me non m’interessa una persona no * che me ne frega di quello che fa. (LIP, N B 65 94 B, *= anchor for a label)

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“Sorry, but if somebody does not interest me, well, what do I care about what they do.” b. Tu mi hai rubato le forze e mi hai lasciato qui a morire, cazzo. Non vedi che sto agonizzando davanti a te? Ma a te che te ne frega? Tu te ne andrai e io continuerò a morire dopo che avrai voltato le spalle, cazzo. (CORIS, NARRATTrRo) “You stole my strength and left me here dying, damn it! Don’t you see that I am agonizing right in front of you? You don’t give a damn! You’ll go away and I’ll go on dying after you turn your back on me, damn it!” Just like chi se ne frega, the structure types exemplified in (28) are pseudointerrogatives, rhetorical questions that speakers employ to cast doubt on or dismiss the significance and/or extent of their own, of the addressee’s, or of some other discourse participant’s concern for the matter under discussion; but they are also effective for diminishing the matter of concern itself. The message conveyed by these expressions can be quite incisive, often meant to be derogatory of the addressee, and intonation plays a significant role in this respect. In (28) the verb involved cannot be fregarsene given the lack of subjectverb agreement (te2SG ne frega3SG not te2SG ne freghi2SG). For these examples, we have to assume an intransitive (unaccusative) fregare, characterized by a syntactic and thematic structure comparable to those of piacere ‘like’ (Belletti and Rizzi 1988). This type of fregare is not found in De Mauro (1999–2000, 2001), where all the acceptations given are transitive (see Table 32). Therefore, the semantic and syntactic frames informally sketched in (30), although drawn on empirical data, remain definitely provisional. (29) Piacere ‘like’ a. A Carlo piace la frutta. a’. Mi piace nuotare. “Carlo likes fruit.” “I like to swim.” b. NP1 piacere NP2/CLAUSE c. NP1 = indirect object; NP2 /CLAUSE = subject. d. NP1 = experiencer; NP2 /CLAUSE = theme (stimulus).

126 Chapter 5: Verbs in ne (30) Fregare ‘care; be concerned’ a. A Carlo frega di quell’orologio. “Carlo cares about that watch.” a’. Ti frega di arrivare in orario.45 “You care about arriving on time.” b. NP fregare PP/CLAUSE c. NP = indirect object; PP /CLAUSE = subject. d. NP = experiencer; PP /CLAUSE = theme (stimulus). Speakers fully and unconditionally accept constructions of the type given in (30a, a’), both in terms of structure and semantically. Nonetheless, their absence from both CORIS/CODIS and LIP suggests that the occurrence of fregare may indeed be restricted to the following two contexts: (i) pseudointerrogative, exclamative constructions, as in (28) and (ii) negative constructions of the type shown in (31); i.e., ‘IONP non/non IOPRON frega niente/nulla’.46 (31) a. La barella corre tra i corridoi, tra infermieri indifferenti e medici distratti. ‘Porca miseria’, pensa Piera, ‘a questi non gliene frega niente di quello che sento!’ (CORIS, MON2001_04) “The stretcher runs along the corridors, among indifferent nurses and distracted doctors. ‘Gosh!’ – Piera thinks – ‘These people don’t care at all about what I feel!’” b. Cosa è successo? Non me ne frega nulla, non voglio attaccarmi a niente. La gara non era facile, la neve sempre diversa, i dossi, il sole e l’ombra. (CODIS, STAMPA_20) “What happened? I don’t care; I don’t want to blame anything. The race wasn’t easy; the snow always different, the humps, the sun and the shade.” Ne is not strictly obligatory in these constructions, given (28a) vs. (32a) and (31a) vs. (32b), which confirms its pronominal status in this environment. (32) a. Un gobbo sfigato e ricco sfondato, ecco quello che era. Che mi frega di lui? Io parlo di vera poesia: Elliot, ad esempio. O Blake. (CORIS, MON2001_4) “A creepy hunchback full of money, that’s what he was. Forget him! I’m talking about true poetry: Elliot, for instance; or Blake.”

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b. Agli inglesi, ma spesso capita anche con gli americani, del pubblico non frega niente. (CODIS, STAMPA_20) “British, but it happens often with Americans too, don’t care at all about the audience.” These constructions involving fregare are important because they indicate that a diachronic relation must exist between intransitive fregare and fregarsene. Reconstructing the exact trajectory of development, particularly its directionality, and tracing the emergence of this use of fregare are matters of extreme interest but their investigation will have to be postponed.

5.5. Non-obligatory ne: saperne Other verbs are found in contemporary Italian, such as saperne ‘know (about)’, capirne ‘understand’, pensarne ‘think of; have an opinion about’, which pattern with intendersene ‘have knowledge/expertise of something’, given that ne has not yet reached the stage of full obligatoriness. Due to space considerations, I have chosen to examine only saperne because it shows an evolution pattern similar to fregarsene by having developed comparable fixed and semi-fixed locutions. Let us start by looking at two different variants of the same sentence given in (33), which show that, in contrast to what we saw in (2) – repeated here as (34) – for fregarsene and its variants, omission of the clitic does not bring about ungrammatical structures. (33) a. So poco di Carlo. b. Ne so poco di Carlo. “I know little about Carlo.” (34) a. *Mi frego di Carlo. b. Me ne frego di Carlo. “I don’t care about Carlo.” Before engaging in the exploration of what exactly distinguishes (33a) from (33b), it may be helpful to give an essential definition of sapere di ‘know of/about’ as opposed to sapere ‘know’.47 As shown in (35), sapere takes clausal (35a) or nominal complements (35b), though there are restrictions on the types of referents that can actually function as its objects. The

128 Chapter 5: Verbs in ne core meaning of sapere can be defined as ‘possessing knowledge of some kind (information and/or notions)’. (35) a. So [che hanno avuto una bambina a giugno.]S “I know that they had a baby-girl in June.” b. Carlo sa [la lezione di storia molto bene.]NP “Carlo knows the history lesson very well.” Sapere di NP can convey the notion of ‘having strong knowledge/expertise in some field’, as in (36), but this usage has become somewhat marginal in CSI. (36) a. E siccome sa di latino e di Greco, frequenta i corsi di lettere classiche. (CORIS, STAMPAPeri) “And since he knows of Latin and Greek, he attends courses of classics.” b. La giudicammo molto ignorante perché non aveva mai studiato la grammatica e sapeva pochissimo di geografia. (CORIS, NARRATTrVa) “We found her very ignorant because she had never studied grammar and she knew very little about geography.” More typically, sapere di NP expresses the more general meaning of knowing, in the sense of ‘have a notion/knowledge about (the existence of) something’, as shown in (37).48 (37) a. Sappiamo tutti del simbolo del pesce nella cristianità , ma non molti sanno del mito della conchiglia come Grande Madre e che gli antichi danesi chiamavano kudefisk. (CORIS, MON2001_04) “We all know about the symbol of the fish in Christianity, but few people know about the myth of the shell as great Mother that the ancient Danes called kudefisk.” b. Sapevo di una sua simpatia per una ragazza di nome Paola. (CORIS, MON2001_04) “I knew of his attraction to a girl named Paola.” We can now go back to (33), repeated for convenience as (38), and ask the following questions: (i) what is difference between (38a) and (38b); and (ii) how does saperne contrast with fregarsene.

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(38) a. So poco di Carlo. b. Ne so poco di Carlo. “I know little about Carlo.” The sentences above would appear to be instances of RD constructions, comparable to Carlo ne ha poca, di pazienza ‘Carlo has little of it, patience’. The RD status of (38) is evinced by the fact that neither (38a) nor (38b) can be uttered as a single prosodic phrase; that is, neither sentence can receive the same intonation pattern as canonical Subject-VerbComplement constructions, in which the complement constitutes new information. More accurately, the constituent di Carlo can receive focal stress only under a contrastive interpretation, as in the answer part of (39).49 (39) Q: Come puoi giudicare Mario se non hai la più pallida idea di cosa gli è successo? “How can you judge Mario if you haven’t the faintest idea of what happened to him?” A: No, scusa, guarda che (ne) so poco DI CARLO, ma di Mario so tutto. “Well, look, I know little about Carlo’s story, about Mario’s I know everything.” As we recall from the previous discussion about resumptive clitics in dislocated construction, ne is obligatory if the dislocated constituent is a quantified noun phrase and it is highly preferred in the other cases (§ 5.2, and also note 41). Therefore, (39a) would be unexpected. Nevertheless, considered the contrast between (40a, b) and (40c), we may be dealing with a less canonical instance of quantified complement: (40) a. Ne ha pocaF, di pazienzaF. “S/he has little, of patience.” a’. *Ha poca, di pazienza a’’. *Ne ha pocoM, di pazienza. b. Non ne mangia molta, di carne. “S/he doesn’t eat much, of meat.” b’. *Non mangia molta, di carne. b.’’ *Non ne mangia moltoM, di carne. c. *Ne so pocaFEM della storiaFEM di Carlo. “I know little about Carlo’s story.”

130 Chapter 5: Verbs in ne The quantifier-noun agreement contrast that separates the canonical partitive construction in (40a) and (40b) from (40b) may suggest that in constructions with sapere ne does not carry true partitive value. In other words, in (38) poco might be an adverbial modifier of the verb not a quantifier that modifies the object. Consequently, ne becomes optional. Positive evidence for this hypothesis seems to come from the fact that ne is unacceptable in (41): (41) a. So perfettamente (della storia) di Carlo. – *Ne so perfettamente (della storia) di Carlo. “I know perfectly about Carlo (Carlo’s story).” At the same time, though, (42) seems to provide evidence to the contrary; that is, that poco is a quantifier of the object. (42) a. *Ne so, (della storia) di Carlo. “I know about Carlo’s story.” b. So, (della storia) di Carlo, voglio dire. “I know, about Carlo (Carlo’s story), I mean.” To summarize, ne is compatible with sapere ‘know’ exclusively in conjunction with a quantificational element, either of the type poco ‘little’, molto ‘much’, etc. or the interrogative quanto ‘how much’; or with the interrogative che cosa /che/cosa ‘what’: (43) a. Quanto (ne) sai della storia di Carlo. “How much do you know about Carlo’s story?” b. Che cosa/Che/Cosa (ne) sai della storia di Carlo? “What do you know about Carlo’s story?” c. Non (ne) so molto della storia di Carlo. “I don’t know much about Carlo’s story.” The sapere di NP data, then, seem to lead to the conclusion that the optional status of ne in RD involving sapere (as opposed to its obligatoriness in RD constructions that involve transitive verbs) depends on the nature of the complement (i.e., di + NP vs. NP). This implies that (38a) and (38b) should have identical semantic and pragmatic value. At most, the presence/absence of ne in this type of context would be interpreted by native speakers as register marked. More precisely, the absence of ne would be a

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sign of (overly) formal written and/or spoken registers, whereas the presence of the clitic is considered as typical of a linguistic standard unmarked (less marked) for register (see Benincà, Salvi, and Frison’s [2001:190] claim that the resumptive clitic always points to a more colloquial, informal register; but cf. Frascarelli 2003). The question to ask at this point is thus the following: are (38a) and (38b) truly equivalent from both a semantic and pragmatic standpoint? That is, can ne be left out without bringing any consequences whatsoever or is it rather the case that the absence/presence of ne is in fact responsible for some pragmatic and/or semantic contrast? Put it in slightly different terms, can ne in this context be attributed any specific function or is it a truly redundant element, void of any structural, semantic and pragmatic import? Let us look at sets of data that contrast only with respect to the presence/absence of ne. (44) a. “Sara, cosa sai di Aref? È davvero un militare?” Lei annuì. “Colonnello Ahmad Aref. Ho visto un rapporto su di lui nell’ufficio di Trainer.” (CORIS, NARRATTrRo) “Sara, what do you know about Aref? Is he really a soldier?” She nodded in assent. “Colonel Ahmad Aref. I saw a dossier about him in Trainer’s office.” b. Senti, Chelo! Aspetta un momento. Questo ... Che cosa sai di Matias? - Matias? Ultimamente non viene a scuola. Non lo vedo… Anzi, sì, lo vedo, però ... lui non vede me. (CORIS, NARRATTrRo) “Listen, Chelo! Wait a moment. This … What do you know about Matias? – Matias? He hasn’t been coming to school lately. I don’t see him … well, actually I do see him but … he doesn’t see me.” (45) a. Claudia bloccò la macchina e lo fissò. – Cosa ne sai di me per dare giudizi? – Scusami – continuò Cristiano, – non avrei dovuto. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “Claudia stopped the car and stared at him. – What do you know about me to make judgments? – I’m sorry – Cristiano continued, - I shouldn’t have.” b. Aveva osato alle volte chiedere la pompa, gliela avevano rifiutata sempre, sei piccola, che ne sai di come s’innaffia un giardino. (CODIS, NARRAT_13)

132 Chapter 5: Verbs in ne “Occasionally, she had tried to ask for the ooze but they had always denied it to her; you’re little, what would you know about watering a garden.” How do the sentences in (44) without ne differ from those in (45) with ne? The essential contrast between the two sets of examples appears to be similar to the difference observed between true interrogative constructions, as in (44), and pseudo-interrogative, exclamative constructions, as in (45). In the case of the former, we have simple, genuine requests for information: the speaker assumes that the addressee has the information s/he is asking for and expects an informative answer but nothing more. In the case of (45), on the other hand, we are dealing with rhetorical questions: the speaker is not asking for any information nor is s/he expecting an answer from the addressee, least of all an informative one. Quite the opposite, the speaker is challenging the soundness and/or relevance of any piece of information the addressee may have, with the precise intention of dismissing it. This is why the sentence is not (in fact, cannot be) uttered with the interrogative intonation pattern but must receive the same intonation contour as the che te ne frega constructions discussed previously. Thus, the key difference between che sai di X? and che ne sai di X? appears to be of pragmatic nature and can be characterized as in (46): (46) Key pragmatic difference between (a) che sai di X?, and (b) che ne sai di X? a. The speaker assumes that the addressee has knowledge about X and expects an informative answer. The speaker assumption can be unsubstantiated in that the addressee may fail to meet the speaker’s expectations (either because s/he does not have the information or because s/he does not want to give it out). b. The speaker does not expect an informative answer from the addressee because s/he is not asking the addressee about X. Rather, the speaker is asserting that the addressee has no or at best inadequate or irrelevant knowledge about X. There are cases, though, in which the presence/absence of ne may actually seem inconsequential, as for instance the examples in (47).

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(47) a. Non poteva cucinare e lasciarla affamata alla porta, né poteva cucinare e servirla come se fosse lui il servo. “Ne sai qualcosa di cucina?” gridò alla fine. “Sì, signore.” (CODIS, NARRAT_3) “He couldn’t cook and leave her hungry at the door. Nor could he cook and serve her as if he were the servant. “Do you know anything about cooking?” he yelled at last. “Yes, Sir.” b. Badaloni lo cercò e poi gli venne incontro con un piccolo affanno: “Ne sai nulla di attività dei cosí detti patrioti?” (CODIS, NARRAT_7) “Badaloni looked for him then he went toward him panting slightly: “Do you know anything about activities of so-called patriots?” c. Tu, piuttosto, che ne sai di quella storia di sessant’anni fa? – Lo so perché sta scritto qua, sul giornale. (CODIS, NARRAT_3) “You, on the other hand, what do you know about that sixty-yearold story? – I know because it’s written here, in the newspaper.” At first glance, the examples in (47) do not to fit the scenario sketched in (46) because they represent instances of questions that do call for an answer, even though it may be simply a yes/no answer. The presence of ne, however, is responsible for the emergence of specific inferences, precisely (a) the speaker gives for granted that the addressee has a positive answer (47a, b) and/or (b) the speaker implies that the addressee is somehow involved in the matter. To sum up, in interrogative constructions the clitic-less variant sapere di NP yields a more neutral and more objective interpretation of sapere as ‘having information/knowledge about something’. In contrast, the variant with ne either produces a rhetorical question or gives the utterance the more specific meaning of ‘have information/knowledge about + involvement/implication in’. In other words, the question without ne is interpreted as if the speaker is simply asking for information, i.e., s/he is expecting an informative answer, without making any implication as to the possible involvement of the addressee in the issue under inquiry; nor does it take for granted that the addressee must know about it. On the contrary, the question with ne expresses the speaker’s dismissal of the addressee’s comment, or it conveys quite clearly the speaker’s implicit assumption that the addressee knows about and is involved in the relevant matter. Utterances like those in (46) and (47), then, are marked for personal involvement, and ne can be taken as a marker of subjectivity (Traugott 1988, 1989, 1995). The

134 Chapter 5: Verbs in ne notion of subjectivity (and that of subjectification) becomes quite relevant in the analysis of the grammaticalization pattern of the clitic la, so it is discussed in more detail in Chapter 7. Evidence in support of a less objective value of ne in the context of sapere di is given by exchanges like the following.50 (48) Q: Dove sono le forbicine? “Where are the nail-scissors?” (49) a. A1: Non lo so. “I don’t know.” b. A2: Che ne so? “I don’t know.” (= “Why would I know?”) Both (49a) and (49b) are equally possible answers to (48), which communicate the same factual meaning, namely that speaker B does not know where the nail scissors are. Nonetheless, there is a salient difference between the two. The utterance in (49a) denotes that speaker B hss a neutral attitude towards the situation. By using the sentence non lo so ‘I don’t know it’ – where lo functions as a phrasal pronoun – she simply expresses her ignorance about the state of affair described in speaker A’s question and, at the same time, she distances herself from the situation. That is, speaker B asserts the fact that she is not involved in the disappearance of the nail scissors. On the other hand, (49b) unequivocally suggests speaker B’s personal involvement. By speaker’s involvement, I do not necessarily mean that she actually knows where the scissors are and wants to keep it a secret; nor that she has actually lost the scissors but does not want to admit to it, etc. but simply that speaker B perceives or interprets the question as an unwarranted insinuation. The prototypical, in the sense of most appropriate, scenario for (49b) would thus be the following: it is regularly the case and a well-know fact to the other household members that speaker B misplaces the nail scissor whenever she uses it. By using che ne so, speaker B acknowledges speaker A’s assumption that she is once again responsible for misplacing the nail scissors. Moreover, it may suggest an attempt by speaker B at asserting her non-involvement in the facts. If this scenario does not apply, that is, if it is not the case that speaker B notoriously misplaces or loses the nail scissors, (49a) would be the most appropriate and most expected response, while (49b) would suggest that speaker B is indeed responsible for the misplacement/loss of the nail-scissors. Thus, the message the speaker intends to

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communicate by means of (49b) resembles those expressed in (45): in both cases, the speaker articulates his/her criticism, rejection, disappointment, etc., towards the addressee’s proposition. The construction che ne SAPERE di appears to have reached a high level of desemanticization (perhaps more accurately pragmaticization) when the verb is in the first person singular. (50) a. Non è che te la toglie però eh per esempio con questa dieta qui uno non ha fame però gli resta lo sfizio perciò a fine pasto che tu ti sei mangiato la verdure o la frutta e che ne so un piatto di legumi magari tu avresti voglia di qualcos’altro. (LIP, R A 2 128 B) “It’s not that it takes it away but for example with this diet here one doesn’t get hungry but is still left with that fancy so at the end of a meal that you ate your vegetables or fruit and I don’t know a dish of beans maybe you’d like something else.” b. Vedi il voto sulla procreazione assistita, il tentativo di rimettere in discussione l’aborto, poi magari - che ne so - ci proveranno pure con il divorzio. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “Look at the vote for assisted procreation, at the attempt at questioning abortion, then maybe – I don’t know– they’ll try also with divorce.” In (50), the function of che ne so borders on that of discourse filler and the expression could be omitted without any consequences for the semantic and structural integrity of the sentence. As (51) shows, ne can be left out: (51) a. A me piacerebbe un ruolo bello teso, da tossicodipendente o da gangster, che so? Almeno nella fiction vorrei levarmi questo look da bravo ragazzo che mi porto dietro fin da piccolo. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “I would like a nice stiff role, as drug addict or gangster, I don’t know. At least in acting, I would like to get rid of this ‘good boy’ look I’ve been stuck with since I was a child.” b. Perché non non possiamo non riconoscere che la nostra gente quella del $ tanto per intenderci ha colpito eh che so frequentando l’ateneo napoletano.(LIP, N C 2 1 A; $ = unclear word) “Because we cannot ignore that our people, those of the $ just to be clear, left a mark by attending the Neapolitan academy.”

136 Chapter 5: Verbs in ne Interestingly, the frequency ratio of the variant without ne is significantly lower; also, the ne-less variant seems to be characterized by a higher degree of formality. For instance, in LIP we find a total 11 occurrences of che so, which occur mainly in type C texts (regulated bidirectional face-toface exchanges of a more formal, such as official assemblies, classroom activities, debates). In contrast, che ne so shows 45 occurrences, which are highly concentrated in type A and type B texts (free bidirectional, face-toface and not, exchanges of informal nature like casual conversation, telephone conversation, voice-mail messages; see Chapter 1, § 1.2 for details on LIP text types). Table 35. Occurrences of che so vs. che ne so in LIP. REGISTER + informal

che so TEXT OCCURRENCES A 1 B 1 C 7 D 1 E 1

+ formal

REGISTER + informal

che ne so TEXT OCCURRENCES A 16 B 23 C 2 D 3 E 1

+ formal

Table 35 shows that the frequency of che ne so is more than 4 times higher than the frequency of che so and that about 64% of the occurrences of che so are found in a relatively formal discourse setting, whereas about 87% of the occurrences of che ne so are found in the two most informal settings. This discrepancy with respect to the formality degree of the discourse setting may be related to a phenomenon of ‘speaker self-distancing’, which is expected to be the more prominent the more formal the discourse is.

5.6. Conclusion This chapter has shown that, in conjunction with several verbs ne, has become a lexical marker. In addition, some of these lexicalized verbs have also developed fixed constructions, which are characterized by highly pragmatic functions. It has also been that shown that in some cases ne has not reached the stage of obligatoriness yet because its omission does not lead to ungrammatical structures, even though it does produce communica-

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tively inappropriate ones. In other words, ne can be an optional component from a strictly structural point of view, but it is an obligatorily necessary element from a pragmatic standpoint. Specifically, it has acquired a precise communicative function, which leads to the emergence of precise inferences that can be linked to the expression of subjectivity. Notice that coexistence of alternative, different stages of a given structure and/or norm has indeed been identified as a typical feature of grammaticalization, persistence (see Chapter 2, Table 9). Persistence applies to the clitic because ne retains its full pronominal function in specific contexts; but can also apply to the source verb, as in the case of sapere, which preserves its original lexical meaning. This issue is quite relevant for a morphological categorization of ne, as well as the other clitics, because it poses the question of whether we have a morphological continuum of polysemous but also polyfunctional formatives or, on the contrary, we have a number of separate individual homonymous forms each with its own specific function(s).

Chapter 6 Verbs in ci

6.1. Introduction In this chapter, we will see that non-personal ci has undergone a development comparable to the one that has affected ne in terms of different degrees of obligatoriness, multi-functionality, and not easily determined morpho-syntactic status of the clitic. Like ne, in fact, non-personal ci has lexicalized in a number of predicates, such as entrarci ‘be related to something’, volerci ‘be necessary; take (intransitive)’, metterci ‘take (employ)’, rimetterci ‘lose’, starci ‘agree to do something’ (see Table 36 on page 142 for a complete list). Before starting to examine the structural features and, most of all, the semantic and pragmatic domain of these verbs vis-à-vis their sources, let us briefly review, through the examples in (1)–(3), the types of constituents that ci pronominalizes. (1)

(2)

Locative a. L’estate scorsa siamo finalmente andati in Italiai, non cii tornavamo da quattro anni. “Last summer we finally went to Italy; we hadn’t gone back in four years.” b. Gli è stato difficile vendere la casai, cii avevano vissuto per trent’anni. “It was hard for them to sell the house; they lived there for thirty years.” c. Sul tavoloi, per favore, non posarcii niente, l’ho appena lucidato. “The table, please, don’t put anything on it; I just polished it.” Prepositional phrases introduced by a, in, su a. Ma tu cii pensi mai al futuroi, a cosa vorresti fare dopo la laurea? “But you, do you ever think about the future, about what you would like to do after you graduate?” b. Quel ruoloi gli piaceva, cii si era immedesimato perfettamente. “He liked that role, he had perfectly identified himself with it.”

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c. Lo sai che sul mio aiutoi puoi contarcii sempre, in qualsiasi momento. “You know that you can always count on my help, at any time, don’t you?” Prepositional phrases introduced by con a. Con Carloi non cii esco da mesi. COMITATIVE “Carlo, I haven’t gone out with him for months.” b. Con quel coltelloi cii ho tagliato il formaggio; lavalo se vuoi tagliarcii il pane. INSTRUMENTAL “I cut cheese with that knife; wash it if you want to use it for slicing the bread.”

When we compare the examples in (4) and those in (5), we immediately notice that the ci found in the first set bears some resemblance to the ne of fregarsene ‘not care; be indifferent’, averne abbastanza ‘have had enough’, and other predicates with obligatory ne. In the sentences in (4), ci functions neither as a pronominal element nor as the resumptive clitic found in pragmatically marked structures (i.e., right- and left-dislocation), given that its omission would lead to structural unacceptability not to communicative inappropriateness. (4)

a. Ci volevano/*Volevano almeno venti minuti per andare dalla casa di Cecilia ai Parioli. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “It took at least twenty minutes to go from Cecilia’s house to Parioli.” b. Quella brava bestiola della Lumaca, a scendere dal quarto piano fino all’uscio di strada, ci aveva messo/*aveva messo solo nove ore. (Le avventure di Pinocchio, p. 114) “That good creature, the Snail, had taken only nine hours to get from the forth floor down to the door.” c. E comunque non crediamo che questo c’entri/*entri con la sua tragica scelta. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “And, in any case, we don’t believe that this has anything to do with his tragic choice.” d. E io non ci sto/*sto a obbedire a distanza. (CORIS, StampaPeri) “And I don’t agree to obey from the distance.”

Introduction

(5)

141

a. “Ehm”, faccio io con imbarazzo “volevo/*ci volevo un caffè ma ...” (CODIS, NARRAT_3) “Hem’, I say embarrassed, I wanted a cup of coffee…” b. Suo padre ha messo/*ci ha messo in frigo una bottiglia di spumante. (CODIS, NARRAT_13) “Her father put a bottle of champagne in the fridge.” c. Non era mai entrato/*ci era mai entrato in un ospedale prima di oggi. (CODIS, NARRAT_7) “He had never gone inside a hospital before today.” d. Adesso sta/*ci sta a Nettuno, ha le proprietà, sta bene. (CODIS, NARRAT_13) “Now he stays (lives) in Nettuno, he has some properties, he’s well off.”

The fact that ci must be present in the examples in (4), whereas it cannot occur in (5), indicates that incorporation of ci has lead to the creation of new predicates, which are either no longer semantically related to the corresponding predicates without ci, or are linked to them only metaphorically.51 Table 36 below lists the most common verbs in ci found in contemporary Italian.

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Table 36. Italian verbs in ci. GLOSS

VERB

SOURCE

FIRST ATTESTED

volerci (fundamental)*
metterci

‘be necessary’, ‘to take, intr.’

rimetterci (common) entrarci (common) starcia (common)

‘to lose’

starcia (common) restarci (common), rimanerci (common) esserci (high usage)
averci vederci (common) sentirci (common) provarci (common, familiar) farci (regionalism; central Italian) *

‘take (employ)’

‘be related to/involved into something’ – ‘agree/acquiescence to do something’ – ‘be easy, especially of a woman’ (colloquial) – ‘be (negatively) surprised, disillusioned, disappointed’ – die’ (familiar) ‘be, presentational/existential’ ‘have, possessive’ ‘be able to see’ ‘be able to hear’ ‘attempt at having a sexual encounter with somebody’ ‘play dumb’

volere ‘want’ mettere ‘put’ rimettere ‘put again’ entrare ‘enter’

before 1375

1871 1533 16th cent.

stare ‘stay’ 1949 restare, remanere ‘stay, remain’ essere ‘be’ avere ‘have’ vedere ‘see’ sentire ‘hear’ provare ‘try’ fare ‘do, make’

before 1735

13th cent.

1879 20th cent. 20th cent. 20th cent.

‘Fundamental’ (It. fondamentale) indicates items of very high frequency whose occurrences constitute about 90% of the lexical occurrences in the entire body of spoken and written texts; see Table 32 (Chapter 5) for the other labels.

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6.2. Obligatory ci 6.2.1. Volerci The greatest semantic divergence between source verb and target verb is observed for the pair volere ‘want’ ~ volerci ‘be necessary, required; take (intransitive)’, and it is accompanied by a considerable change in the selectional and structural properties of the predicate. The structural and selectional differences between the two verbs are easily identified when we compare the sentences in (6) with those in (7). The constituents in brackets represent the subjects and complements of the verbs, indicated respectively by subscript S and O (= direct Object) for volere, but X for volerci. The need to distinguish between O and X derives from the unsettled status of the X-constituents; that is, whether they are in fact verbal arguments or adjuncts instead, which is an issue whose discussion goes beyond the scope of the present study (see Russi 2006b, 2007 for a more detailed discussion of this issue). (6)

(7)

a. [Lady Grayle]S vuole [una tazza di brodo caldo.]O (CODIS, NARRAT_13) “Lady Grayle wants a cup of hot broth.” b. [Tuo padre]S vuole [vederti.]O (CODIS, NARRAT_3) “Your father wants to see you.” c. [Mio padre]S vuole che io [continui a studiare.]O (CODIS, NARRAT_13) “My father wants me to continue studying.” a. Ci vuole [la personalità di Totti]S [per far riaffiorare e crescere tutto il gruppo.]X (CORIS, MON2001_04) “We need Totti’s personality to make the entire group re-emerge and grow.” b. [Per acquistare il farmaco] X ci vuole [la ricetta medica.]S (CORIS/CODIS, STAMPAPeri) “To buy the medicine, the prescription is needed.” c. Ci vogliono in media [sei mesi]S [perché una pagina venga individuata e schedata da un motore di ricerca.]X (CODIS, MISCEL_4) “In average, it takes six months for a search engine to identify and file a page.”

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d. [Contro la mafia]X ci vogliono [gli antibiotici]S, e questa è solo un’ aspirina. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “What we need against mafia is antibiotics and this is just aspirin.” e. [Per le labbra]X, invece, ci vuole [uno stick dal filtro altissimo.]S (CORIS, STAMPAPeri) “For the lips, on the other hand, you need a stick with very high sun block.” f. Ci vuole [un tovagliolo]S (non il grande asciugamano usato nel test 4). (CODIS, PRACC_4) “You need a napkin (not the big towel used for test 4).” Example (6a) shows that volere can select a nominal complement (see also [5a]), thus behaving like a transitive verb. Examples (6b) and (6c), on the other hand, illustrate modal volere (or perhaps ‘semi’-modal in [6c]).52 As for the subject, it is most typically a human referent (but see below for further discussion on this issue) and, as expected of Italian transitive constructions, its canonical position is pre-verbal. Volerci takes a nominal grammatical subject, but its canonical position is post-verbal; the subject referent is usually inanimate, most commonly a temporal expression as in (7c). In addition, volerci can select a clausal (7a)(7c) or a prepositional phrase complement (7d)-(7e), which can remain covert (7f). The crucial structural distinctions between volere and volerci then concern the following: A. Position, semantic feature and thematic role of the subject: a. The subject of volere is pre-verbal, most commonly animate, with the thematic role of experiencer. b. The subject of volerci is post-verbal, most typically inanimate, and possibly carries the thematic role of instrument (see Russi 2006b, 2007 for details). B. Nature of the complement: a. Volere selects nominal and clausal complements (introduced by che ‘that’ or infinitival). b. Volerci selects prepositional and clausal complements (finite or non-finite, introduced by different complementizers). The semantic and syntactic frames of volere and volerci are sketched informally in (8) and (9).

Obligatory ci

(8)

Volere ‘want’ a. NP1 volere NP2/CLAUSE (INF/FIN) b. NP1 = subject; NP2 /CLAUSE (INF/FIN) = object. c. NP1 = experiencer; NP2 /CLAUSE = theme (stimulus).

(9)

Volerci ‘be necessary, take (intr.)’ a. volerci NP; (PP/CLAUSE (INF/FIN)) ~ (PP/CLAUSE (INF/FIN)) volerci NP b. NP = subject; PP/CLAUSE = X. c. NP = instrument; PP/CLAUSE = (goal).

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Concerning the semantic difference between the two verbs, it appears that, in essence, we move from the expression of volition/intention and desire (for something) to the expression of a notion that, in its prototypical instantiation, I would like to define as intrinsic objective necessity. By this, I mean a state of affairs that predicates the intrinsic necessity of some entity for the realization of a given event/state of affairs. Typically, this state of necessity is maximally objective (i.e., factually objective) and external to the speaker because the necessity of the entity in question is not (indeed cannot be) established based on the speaker’s or another participant’s individual, subjective reasoning. Rather, the condition of necessity stems from empirical factual circumstances over which the speaker/discourse participant can exercise no control, as illustrated by the sentences in (10). (10) a. Per non irritare l’occhio, questi liquidi sono molto diluiti: e quindi ci vogliono almeno quattro ore perché eliminino funghi, batteri e virus. (CORIS, STAMPAPeri) “These liquids are much diluted in order to not irritate the eye; therefore, it takes at least four hours to eliminate fungi, bacteria, and viruses.” b. Se saltiamo nove o più fusi orari, infatti, ci vogliono 5 giorni per rimettere in sesto il nostro ritmo biologico. (CORIS, STAMPASupp) “In fact, if we skip nine or more time zones, it takes five days to readjust our biological rhythm.” c. Ci vogliono almeno 25 litri di quel liquido per produrre una di quelle fiale che la signora McCaughey si faceva iniettare ogni giorno. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot)

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“At least 25 liters of that liquid are needed to produce one of those vials that Mrs. McCaughey had injected every day.” d. Hai visto che gli uccelli, quando covano, non si allontanano mai dal nido? Ci vuole una temperatura costante e i termosifoni invece ogni notte li spengono. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “Have you noticed that birds, when they lie on their eggs, they never leave the nest? It needs a constant temperature and the heaters, on the other hand, are turned off every night.” In the examples in (10), a certain amount of time (10a, b), a given amount of a substance (10c), or a specific constant temperature (10d) are intrinsically necessary to carry out of some specific events, precisely the elimination of bacteria (10a), the re-adjustment of biological rhythm (10b), the production of a vial (10c), the hatching of the eggs (10d). In other words, the denotata of the subject constituents are portrayed as instrumental to the realization of the event/entity denoted by the X constituent, which is taken to instantiate a goal (or result). The state of necessity is not determined on the account of the speaker’s (or another interlocutor) individual, personal conjectures. The speaker does not assess the state of necessity based on a process of subjective inference; on the contrary, the necessity is assessed by means of reference to general ‘facts/laws of nature or the world’. In (10), then, the source of the necessity, which is the element or force determining that X is necessary for Y, is simply a concrete fact. Moreover, it should be noted that the state of necessity denoted by volerci in the examples considered so far is perceived overall as impersonal, due to the absence in the construction of a participant that experiences it (i.e., the ‘needer’). In other words, volerci seems to focus on the expression of the ‘needed object’; more precisely, it instantiates a presentational predicate analogous to esserci ‘be there, exist’ (Burzio 1986; Salvi 2001) that introduces/presents (the existence of) such object. As shown in (11), though, an experiencer participant can be expressed in the form of a dative constituent, either pronominal (11a, b) or phrasal (11c). (11) a. Gli ci erano voluti degli anni per riacquistare le abitudini della sua gente, dopo la giovinezza passata negli Stati Uniti. (CORIS, NARRATTrRo) “It had taken him years to regain his people’s habits, after having spent his youth in U.S.”

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b. Poi ti ci vuole anche la segreteria telefonica e l’impiegata. (LIP M A4 185 D) “Then you need also an answering machine and a secretary.” c. A McNab ci sono voluti sei mesi di cure intensive per riprendersi. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “McNab needed six month of intensive treatment to get well.” In view of the above examples, then, the frame given in (9) has to be revised as in (12): (12) Volerci ‘be necessary, take (intr.)’ a. (IO clitic/PP2 ) volerci NP (PP1/CLAUSE (INF/FIN)) b. PP2 = oblique; NP = subject; PP1 /CLAUSE = X. c. PP2 = experiencer (recipient); NP = theme (instrument); PP1/CLAUSE = goal. It should be pointed out that the semantic domain of volerci is actually larger and includes the expressions of less objective states of necessity. I have examined this issue thoroughly in a separate study (Russi 2007) and I will not discuss in detail here in consideration of space. My essential claim is that synchronically volerci, as well as volere, exhibit a range of meanings (or uses) that can be arranged on a cline of increasing subjectivity (Traugott 1989, 1995). For instance, the states of affairs portrayed by the examples in (13) are comparable to those discussed in the previous section vis-à-vis the possible sources of the state of necessity. Yet, they contrast as to the strength of the necessity: they relate to a ‘weaker’ state of necessity, such as suitability, desirability. (13) a.“Ti faccio una cioccolata. Ci vuole qualcosa di caldo al mattino. Altro che yogurt!” (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “I’ll fix you a hot chocolate. You need something hot in the morning, not yogurt!” b. Per fare grande la Fiorentina ci vuole anche Dunga oltre ai nuovi acquisti che debbono arrivare. (LIP, F E 18 81 C) “In order to make Fiorentina great, we also need Dunga besides the new acquisitions that are yet to arrive.” c. “Per valorizzare qualsiasi taglio ci vogliono sempre 3 o 4 sfumature differenti, da applicare con lunghe pennellate irregolari su tutta la testa.” (CORIS, STAMPAPeri)

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“To bring out any hair cut, you always need 3 or 4 different shades, to be applied on the entire head with long irregular brush strokes.” Broadly speaking, the factors determining the necessity in (13) can still be considered objective and external to the speaker. In (13a), for example, the need for hot chocolate is related to the highly common practice of including into our breakfast a hot beverage of some sort. The necessity of some entity appears to be established taking into account factors, which are, at least partially, external to the speaker yet they are not as incontrovertibly and intrinsically instrumental as the ones examined in precedence. The suitability reading, then, leaves space for the emergence of subjectivity: the speaker becomes able to express his/her own point of view toward the situation and to introduce his/her judgment so that, to some extent, the necessity is now framed with respect to the speaker’s prospective. Cases like (13b) may be considered subjective since the ‘required’ entity (i.e., the soccer player Dunga) is certainly not as incontrovertibly and intrinsically instrumental as, for instance, the ricetta medica in (7b) above. Some other player may serve as well (perhaps even better) for the purpose of making Fiorentina a winning team, whereas the medicine will not be obtained without the doctor’s prescription. In other words, (13b) carries “the speaker’s imprint” (Finegan 1995: 1) because the ‘necessity’ of Dunga is indeed established based on the speaker’s subjective inferencing process, which is driven by his/her personal opinions and beliefs. And the same holds for (13c). Attention should be drawn, in this respect, to the fact that volerci has developed several fixed constructions that resemble quite closely the fixed and semi-fixed constructions involving fregarsene ‘not care; be indifferent’ and saperne ‘know (about)’ examined in the previous chapter, which can be attributed a higher degree of subjectivity. Among the most common constructions are che ci vuole?, literally ‘what does it take?’, non ci vuole niente ‘it takes nothing’, ci vuole poco ‘it takes little’. They are illustrated in (14). (14) a. “E che ci vuole?” era solito dirgli con strafottenza a proposito di cose che aveva giudicato irrealizzabili fino al giorno prima. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “So, what’s the big deal? (=It’s easy) – he used to say to him with impudence about things he had considered unachievable until the day before.”

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b. Ripeto, a buttare giù l’ecstasy non ci vuole niente, è ancora più facile che bere una coca e whisky, non si pensa che ti stai drogando. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “Again, it’s easy to down ecstasy, it’s easier than drinking a whisky and coke; you don’t think that you’re doing drugs.” c. L’ammiraglio Nelson gli tirò un gran cazzotto mandandolo a sbattere contro il periscopio. “Quando ci vuole ci vuole”, disse papà. (CORIS, NARRATTrRo) “Admiral Nelson punched him hard, slamming him against the periscope. ‘When you need it, you need it’, dad said.” d. Li persi di vista. Riuscii a rintracciare l’auto solo due ore dopo, ma loro non li trovai più. Accidenti! Questa non ci voleva. (CORIS, NARRATTrRo) “They went out of my sight. I was able to trace back the car two hours later, but them I didn’t find any more. Damn it! It was really too bad!” The expressions above fulfill strictly pragmatic functions, such as highlighting the easiness of an action (14a, b); referring to the inevitable necessity of carrying out some action (14c); or expressing the speaker’s disappointment at (or general negative attitude toward) the happening of an unfortunate, unpleasant event (14d) (De Mauro 1999–2000). Volerci is possibly one of the oldest of verbi procomplemetari. If we accept De Mauro’s (1999-2000) dating (pre 1375), it is second only to andarsene (or perhaps the construction pattern ‘verb of motion + sene’) and esserci/esservi.53 This may explain its very high frequency; in fact, among verbi complementari, volerci is the only one that De Mauro (1999–2000) characterizes as fundamental.

6.2.2. Metterci, entrarci and starci Verb pairs like mettere ‘put’ ~ metterci ‘take, employ (time)’, and entrare ‘enter’ ~ entrarci ‘be related to’ exhibit the least amount of semantic (and structural) divergence. In the case of the pair entrare ~ entrarci, in particular, the differences observed between source and derived predicate in terms of selectional and structural properties are minimal, except of course for the presence/absence of ci. Furthermore, for both verbs the semantic change is

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summed up as a simple process of conceptual abstraction, a metaphorical shift from a (more) concrete domain to a (more) abstract one.

6.2.2.1. Metterci In the case of mettere  metterci, the semantic shift is from a conceptual schema that denotes the act of locating a concrete physical entity into a spatial domain to a schema that involves the allocating of an abstract entity (i.e., time) into the realization of some event, which is construed as an abstract place.

SPACE

XOBJ

XO

mettere: locate an object

EVENT

XTIME

XTIME

metterci: use time to carry out an event

Figure 2. Mettere vs. metterci.

In other words, we have a shift from a frame denoting caused-motion (Goldberg 1995) to a frame denoting an activity or, more appropriately, an active accomplishment, especially if the construction is in the past perfect tense. As shown in (15) and (16), the number of constituents participating in the constructions remains the same. (15) Mettere ‘put’ a. Carlo mette le chiavi nel cassetto. “Carlo puts the keys in the drawer.” b. NP1 mettere NP2 PP c. NP1 = subject; NP2 = direct object; PP = oblique d. NP1 = agent; NP2 = theme; PP = goal (space)

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(16) Metterci ‘take, employ time’ a. Carlo ci mette dieci minuti a farsi la doccia. “Carlo takes ten minutes to shower.” b. NP1 metterci NP2 CLAUSEINF c. NP1 = subject; NP2 = object1; CLAUSEINF = object2 d. NP1 = agent; NP2 = instrument (time); CLAUSEINF = goal (event) The fact that the second object of metterci is a clause actually implies the addition of another participant, the covert subject/actor of the infinitival. However, since this participant must be co-referential to the subject of metterci, it could be claimed that we have an instance of ‘double participation’ rather than an actual increase in the number of participants. Metterci appears to carry a noticeable structural resemblance to verbs of the ‘B6 verb class’ (Salvi 2001: 9) This class includes verbs like avvisare ‘inform’, incaricare ‘order’, costringere ‘force’, etc., which are characterized by the frame in (17). (17) Costringere ‘force’ a. Il contadino costrinse Pinocchio a fare il cane da guardia. “The farmer forced Pinocchio to be a guard-dog.” b. NP1 metterci NP2 a/di CLAUSE INF c. NP1 = subject; NP2 = object1; CLAUSE INF = object2 d. NP1 = actor; NP2 = undergoer/actor (performer); CLAUSE IN = goal (result) Two crucial differences are found, though, between B6 verbs and metterci. The first difference relates to the nature of the object, which is human (or animate) for the former but a time expression for the latter. The second difference, clearly inherently related to the first, pertains to subject/object control facts. In the case of B6 class verbs, the direct object (undergoer) is the subject (actor) of the completive infinitive clause; this obviously does not apply to metterci, whose subject is necessarily also the subject of the embedded clause.54 The event schema instantiated by metterci XTIME resembles closely the one embodied by volerci, in that both denote time as an instrument for some achievement. In fact, they are very close synonyms and apparently interchangeable:

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(18) a. Ci mette dieci minuti a farsi la doccia. b. Gli ci vogliono dieci minuti a/per farsi la doccia. ‘S/he takes ten minutes to shower.” However, volerci is characterized by a precise connotation of necessity that metterci lacks, so that (18b) is a close equivalent of (19) while (18a) is not. (19) Ha bisogno di dieci minuti per farsi la doccia. “S/he needs ten minutes to shower.” Metterci constructions like (16a) are most appropriate to denote matterof-fact situations; also, they have a much more limited range of application due to stricter restrictions on the nature of the direct object referent, which can practically be only a time expression. The example in (20) shows that abstract nouns can occur as objects of metterci but sentences like (20) seem to represent a minority. (20) Era tutto denso carico piccante, nei piatti nei bicchieri nell’aria della stanza: ma ci aveva messo tanta fantasia e ore e ore dentro la cucina. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “Everything was heavy, dense, spicy; in the plates, in the glasses, in the air in the room. But she had put into it so much fantasy and hours spent in the kitchen.” A preliminary screening of CORIS/CODIS (all person of present indicative and compound verb forms) yielded 303 tokens of metterci with a temporal referent as direct object and 67 tokens with a non-temporal one; that is, about 82% of the occurrences involved a time expression. In addition, no instances of metterci NP [non-temporal] were found in LIP vs. 5 occurrences of metterci NP [temporal].

6.2.2.2. Entrarci and starcia In the case of the development entrare  entrarci, the conceptual shift is from a schema of motion into a place to a schema of involvement into some subject matter/situation. This is again an instance of metaphorical transfer from actual movement within the physical domain of space (concrete dimension) to metaphorical movement into the perceptual domain of

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causal relevance (abstract dimension).55 The structural frame of the source verb is not altered but the semantic roles of the participants, of course, are. (21) Entrare ‘enter’ a. Pinocchio entrò nel teatrino delle marionette. “Pinocchio entered into the puppet theatre.” (Le avventure di Pinocchio, p. 29) b. NP entrare PP c. NP = subject; PP =object (space) d. NP = theme (mover56); PP = location (space) (22) Entrarci ‘be involved into something’ a. Pinocchio non c’entra con/in quella storia. “Pinocchio has nothing to do with this story.” b. NP = subject; PP = object c. NP = theme; PP = abstract location (subject matter) The complement can be left unexpressed in both cases. If covert, the locative of entrare has a fixed deictic value, in that it must correspond to the place of discourse. In the case of entrarci, on the other hand, the ‘locative’ can be covert only if recoverable from the discourse or accessible. Incorporation of ci into stare brings about a more significant modification in the verb structural properties. (23) a. Stasera sto a casa, non mi va di uscire. “I’m staying home tonight; I don’t feel like going out.” b. Sono stata in ospedale solo una notte. “I stayed in the hospital only one night.” c. I tuoi occhiali da sole stanno sulla scrivania. “Your sunglasses are on the desk.” (24) Ma Teodoro non ci sta. Non ci sta a vivere nella puzzolente fabbricalavanderia in cui lavora il padre, non ci sta a vivere una vita disperata. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “But Teodoro won’t go along with it. He won’t go along with living in the smelly factory-dry cleaner where his father works; he won’t go along with living a desperate life.”

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Stare requires overt realization of the locative complement, except in the specific and somewhat geographically (but not necessarily dialectally) marked construction io sto/sono stato ‘I’ll stay/I stayed’, for which standard Italian normally prefers to use restare or rimanere ‘remain’. In this case, though, the locative complement can only be the discourse ‘here’. In contrast, the ‘locative’ complement of starcia remains covert if it is inferred or inferable, exactly like we saw for the predicates of the fregarsene type. As for semantic change, the case of starcia ‘agree/acquiescence to do something’ is easily accounted for as yet another instance of metaphorical transfer from a spatial or physical relation: from being physically situated within either a specified spatial domain or a state of being to the more abstract relation of agreement/participation into some event or state of affairs.57 The second, more colloquial meaning of starcia, starcib ‘be easy, especially of a woman’ is examined in the next section, together with two other verbs, farci ‘play dumb’ and provarci ‘attempt at having a sexual encounter with somebody’, to which starcib bears a striking similarity.

6.3. Obligatory ci and semantic specialization This section offers a brief investigation of three verbs that are characterized by a rather restricted distribution; in fact, they seem to be the least attested in the corpora taken into consideration. Such a low rate of occurrence may be taken to indicate that they hold a marginal status in the language, which is most likely due to the fact that they are (among) the newest additions to the verbi procomplementari class (see Table 36, page 142). They are starcib‘be easy, especially of a woman’, provarci ‘attempt at having a sexual encounter with somebody’, and farci ‘play dumb’. In all three verbs, ci has undergone complete obligatorification, and all of them have developed a fairly strong idiomatic connotation which, as we will see shortly can be derived by making reference to the same idiomaticization pattern.

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6.3.1. Starcib and provarci 6.3.1.1. Starcib This predicate, illustrated in (25), is a highly specialized relative of starcia ‘agree/acquiescence to do something’. (25) a. La tedescona ci stava ... me la sono portata in camera dopo appena cinque minuti. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “The German girl was condescending … I took her to my room after only five minutes.” b. Capii che in quegli anni mi ero ‘fatta fottere’, e che per loro ero una che ci sta, in gamba, magari, abbastanza in gamba da cavarsela in tutto il resto come un uomo, ma pur sempre ‘una che la dá’. (CORIS, PRACCVolum) “I realized that for all those years I had let them screw me, that for them I was just an easy girl, smart perhaps, even smart enough to manage everything else as a man, but still a girl who ‘gives it’.” Starcib constitutes an instance of semantic specialization, where the event or state of affairs to which the subject is supposed to agree is attributed a very precise, unique referent, namely a sexual relationship. Naturally, since the object agreed upon has become an intrinsic semantic component of the predicate, in this highly specialized connotation starci is only compatible with adverbial modifiers of manner (e.g., facilmente ‘easily’, volentieri ‘gladly’) and time (e.g., spesso ‘often’, sempre ‘always’). I would like to suggest that, to some extent, the development of starci may be related to the development of the Ewe noun megbé ‘back’ discussed in Chapter 2 (§ 2.2.4.1) and repeated in a simplified fashion in (26). (26) Grammaticalization of Ewe megbé ‘back’ (Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer 1991: 65–66) a. BODY PART (OBJ)  SPACE  TIME  QUALITY b. épé megbé fá é-n
megbé é-kú Ie é-megbé é-tsí megbé c. “His back is cold” “He stays back” “He died after him” “He is dull” In this case, locative ci has come to denote a metaphorical space, namely the locus of being, agreeing, and participating into a situation. Consequently, it now denotes a quality, that of ‘being easy’. Actually, even the

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meaning ‘agree/acquiescence to do something’ can be related to a quality; that is, being compliant or weak. This process of semantic specialization (precisely, narrowing) may have been aided by the fact that the locution stare con qualcuno ‘be with somebody’ – featuring a comitative complement that is pronominalized by ci – also carries the more specific denotation of ‘being involved in a sentimental relationship with somebody’, and often acquires the narrower connotation of ‘having a sexual relationship/encounter’, especially when the verb is in the past tense, as for instance in (27). (27) “Aspetto un bambino” […] “Sa chi è stato?” “Sí, ma lui ha detto che sono fatti che non lo riguardano.” […] “È sicura che sia stato lui?” “Sí.” “Non è stata con nessun altro?” “I’m pregnant” – “Do you know who the father is– “Yes, but he said it doesn’t concern him.” – “Are you sure it’s him?” – “Yes.” – “Were you with anybody else?” Notice that the ‘comitative’ analysis could be extended to starcia if we assume a conceptual correspondence or link between ‘being with a situation/state’, where the situation/state is conceptualized as a companion, and ‘being into a situation’, where the situation is conceptualized as an abstract space. Within this scenario, we would have a process of conceptualization that obeys the metaphorical continuum of Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer (1991).

6.3.1.2. Provarci Provarci ‘attempt at having a sexual encounter with somebody’ instantiate a scenario quite analogous to the scenario portrayed by starcib but it implies a change of perspective that pertains to the default semantic features of the agent participant. That is, the (quite unsurprising!) shift from female to male participant, which clearly stems out from the fact that in our (i.e., Italian) socio-cultural reality men are expected to make advances on women not vice-versa. In this respect, it may be interesting to point out how examples in which the referent subject of provarci is a female can, albeit quite sporadically, be found.

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(28) a. Più della metà sono favorevoli a una scappatella estiva, e cinque signore su dieci ci provano con il bagnino: mestiere faticoso. (CORIS, STAMPAPeri) “More than half are in favor of a summer affair, and five ladies out of ten try with the lifeguard: a hard job.” b. In certe partite di poker per soli uomini, il vincitore della serata aveva diritto di spassarsela con la vispa ragazza. Ha detto Arthur Miller: “Lillian ci provava con tutti. A me non faceva né caldo né freddo e questo non me lo ha mai perdonato”. (CORIS, NARRATVari) “In some poker games for men only, the winner had the right to have fun with the sparkly girl. Arthur Miller said: ‘Lillian tried with everybody. I couldn’t care less and she never forgave me for this.’” In contrast, I was not able to find any example of starcib with a male subject referent. In any case, as I already mentioned at the beginning of this section, neither provarci nor starcib are very frequent items. No occurrences of either verb are found in LIP and in CORIS/CODIS we find only 27 unequivocal attestations of provarci and 18 of starcib. Yet again, such a low frequency rate should not raise too much surprise. Even though these predicates are labeled as common by De Mauro (1999–2000, 2001) – which, in essence, means that they are known to and understood by every speaker (see Table 32, Chapter 5, for the definition of It. comune ‘common’) – we should keep in mind that we are dealing with highly specific and possibly ‘delicate’ meanings, which we would expect to be most likely found in very specific discourse settings, such as private conversations among friends, etc.

6.3.2. Farci The analysis of farci ‘play dumb’ appears to be somewhat unproblematic since the development of this verb can be accounted for by referring to a process of semantic specification, similarly to what hypothesized above for starcib ‘be easy’. Ci has come to refer to a quite specific state (or, more exactly, to a false state), that of pretending to be lacking in intelligence. This highly specialized idiomatic meaning could be explained by making combined reference to the construction fare a NP illustrated in (29), where the

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NP most typically denotes a game or some playful entertaining activity, and one of the numerous connotations of fare, namely, ‘imitate, play a role’, exemplified in (30). (29) a. Durante la ricreazione ci fecero stare dentro la scuola, perché è vietato fare a palle di neve nel cortile. (CORIS, NARRATTrRo) “During the break, they made us stay inside the school because it is forbidden to play snowballs in the courtyard.” b. Almeno vedo il porto e se un giorno mi viene voglia prendo il traghetto e vado a trovare i miei vecchi colleghi e faccio una partita a briscola. (CORIS, NARRATRacc) “At least I can see the port and if one day I feel like it, I can take the ferry and go to visit my old colleagues, and play a game of briscola.” (30) a. Il «club Lotus» - di solito c’è George Clooney che fa lo scemo con le bariste. (CORIS, MON2001_04) “The ‘Club Lotus’ – usually, there is G. C. who fools around with the bartending girls.” b. Appena, difatti, sua suocera (che sapeva fare la commediante come non se ne trovano uguali) gli si buttò ai piedi piangendo e dicendo che per un momento di esitazione di Annetta, […], egli voleva mandare a catafascio la famiglia, non ci pensò due volte a ricaricarsi le sue corna. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “In fact, as soon as his mother-in-law (who was an excellent performer) threw herself at his feet crying and saying that he was going to ruin the family for what was only a moment of hesitation on Annetta’s behalf, he didn’t think twice about forgetting all of it.” c. Devi sentirla quando fa gli accenti, è incredibile. “You should hear her making (foreign) accents, she’s unbelievable.” Farci is very poorly attested, even less so than provarci and starcib, but of course, the fact that it is a regionalism (central Italian) may be an aggravating factor in this case. I found no instances in LIP and only nine attestations in CORIS, four of which are given in (31).58

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(31) a. A Roma dicono: o ci sono o ci fanno. Ma può un senatore della Repubblica ignorare leggi che anche lui contribuisce a scrivere? (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “In Rome they say: either they are dumb or the play dumb. But can a senator ignore the laws he contributes to create himself?” b. Ma gli Oasis ci sono o ci fanno? È questa la domanda che rimbalza tra gli appassionati. (CORIS, STAMPASupp) “But the Oasis, are they dumb or they play dumb? This is the question that bounces among the fans.” c. Bailamme della stampa e serpeggiante interrogativo sul tasso di intelligenza di Bonolis. Ci è o ci fa? (CORIS, MON2001_04) “Hubbub from the press and sneaky interrogatives about Bonolis’ IQ. Is he dumb or does it play dumb?” d. Tutti se ne sono rimasti zitti e buoni negli alberghi, discutendo giorno e notte fra loro se la Marini ci è o ci fa. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “Everyone remained quite in their hotels, debating all night and day on whether Marini is dumb or just plays dumb.” From the sentences in (30), it would seem that farci occurs essentially in the fixed construction type esserci o farci ‘be dumb or play dumb’. In fact, all the attestations of farci found in CORIS are of this type. Farci constitutes an instance of semantic narrowing reminiscent of the case of starcib. Ci encodes the reference to a state that is negatively characterized in that it relates to negative attributes, such as connivance, slyness, etc. As mentioned above regarding starcib, this process of semantic specialization can be accounted for by means of a euphemizing tendency, i.e., a strategy to hide, or at least subdue, taboo meanings (see Chapter 7). This same analysis could indeed be extended to provarci, even though this verb is not necessarily interpreted negatively, while the other two are. More accurately, provarci is not necessarily interpreted as negatively as starcib and farci since provarci may well receive a positive connotation in specific contexts but the opposite is not true: a woman who ‘ci sta’ and someone who ‘ci fa’ will always be looked at with some disapproval.

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6.4. Esserci, averci, and verbs of perception We have seen in the previous section that ci-verbs appear to be characterized by different degrees of idiomaticization when compared to their ci-less counterparts (their sources). In this section we will examine ci-verbs that show no or only minimal semantic difference compared to their corresponding verbs without ci; that is, a semantic difference even less prominent than the one observed for metterci, entrarci, and starci. Moreover, we will look at verbs, for which it could be argued that ci has not undergone complete obligatorification because its omission does not lead to a structural failure of the construction, in contrast to what happens, for instance, in the case of metterci or starci (e.g., *(Ci) mette dieci minuti a farsi la doccia ‘S/he takes ten minutes to take a shower’, Sembra un ottimo piano, *(ci) sto ‘It seems an excellent plan, I’m in’, etc.)

6.4.1. Esserci Ci has reached a fully grammaticalized status (i.e., full obligatoriness) in the presentational/existential predicate esserci ‘be there, exist’, so that in Italian the pair essere ~ esserci expresses the contrast between copula (32a) and auxiliary (32b) as opposed to presentational/existential (33): (32) a. Non era una brava cuoca e mai lo sarebbe stata. (CORIS, NARRATrRo) “She wasn’t a good cook and she would never be.” b. Appena i tre medici furono usciti di casa, la Fata si accostò a Pinocchio e, dopo averlo toccato sulla fronte, si accorse che era travagliato da un febbrone da non si dire. (Le avventure di Pinocchio, p. 56) “As soon as the three doctors had left the house, the Fairy went near Pinocchio and, after touching his forehead, she realized that he was burning from a terrible fever.” (33) a. Con Federico andavamo sempre in un’osteria dove c’era una brava cuoca che ci aveva preso a ben volere. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “Federico and I would always go to a tavern where there was a good cook who had a thing for us.”

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b. Torino costa meno, si lavora sei giorni su sette, ci sono importanti teatri di posa. (CODIS, PRGAMM_4) “Turin is less expensive, people work six days a week; there are important studios.” d. Dio c’è, ma ci odia. (CORIS, MISCVolumi) “God exists but He hates us.” e. Non ci sono più le famiglie di una volta, con gli zii e i nonni che si prendevano cura dei piccoli. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “The old-fashioned families, with uncles and aunts and grandparents who would take care of the children, don’t exist any more.” Even though the ci of esserci no longer functions as an actual locative pronoun because it does not replace a locative complement, it has not been completely emptied of its spatial reference in that it expresses the place or, perhaps more appropriately, the realm of presence and/or existence of a given entity. The grammaticalization of ci/vi into a morpheme marking presentational constructions (ci presentativo ‘presentational ci’ in Burzio 1986: 126–132 and Salvi 2001: 125–126; or ci attualizzante in D’Achille 1990, Chapter 3, who borrows from Sabatini 1985), hence the lexicalization of esserci as a verb separate from essere, is probably the oldest example of this type of phenomena. Attestations of esser-ci/-vi are, in fact, easily found as early as the thirteenth century.59 For instance, 12 occurrences are found in Novellino (of esserci and esservi combined), two of which are given in (34). (34) a. ‘Buona femina, come dai cotesti cavoli?’ – ‘Messere, due mazzi a danaio.’ – ‘Certo, questa è buona derrata; ma dicoti che non ci sono se non io e la fante mia, ché tutta lafamiglia mia è in villa: sicché troppo mi sarebbe una derrata, et io li amo più volentieri freschi.’ (Novellino, 96) “Good woman, how do you sell these cabbages?” – “Two bunches for a danaio.” – “Surely it is a good price; but I tell you, there are only myself and my servant in the house, for all my family are in the town; and two bunches are too much. Moreover, I like them fresh.” b. In quella stagione v’era Merlino. (Novellino, 26) “At time there was Merlin.”

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In older stages of the language the presence of esservi was much more significant than it is in CSI, because locative vi was considerably stronger (see Chapter 3). In contrast, the occurrence rate of esservi in contemporary Italian is very low and strongly restricted to highly formal, mainly written registers.

6.4.2. Averci Complete structural obligatorification of ci has not been reached yet in some predicates. A nice example of this situation is represented by averci ‘have, possessive’ (< avere ‘have, auxiliary and possessive’), illustrated in (35), which may still be stigmatized by purists but has become very widespread in contemporary Italian, certainly in the spoken language but also in written varieties. (35) a. Quelli però c’avevano il casco. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “Those had the helmet though.” b. C’ ho un formicolio alle mani e ai piedi. (CORIS, NarratRacc) “I have a tingling in my hands and feet.” Omission of ci in (35) does not lead to ungrammatical sentences, as shown by the fact that the sentences in (36) are perfectly acceptable. (36) a. Però avevano i documenti. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “They had the documents though.” b. Ho un formicolio sulla nuca, e le mani sudate. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “I have a tingling at the nape f the neck, and my hands are sweaty.” Ci, then, is not a strictly obligatory element and, as already mentioned, it is still fairly common to consider sentences like (35) a feature of italiano popolare (i.e., non-standard, lower register Italian; see, among many, Battaglia and Pernicone 1968: 154), or at best of spoken informal (i.e., colloquial, familiar) Italian (Lepschy and Lepschy 1984: 172; Sabatini 1985: 160). Yet, the opposite has been claimed too, namely, that the use of averci is extensive also in spoken formal language (Alinei 1984: 51).

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The presence of ci in lexical avere constructions appears to increases considerably when the object of avere is realized as an object pronoun, as in (37). (37) (C’) hai le chiavi? – No, non ?(ce) le ho “Do you have the keys? – No, I don’t have them” Omission of ci in the answer part of (37) would apparently lead to ungrammaticality, given that “alla domanda hai la macchina? non posso rispondere *sì, l’ho ma sì, ce l’ho” (‘to the question do you have a car? I cannot answer *sì, l’ho but [I have to answer] sì, ce l’ho’, Dardano and Trifone 1995: 243 [translation mine, CR]; see also Alinei 1984: 52; Christmann 1984). Pulgram (1978) discusses at some length the status of the new predicate averci, which he refers to as ciavere [sic].60 He proposes that a lexical split is in progress in Modern Italian, especially in some regional varieties like romanesco (i.e., the variety spoken in Rome and surrounding area), so that the original avere is destined to survive merely as an auxiliary verb, while ciavere is on its way to becoming the full verb indicating possession. In other words, with respect to the outcome of Latin HABERE, contemporary Italian seems to be evolving in the same direction as Spanish, which makes use of two separate verbs to express possession and auxiliary function, tener and haber respectively. Overall, the empirical evidence provided by the corpora appears to support Pulgram’s hypothesis of an ongoing split between lexical averci and auxiliary avere, pointing to a register effect as well. Koch’s (1994) partial screening of LIP (type A, C and D texts limited to Milan) reveals that the use of averci seems to be directly related to the discourse register: the closer we are to the spoken language the higher its frequency. Moreover, Koch’s data, which are reported in Tables 37 and 38, confirm that averci is preferred to avere in constructions involving 3DO clitics, especially if the verb is a third person form. Nevertheless, Koch’s results also indicate that the split between lexical averci and auxiliary avere is quite far from completion yet because lexical avere is still strong, the highest occurrence rate of averci amounting to a not impressive 21%.

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Table 37. Frequency values of averci in LIP (Koch 1994: 204). MILAN CORPUS TYPE A TYPE C TYPE D

Avere Occurrences Percentage 113 79% 130 95% 173 100%

averci Occurrences Percentage 30 21% 7 5% 0 0%

Table 38. Frequency values of averci configurations in LIP (Koch 1994: 205– 206). MILAN CORPUS TYPE A TYPE C

ci 3DO avere3 Occurrences Percentage 20 66.7% 6 85.7%

Other averci Occurrences Percentage 10 33.3% 1 14.3%

Table 39 summarizes the results relative to the occurrence rate of avere vs. averci in constructions involving a third person direct object clitic for the entire LIP. Table 39. Avere vs. averci in LIP in constructions involving 3do. CONSTRUCTION TYPE 3DO + avere ci + 3 DO + avere

OCCURRENCES 59 95 154

PERCENTAGE 38.3% 61.7 % 100%

The results in Table 39 show that averci is preferred to avere in this specific environment. Note, however, that the gap between the two is not dramatic (about 62% vs. 38%), certainly not sharp enough to warrant Alinei’s (1984) or Dardano and Trifone’s (1995) categorical claims about the unacceptability of the ‘l’ho’ type. In addition, the results reported in Tables 40 and 41 clearly indicate that avere is still holding on considerably well outside the environment of cooccurring 3DO clitic pronoun.

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Table 40. Avere vs. averci in LIP: a partial assessment (a). OCCURRENCES 427 51

CONSTRUCTION TYPE avere + noun averci + noun

PERCENTAGE 89% 11%

Table 41. Avere vs. averci in LIP: a partial assessment (b). CONSTRUCTION

Avere OCCURRENCES

%

CONSTRUCTION

741

81%

87

76%

47

67.1%

averci + article + noun averci + adjective + noun averci + numeral +noun

TYPE

avere + article + noun avere + adjective + noun avere + numeral + noun

Averci OCCURRENCES

%

173

19%

27

24%

23

32.9%

TYPE

In constructions that involve a bare nominal object, the incidence of averci is quite low. The majority of these constructions are of the type avere fame/sete, ‘be hungry/thirsty’ etc.; i.e., they denote a state rather than an actual possession, and this could be why avere is preferred. The results for constructions involving nouns modified by an adjective are not much different, but the fact that quantificational items such as molto ‘much’, poco ‘little’, etc. are included under the category of adjectives may be playing a role here. The highest rate of occurrence of averci is registered for the construction involving a quantified noun where the quantifying element is a numeral (e.g., una famiglia di eh di quelle che c’hanno otto macchine ‘one of those families, eh, who has 8 cars’ LIP N E13 215 A). It is certainly possible, then, that a more detailed analysis of avere and averci constructions, which would pay special attention to the properties of the object NPs, might help to attain a better assessment of the status of averci in CSI. It is also clear, though, that possessive avere is far from being dead. Regarding the issue of the higher occurrence of averci in the spoken register, negative evidence comes from the fact that averci is highly attested in nineteenth century prose, among authors like Verga and De Amicis (Christmann 1984). Yet, the occurrence – extensive as it may be – of averci in prose should not be taken as incontrovertible proof of the non-

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restrictedness of this form to the spoken register because it could be due to the author’s conscious, voluntary choice. That is, the author might have deliberately used averci as a means to make the texts more authentic, in terms of either spoken vs. written or lower vs. higher register, or even regional/dialectal vs. standard. In any case, that possessive averci is by no means a novel form is shown by D’Achille (1990), who provides numerous attestations dated as early as the fourteenth century. (38) a. Dimmi il vero, ha ’ci tu persona nesuna in casa? (Fiorentino Il Pecorone c. 1378, p. 32; from D’Achille 1990: 272, ex. [38]) “Tell me the truth do you have nobody in the house?” b. Io non ci ò amico nessuno di chi mi fidare. (Buonarroti Lettere 15th century, p. 70; from D’Achille 1990: 272, ex. [32]) “I don’t have any friend I can trust.” c. Ma, e che i giovani scapoli che non ci hanno alcuna attenenza, vengan dalle mogli degli altri la mattina ... senza che mai vi siano i mariti, è la moda? (Fagiuoli Ciò che pare non è ovvero Il cicisbeo sconsolato 1734– 1738, p. 148–149; from D’Achille 1990: 273, ex. [43]) “So, is this the fashion, young bachelors who have nothing to do with them go to visit other men’s wives in the morning ... without the husbands being present?” d. Io c’ho tre nepoti e li piace assae la cacc[i]a. “I have three nephews and they like hunting very much.” (Scrittura e popolo nella Roma barocca 6th–17th century, p. 42; from D’Achille 1990: 273, ex. [50]) D’Achille’s data show that in the earlier attestations the ci found with avere retains some degree of referential value: both locative, as in (38a) and (38b) where ci can be related a specific place, and non-locative, as in (38c) where ci can be related to the complement of attenenza ‘relevance’. The earliest attestations of ‘true’ lexical averci, such as (38d), date from the sixteenth century, which, overall, makes the phenomenon relatively late.61 D’Achille’s data also confirm that the co-presence of another clitic pronoun increases the incidence of occurrence of averci. According to D’Achille, this may be influence by the fact that the presence of another clitic eliminates any orthographic complication, namely the problem of

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rendering the palatal sound in an environment that does not suggest it (e.g., c’ho, c’abbiamo vs. ce l’ho, ce l’abbiamo). We should remember, though, that D’Achille’s study takes into consideration types of texts that are supposed to be reflective of the spoken language; therefore, his data too cannot be taken to provide incontrovertible evidence for the diffusion of averci in the written language.

6.4.3. Verbs of perception Grammaticalization of ci appears to have progressed noticeably also for two verbs of perception: sentirci ‘(to be able to) hear’ and vederci ‘(to be able to) see’. In this case, ci appears to have completely lost its locative/spatial reference and has traditionally been viewed as a semantically empty marker with purely reinforcing, emphatic value (e.g., Berruto 1985; Berretta 1989; Sala-Gallini 1996). Such a claim, however, may be too strong; in fact, it would be warranted only if sentirci and vederci were truly equivalent to their ci-less counterparts, both in terms of meaning and as far as construction patterns. This does not seem to be the case, though, because ci has actually acquired the function of modifying the meaning of the basic predicate, so that the following contrast is obtained: (39) a. Non ci sento/ ci vedo. b. ?Non sento/vedo. “I cannot hear/see.” (40) a. Non (*ci) sento nessun rumore. “I don’t hear any noise.” b. Non (*ci) vedo niente, è troppo buio. “I don’t see anything, it’s too dark.” The presence of a direct object in (40) is excluded categorically, as expected in the case of stative intransitive predicates. In contrast, leaving ci out in (39b) does not lead to unacceptability, although it forces the interpretation ‘I don’t hear/see something’, i.e., it implies a direct object. In fact, sentire and vedere are more commonly found in contexts where the object is given, either overtly present (41a, first underlined segment) or recoverable (41b), but are seldom used to refer to the actual state of being

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deaf/blind, for which sentirci and vederci are much preferred (41a, second underlined segment) and (41c). (41) a. Ma io vedo anche la spiaggia1, – disse il burattino. – per vostra regola, io sono come i gatti: ci vedo2 meglio di notte che di giorno. (Le avventure di Pinocchio, p. 156) “‘But I see even the shore’ the puppet said. ‘For your information, I am like cats: I can see better at night than in daylight’.” b. Senti? senti? Mamma, senti? – Veniva dalla stanza, attraverso l’uscio, un romor sordo. (L’esclusa, p. 20) “Do you hear? Do you hear? Mother, do you hear? – A hollow noise was coming from the room, through the door.” c. I giornalisti, le interviste, le foto, Cannes in un elegante abito bianco, l’ascesa dei gradini, tutta quella gente che mi chiama, dimenticando che non ci sento. (CORIS, NARRATTrVa) “Journalists, interviews, photos, Cannes in an elegant white gown while ascending the staircase, all those people who call me forgetting that I’m deaf.” When denoting stative meaning, vedere and sentire typically refer to a state of feigned deafness or blindness, as in (42). (42) a. “Ecco chi fa da sponda al guastafeste”, chiosava D’Alema indicando il presidente di Rifondazione: “E da buon stalinista mi aggredisce verbalmente”. Cossutta si è portato prontamente le mani alle orecchie: “Non sento”, ha sorriso in modo da glissare davanti all’affondo del capo della Quercia. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “‘Here’s the one who mediates with the spoilsport’”, D’Alema commented pointing at the president of Rifondazione: ‘And like a good Stalinist, he verbally abuses me’. Cossutta quickly put his hands to his ears: ‘I can’t hear’, he smiled and so was able to skate over the lunge of the Oak’s leader.” b. Si tratta, per noi psicoanalisti, di una difesa inconscia contro un eccesso di angoscia altrimenti non tollerabile, difesa che consiste nel divenire ciechi – se non vedo non soffro – e in quella che Silvia Amati Sas chiama “assuefazione all’ovvio”. (CORIS, STAMPAPeri)

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“For us psychoanalysts, it is an unconscious defense, which consists of becoming blind – if I don’t see I don’t suffer – and in what Silvia Amati Sas call ‘addiction to the obvious’.” The presence/absence of ci in sentirci and vederci, then, is not simply a matter of emphasis; rather, ci carries a precise semantic (stative) and grammatical (intransitive) value, so that it should not be handled simply as a pleonastic emphatic marker. The development we are dealing with is, in some respect, similar to the one sketched for fregarsene and starci, i.e., absorption of the verb complement. Yet, while fregarsene and starci continue to allow for overt expression of its prepositional complement (even outside the environment of dislocation), vederci and sentirci no longer do so. The object referent has become so maximally general that it matches the entire field of visual/auditory perception, and the verbs are now intransitive stative predicates that can take only adverbial modifiers. The ci of sentirci and vederci can thus be viewed as a morphosyntactic marker that indicates a change of valence in the verb and a shift from a verb of perception to a pure stative. (43) a. Sento delle voci. a’. Vedo delle ombre. “I hear voices.” “I saw shadows.” b. NP1 ___ NP2 c. NP1 = subject; NP2 = direct object. d. NP1 = experiencer; NP2 = theme (stimulus). (44) a. Ci sento benissimo. a’. Non ci vedo senza occhiali. “I can hear very well.” “I can’t see without glasses.” b. NP ___ (ADV) c. NP = subject. d. NP = experiencer. The stage of full lexicalization has not been reached yet because ci can still be omitted without bringing about structural unacceptability, as illustrated by the examples in (45). (45) a. Chi è ipermetrope quindi vede male da vicino. Alla lunga, tuttavia, può iniziare a vedere sfuocato anche da lontano. (CORIS, STAMPAPeri)

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“Hypermetropes, therefore, see badly from close up. However, they can start to see blurredly even from far away.” b. Chi è presbite, infatti, vede male da vicino. (CORIS, STAMPAPeri) “Presbyopes, in fact, see badly from close up.” The examples in (45) may suggest that the use of vedere with stative meaning is restricted to formal scientific contexts, which presumably call for a more formal register. However, examples are found in more general, nonspecialized contexts as well, and the two variants are even found side by side in (46c). (46) a. Nessuno si accorge che lui vedeva pochissimo quasi niente. (LIP R C 11 16 B) “Nobody notices that he could barely see, almost not at all.” b. Onestamente grazie al cielo avete occhi sulla fronte un cieco poveretto perché non vede non può giudicare ma chi ha il dono della vista non può negare ciò che vi stiamo dimostrando. (LIP R E 22 B) “Honestly, thank God you have eyes on your forehead a blind man, poor guy, since he cannot see he cannot judge but those who were given the gift of sight cannot deny what we are trying to demonstrate to you.” c. Non ci vedo proprio senza occhiali non vedo. (LIP R A 9 261 B) “I really cannot see, without glasses I cannot see.” The total number of attestations for both vederci and vedere used intransitively is quite low. In LIP, vedere occurs only three times in the sentences given in (46) and vederci only twice, in (46b) and in the excerpt in (47): (47) C: ascolta ottimo guidatore di lambretta * ottimo pilota di A: * da qualche anno * si' C: auto A: * però c’ha la vista un pochino C: * vuol dire va bene ma quando ci vedeva l’andava benino ottimo nuotatore * (LIP F B 18 29 C; * = anchor for a label) “C: listen excellent lambretta driver * excellent pilot of A: *for the last few years * yes

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C: cars A: but his sight is a little C: * I mean it’s fine but when he could see he was all, right, an excellent swimmer*” Sentirci shows an even more restricted usage, since one single occurrence comes up in LIP: (48) C: sì sì cinquanta oh non ho detto cinquanta * tu c’ha’ un telefono un po’ birbante eh D: senz’altro ho le macchine accese C: mannaggia D: ci sento poco (LIP F E 6 20 D) “C: yeah, yeah fifty oh I didn’t say fifty * your phone is a bit of a scoundrel, eh D: absolutely, the machines are on C: too bad D: I can’t hear much” In LIP, no occurrences of stative sentire are found, such as, for instance, non sente (bene) senza l’apparecchio acustico ‘s/he cannot hear (well) without a hearing aid’. This absence might be an indication of the fact that sentirci has moved further ahead in the process of lexicalization than vederci. On the other hand, it might as well be a consequence of the fact that sentire/sentirci have overall a lower occurrence incidence compared to vedere/vederci. To conclude, we have seen that averci, sentirci and vederci have not reached the stage of full lexicalization because ci has not yet become a structurally obligatory morpheme. In addition, the stability and actual range of diffusion of averci in CSI seems to be less prevalent than expected or asserted in some previous studies.

6.5. Conclusion In this chapter, we have seen that the clitic ci has embarked on an evolutionary trajectory that matches that of ne to a considerable extent. Just like ne, ci has become an obligatory lexical marker of a number of verbs, some of which are characterized by a fairly high frequency rate and have been

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alive in the language basically for ever (e.g., esserci) or for a significantly long time (e.g., volerci and entrarci). We have also seen how some verbs are found, in which the process of obligatorification has not reached its final stage yet, so that ci can be omitted without leading to a structurally unacceptable construction, even though the presence/absence of ci may be consequential in terms of semantic-pragmatic value (e.g., vederci and sentirci; averci). The different functions carried by lexicalized ci appear to be relatable to its main non-personal pronominal functions, namely locative and adverbial, which subsumes the other values of ci, such as comitative and instrumental. The locative value still transpires in volerci and esserci, and to some extent, in averci too if we think of the ‘locative’ possession schema (Heine 1997). In the case of averci, ci could be interpreted as a morphosyntactic marker that distinguishes the auxiliary from the lexical (possessive) verb, though empirical evidence exists in support of the claim that the lexical split avereauxiliary vs. averci-lexical is still an on-going phenomenon. In the two verbs of perception examined, sentirci and vederci, ci can be related to the expression of the semantic-grammatical connotation of stativity in that it appears to signal primarily a valence change from transitive verb of perception to intransitive stative verb. Finally, it has been observed that the verbs in which ci has become an obligatory component exhibit different degrees of idiomaticization. However, even in the case of verbs that have developed higher idiomaticity, the new meaning can still be inferred from the meaning of the source verbs, if reference is made to a metaphorical pattern of abstraction converging onto the same semantic-pragmatic dimension. That is, abstraction from the dimension of physical space to the dimension of personal involvement to quality, or, in some case, to a process of semantic narrowing, possibly driven by a euphemizing tendency, which will be discussed in further detail in the next chapter.

Chapter 7 Verbs in la

7.1. Introduction This chapter examines a fourth development in the general process of grammaticalization and lexicalization that has affected the Italian clitic pronouns. This development involves the third singular feminine direct object clitic la – by itself or in combination with si or ci – and has produced a sizeable group of verbs, among which we find smetterla, finirla ‘stop/finish doing something’, pensarla ‘have an opinion about something’, cavarsela ‘manage’, avercela ‘resent’, etc. (the complete lists are given in Table 42 on page 176 and Table 44 on page 198). I will put forward the proposal that the most relevant process involved in this case is lexicalization rather than grammaticalization. This claim is founded on the fact that la does not actually lose pronominal (or, more appropriately, referential) function to acquire a more grammatical value; nor does it show any increase in grammatical function. On the contrary, besides acquiring a pragmatic function that is common to all la-verbs, it may also gains specific semantic connotations that are transmitted directly by the source verbs, thus resembling the clitic ci. The general process of lexicalization pertaining to la can be divided into three separate sub-processes based on the elements implicated. The first process involves only the feminine direct object clitic and leads to the emergence of verbs like smetterla ‘stop doing something’, farla ‘trick somebody’, pensarla ‘have specific opinions on something’. The second process involves la and ‘reflexive’ si and brings us verbs like tirarsela ‘give oneself airs’, prendersela ‘take offence’, farsela ‘have an affair’. Finally, the third process combines la and ci, leading to the verbs farcela ‘manage/succeed’ and avercela ‘bear a grudge’. The case of la represents an interesting phenomenon because the clitic appears to carry a precise semantic content that must have been inherited from an original nominal referent – which, incidentally, transpires quite clearly in the English glosses. This semantic transfer provides evidence in support of the assumption that cognitive processes play an important role in grammaticalization and lexicalization. Most importantly, though, it raises questions about the true nature of desemanticization; that is, it supports the

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claim that meaning is redistributed rather than lost. In addition, it corroborates the hypothesis that semantic changes in grammaticalization are not arbitrary but can be derived from the original meaning of the element involved by means of metaphorical and/or metonymic inferencing (Traugott and König 1991; Heine 1994). Lastly, the verbs in la differ from the other verbi procomplementari in that they abundantly allow for adverbial or adjectival modification.

7.2. Some verbs in la The most common verbs and verbal periphrases characterized by full incorporation of la are listed in Table 42 (page 176). As always, the register and frequency classification, as well as the glosses, are taken from De Mauro (1999–2000). Each verb is then illustrated through the examples given in (1)–(7). (1)

a. I due vecchietti scossero la testa arrabbiati, dicendo: - Se non la smette con questo fracasso ci lamenteremo con l’amministratore. “The two old people shook their head in anger, saying: - If you don’t stop with all this noise we’ll complain to the manager.” (CODIS, NARRAT_13) b. Io sto prendendo di nuovo un caffè e sto guardando di nuovo, e c’è sempre quella tizia che ha già buttato giù un quattro cognac, è ubriaca marcia e non la smette di piangere. (CODIS, NARRAT_3) “I’m having another coffee, looking again, and she is still there, that woman who’s just downed her forth cognac; she’s completely drunk and won’t stop crying.”

(2)

a. Questo qui ci parla di Siena che è una bellissima città, che si sta bene, insomma non la finisce più con questa Siena. (CODIS, NARRAT_13) “This guy tells us about Siena, how it’s a such beautiful city, nice to live in, and he wouldn’t stop with this Siena.”

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b. La comunicazione era unidirezionale, vera e propria propaganda, mia madre cominciava all’alba e la finiva la sera di affermare che la povera Paola era stata la vera vittima di quel perfido gioco. (CODIS, NARRAT_7) “The communication was unidirectional, a real propaganda; my mother would start at dawn with her claims that poor Paola had been the victim of that cruel game and would not end it until night.” (3)

a. Allora lui dice: riconosco che sono stato stupido a cedere agli amici, però un dubbio ce l’ho sempre su quel Rocco. Dico: senti, se è vero che io te l’ho fatta con Rocco mi possa succedere la peggiore disgrazia del mondo, potessi andare dentro e non uscire più! (CODIS, NARRAT_13) “Then he says: I admit I was stupid to give in to my friends, yet I still have some doubts about that Rocco. I say: listen, may the worst misfortune in the world happen to me if it is true that I and Rocco tricked you, may I go to jail and never get out again!” b. Il sangue mi sale alla testa. Non sento le gambe. Esco dallo studio, e mentre irrompo in strada, un camioncino strombazza da rompermi i timpani. Riprendo i sensi. Ricomincio a correre nel vuoto. Mia madre me l’ha fatta! Chissà da quanto tempo aveva combinato questa visitina al meccanico dei cervelli! “Blood rushes to my head. I can’t feel my legs. I get out of the office and when I jump into the street a small truck honks at me hurting my ears. My mother did it to me! God knows since when she had arranged this little visit with a brain mechanic!” (CODIS, NARRAT_2) c. Tutt’a un tratto, la piccola abbozza una smorfietta di stupore, e mi accorgo che ha fatto i suoi bisogni. Già pronta con il mio bel vestitino, e la pupa che me la fa addosso! (CORIS, NARRAT_13) “All of a sudden, the baby makes a little grin of surprise and I realize that she did it. I’m all ready with my cute dress, and the baby does it!”

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Table 42. Verbs in la. VERB/EXPRESSION

FIRST ATTESTA-

GLOSS

SOURCE

TION

smetterla (common)

1840–1842

finirla (common, colloquial)

1565

farlaa (common)

first half of 15th cent.

farlab (common, familiar) pensarla (common)

no date

raccontarlaa (common) raccontarlab (common); in negative contexts menarla (common, colloquial)

1887–1891

1565

no date

20th cent.

scamparla (common,)

1587

darlaa a bere/intendere (common) darlab vinta (common)

before 1536

darlac (common, slang)

‘stop doing something’

smettere ‘stop/suspend an action/activity’ finire ‘finish/complete an activity’

– ‘deceive, trick; prevail upon somebody cunningly’ –‘defecate’

fare ‘make, do’

‘have an opinion on something’ ‘tell long boring stories’ ‘deceive, be suspicious’

pensare ‘think’

‘bother, annoy (by telling long, boring stories)’ ‘escape from/overcome a bad situation’ – ‘deceive; make believe something false’ – ‘give up to somebody after a long discussion/ confrontation’ – ‘of women, have sex easily’

menare ‘take, lead’

raccontare ‘tell’

scampare, same as scamparla

dare ‘give’

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(4)

a. Preso il potere i fascisti si sbarazzarono completamente degli oppositori cioè di coloro che non la pensavano come loro. (LIP, F D 1 10 A) “After they took over, the fascists eliminated all their opponents, that is, those people who didn’t share their same opinions.” b. Noi tutti mettiamo in rete la ns. homepage così da poter estendere una parte di noi: per essere conosciuti, per dire al mondo come la pensiamo, per aiutare altri o essere aiutati. (CODIS, EPHEM_2) “We all post our homepage so that we can expand some part of us: to become known, to tell the world how we think, to help others or get help ourselves.”

(5)

a. Quella è gente che vive di “fasfù”, a me non la racconta. (CODIS, NARRAT_7) “Those are people who live off fast food, they don’t fool me.” b. “Be’, Ares e Ligera ne sono sicuri. Forse sei tu che non ricordi bene ...” Raffaella se la prese: “No, non me la racconti! E io non sono così ... Insomma, ricordo benissimo che ...” (CODIS, NARRAT_13) “‘Well, Ares and Ligera are positive about it. Maybe it’s you who doesn’t remember well…’ Raffaella was offended: ‘No, you won’t fool me! I’m not like that … I remember perfectly well that …’” c. E sono corso a messa. Quella delle 8 e mezza che quella delle 8 l’avevo già persa, che lo so che poi arrivo in ritardo in ufficio che poi lui me la mena ma ... è uguale, sono troppo felice. (CORIS, MON2001_04) “And I run off to mass, the 8:30 mass because I had missed the 8:00 o’clock one, and I know that I’ll get to the office late and he’ll bother me for that but I don’t care, I’m too happy.”

(6)

a. Renzo, lontano dall’immaginarsi come l’avesse scampata bella, [...], pensava, camminando, a quell’accoglienza. (I promessi sposi, p. 617) “Renzo, far from realizing what he had escaped, [...], was walking and thinking about that welcome.” b. Bizzini l’ha scampata, sino a questo momento, ma non è mai sicuro di scamparla ancora. (CORIS, STAMPASuppl)

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“Up to this moment, Bizzini has been saving himself but he is never sure he will manage again.” (7)

a. Ma un nonnulla bastava di tanto in tanto a farlo scattare selvaggiamente. Forse, subito dopo, se ne pentiva; non voleva, però, o non sapeva confessarlo: gli sarebbe parso d’avvilirsi o di darla vinta. (L’esclusa, p. 11) “But, once in a while, the slightest thing would make him go off wildly. Perhaps, he regretted it right after; however, he didn’t want to, or maybe he wasn’t able to confess it: to him, it would have felt like humbling himself, or giving in.” b. Anche lui un attore, bravissimo a fare l’ubriacone o il morto, all’occorrenza. Un grande guitto che riesce sempre a darla a bere. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “He was also an actor, very good at playing the drunk or the dead, as needed; a great guitto, who always manages to make people believe anything.” c. Le donne si dividono in tre categorie: le puttane, le stronze e le rompiballe. La puttana la dà a tutti. La stronza la dà a tutti meno che a te. La rompiballe la dà a te, solo a te, sempre a te. (CORIS, MISCVolumi) “Women are divided into three categories: whores, bitches and pains in the ass. Whores go with everybody. Bitches go with everybody except you. Pains in the ass go with you, only with you, always with you.”

As the examples in (6a) and (7a) show, some of the verbs above can be modified by an adjective in the feminine form. Besides scamparla, two other verbs that often occur with an adjective are farla and raccontarlaa. The most common adjective found with these verbs are bella ‘beautiful’ (6a) and grossa ‘big’ (8a); raccontarlaa can also be accompanied by giusta ‘right’ but only in negative constructions (8b) and farla by sporca ‘dirty’ as we will see later (§ 7.2.2, example [22]). Darla, on the other hand, takes vinta, the past participle of vincere ‘win’, or an infinitival clause introduced by a ‘to’, which involves verbs of believe, understanding, etc. (e.g., non me la dai a intendere ‘you don’t fool me’, literally ‘you don’t give it.SG F to me to believe’.

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(8)

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a. Beh, stavolta è arduo negare che Fassino l’ha fatta grossa. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “Well, this time it’s hard to deny that Fassino made a mess.” b. Una bravata che gli costerà cara. Ma anche quel fotografo non la racconta giusta. Perché non è intervenuto invece di fare click? E perché non si è rivolto subito agli ufficiali invece di vendere le foto anni dopo? (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “A bravado that will cost him dearly. But that photographer does not tell it right either. Why didn’t he intervene instead of clicking? And why didn’t he go immediately to the authorities instead of selling the pictures years later?”

Even at first glance, we notice that, compared to the verbs and periphrases in ne and ci, the predicates in la display a much higher degree of idiomaticization despite the fact that the core meaning of the source verb is still quite transparent. As it will be shown in the following sections, the new meaning can, in general, be obtained compositionally by means of reference to a process of ‘lexical inheritance’, which is distinctive of la. Of course, I am not claiming here that speakers are actually able to derive the meaning of the verbs in la. Nor am I suggesting that they are actually aware of the fact that the pronoun is an intrinsic component of these verbs; or, to put it in slightly different terms, that they are able to make any conscious connection between lexicalized la and plain pronominal la. In other words, the claim I just made about the relative semantic transparency of the la verbs does not clash with the semantic opacity typical of lexicalization because it is only the linguist, not the speaker, who can put together the meaning of the whole through the meaning of the individual components of the lexicalized item. Another important point that emerges from the comparison between the verbs (and verbal periphrases) in la and their sources is that, with the exception of smettere/finire ~smetterla/finirla, the derived forms are all intransitive whereas the sources are transitive or can take oblique or clausal complements (e.g., pensare takes a clausal complement, penso che Carlo sia bello ‘I think that Carlo is handsome’, or a prepositional complement, e.g. penso alle vacanze ‘I think about my vacations’). This observation may lead to attribute to la a valence changing function, i.e., to interpret it as a morphological marker of intransitivity, similarly to what observed for verbs in ci like starci, or sentirci and vederci. However, we will see (§ 7.2.2) that, rather than being intransitives in the standard sense of selecting exclusively

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an external argument, the verbs in la seem to be ‘inherently transitive’, in the sense that they have an inherent, incorporated object structurally marked by la itself. This may sound a trivial remark given that the distinctive feature of verbi procomplementari is exactly that of pronominalizing their complement by definition. Nevertheless, unlike fregarsene and its companions, whose inherently selected (and intrinsically pronominalized) object must be maximally general (see Chapter 5, § 5.2), the inherent object of la-verbs is rather specific. Finally, lexicalization of la appears to portray somehow different scenarios depending on the specific (group of) predicates undergoing the process. Therefore, it is more appropriate to distinguish two main verb types, the smetterla/finirla-type, and the farla-type, and analyze each type separately.

7.2.1. Smetterla and finirla Smettere and finire belong to the B4 verb class (Salvi 2001: 87); these are verbs that select a nominal subject and a clausal object, in this specific case, an infinitival clause introduced by di. More precisely, they are classified as verbi fasali ‘phasal verbs’ (Bertinetto 2001: 129) since their function is to identify a particular phase of the process denoted by the subordinate predicate. Other Italian predicates that belong to the same verb class as smettere and finire are: iniziare, cominciare ‘begin’, continuare, seguitare ‘continue’ (all of which take an a ‘to’ + infinitive clause), stare per ‘be about to’. The lexical meaning of the specific verb determines which phase of the process denoted by subordinate verb will be specified. Smettere and finire, thus, will carry completive value, since they point to the termination or conclusion of the event or state of affairs. Many of the aspectual verbs mentioned above also allow selection of a nominal complement, which is actually the direct object of the infinitive that can remain unrealized because it is always recoverable from the lexical meaning of the NP itself (or by the context). Smettere and finire differ with respect to this parameter, as the contrast between (9) and (10) illustrates. (9)

a. *Ho appena smesso [l’ultimo libro di Marquez.]NP “I just stopped (reading) Marquez’s last book.” b. *Non voglio smettere [il caffè] NP, vengo tra un attimo. “I don’t want to stop (drinking) my coffee, I’ll come in a moment.”

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(10) a. Ho appena finito [l’ultimo libro di Marquez.] NP “I just finished Marquez’s last book.” b. Voglio finire [il caffè] NP e poi ti aiuto. “I want to finish my coffee and then I’ll help you.” As the examples in (11) show, however, it is not the case that smettere categorically rejects direct object NPs. (11) a. Ha iniziato e smesso [il trattamento per disintossicarsi dall’alcool]NP così tante volte che in clinica hanno proposto di mettere una porta girevole per lui. (CORIS, NARRATTrRo) “He started and quit the alcohol rehab treatment so many times that the people at clinic proposed to install a revolving door for him.” b. Un’alta cosa importante è il fatto che le ragazze non malate, una volta raggiunto il peso forma, smettono [la dieta.] NP (CORIS, PRACCRivis) “Another important thing is that girls who are not sick will stop dieting when they reach their target weight.” The unacceptability of the sentences in (9) must be attributed to other factors, possibly the nature of the event denoted. Judging from the examples considered, it would seem that smettere is incompatible with individuated events (accomplishments) but tolerates activities. This is an intricate issue, though, and cannot be explored further at this time. I will only call attention to the fact that a partial screening of the smettere + NPs constructions found in CORIS/CODIS has revealed that the most frequent instantiation of this construction type is the one involving the more specialized meaning of ‘stop wearing/using something’, where the something is either a concrete object (clothing, accessory, make-up, etc.), or an attitude or habit. (12) a. Ieri Umberto Baldini, il responsabile delle Finanze, ha smesso la serenità ostentata due giorni fa dopo il primo confronto con gli inquirenti. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “Yesterday, Umberto Baldini, the superintendent of finances, dropped the calmness he was parading two days ago after his first meeting with the magistrates.” b. Si chiamava Nadia Frey, era di origine francese, non aveva mai smesso il suo accento esotico. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot)

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“Her name was Nadia Frey; she was of French origins and had never dropped her exotic accent.” c. Quando M. Seurel arrivò, verso le dieci, aveva smesso la solita giacca di alpaca nera; indossava un giaccone da pesca con grandi tasche abbottonate. (CORIS, NARRATTrRo) “When M. Seurel arrived, around ten, he was no longer wearing his usual black alpaca jacket; he had put on a fishing coat with big buttoned pockets.” The acceptability of the examples in (11) could then be related to the fact they denote the interruption of events that are construed as habitual, or definitely durative. To conclude, the contrast between the two verbs with respect to the selection of a nominal object can be attributed to a difference in the degree of grammaticalization that characterizes them. Smettere has possibly reached a more advanced stage in the auxiliation process than finire since its selectional properties appear to be more constrained than the selectional properties of finire. The first issue to be discussed about smetterla and finirla relates to the degree of obligatoriness of la. This parameter sets smetterla and finirla apart from the rest of the verbs and periphrases in la and may be related to another important issue, namely the extent and nature of the changes that incorporation of la has brought to the lexical meaning of the predicate. La is not strictly obligatory with smetterla and finirla in that its omission does not lead to structurally ill-formed constructions. In addition, the semantic (idiomatic) contribution of la seems practically inexistent, especially when weighed against verbs like farla and darla. Since they are very close synonyms, I will discuss mainly smetterla although I will point out any relevant discrepancy between the two. What differences emerge if we compare smettere (13) and smetterla (14) in equivalent contexts, both in terms of structural configuration and in terms of meaning? (13) a. Gli ho chiesto di smettere di parlare di me, gli ho fatto sapere che non gradisco certe cose e che anch’io eviterò di nominarlo. (Biaggi – Doohan) (CODIS, STAMPA_20) “I asked him to stop talking about me, I let him know that I don’t like this sort of things and I will avoid mentioning him too.”

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b. Le dicevo di volermi suicidare e quella mi portava al cinema, mi diceva di star su di morale; mi parlava di progetti, amici,... Guarda, guarda le sue lettere, ne ho un armadio pieno. Leggi: smetti di tormentarti ... sei importante e non solo per me ... (CODIS, STAMPA_20) “I would tell her that I wanted to commit suicide and she would take me to the movies, tell me to cheer up; she would talk to me about projects and friends … Look, look at these letters, I have a closet full of them. Read here: stop torturing yourself … you are important and not only to me …” (14) a. Mi ha dato del disonesto. Ha messo in dubbio la mia integrità. Il suo comportamento mi ha stufato. Deve smetterla di parlare in pubblico del mio modo di guidare. (Schumacher - Coulthard) (CODIS, STAMPA_20) “He called me dishonest. He questioned my integrity. His behavior has sickened me. He must stop talking in public about how I drive.” b. Anzi un po’ di titubanza non farà altro che mettere a suo agio lui: può darsi, infatti, che sia alla sua prima esperienza, proprio come te. E, per favore, smettila di pensare alle conseguenze. Che cosa deve succedere? (CODIS, STAMPA_5) “On the contrary, a bit of hesitancy will only make him comfortable: in fact, this might be his very first experience, just like for you. And please, stop thinking about the consequences. What could happen?” At first glance, adding la to the sentences in (13) or eliminating it from the sentences in (14) does not bring about any significant alteration, neither in terms of grammaticality nor in strictly semantic terms. The messages the sentences convey remain fundamentally the same: a strong request or a command from the speaker that some event be stopped. Register and/or text type seem to have no relevance either, given that all the excerpts are from the same kind of text (newspapers and periodicals); also, no geographical effect is observed. The standard response given by native speakers when asked to comment on the contrast between smettere and smetterla runs along the following lines: generally speaking, smetterla is stronger; it imparts an unambiguously imperative connotation to the utterance. In addition, smetterla seems

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to express more decisively and more incisively than smettere the speaker’s irritation, negative attitude or perception towards the ongoing event, or even simply his/her emotional involvement. This difference in incisiveness is perceived much better in contexts like the following: (15) a. Ecco, non so da dove cominciare, sai non è una cosa facile da dire ... Insomma ... Ma la vuoi smettere di mangiare un istante? così mi fai passare la voglia. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “Well, I don’t know where to start from, you know, it’s not an easy thing to say … for heaven’s sake … would you stop eating for a moment? If you go on like this you make me not want to do it.” b. Io non volevo, se ho fatto qualcosa di sbagliato ti chiedo scusa. - E smettila di scusarti - proruppe lei. - È accaduto e basta. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “I didn’t mean it, if I did something wrong, I apologize. – Stop apologizing – she burst – It happened and that’s it.” The requests to stop eating (15a) and stop apologizing (15b) are indeed strong demands, imparted with a certain amount of irritation, due to discourse specific circumstances; namely, the fact that the addressee is being unresponsive to the speaker. If la is removed, the utterances lose their imperativeness and unpleasantness, and become pragmatically less appropriate, if not odd. Let us now consider the following pair of sentences: (16) a. Signor Osborn, non sta a me dirlo. Io le sono affezionata. Lei dovrebbe smetterla di bere. (CORIS, NARRATTrRo) “Mr. Osborn, it’s not for me to say but I care about you. You should quit dinking.” (CORIS, NARRATTrRo) b. Alla fine, si era visto costretto ad andare da un medico. «Devi smettere di bere» lo aveva ammonito questi, dopo averlo visitato. “In the end, he was forced to go to a doctor. ‘You must quit drinking’ the doctor had warned him after the visit.” The presence of la in (16a) is called for by the need of expressing that the speaker is somehow emotionally affected by the addressee’s drinking problem. In (16b), on the other hand, la is or less necessary because the order to quit drinking comes from a professional, who is supposedly presumably unaffected by the addressee and the addressee’s problem. It may well be

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the case that the two individuals have never met previously, as the indefinite NP un medico ‘a doctor’ suggests. It seems thus that la fulfills the function of signaling a discourse participant’s, most typically the speaker, degree of affectedness and/or personal involvement in a given situation; that is, la functions as a semanticpragmatic marker of subjectivity. Since omission of la imparts a lesser degree of subjectivity (i.e., speaker’s or discourse participant’s personal involvement), it would be expected that the use of smettere and finire would be appropriate in more objective, speaker’s neutral contexts. For instance, (17a) would be uttered felicitously as general disinterested (at least to some extent) advice to quit the habit of smoking because it is a well-known fact that smoking is dangerous for one’s health. Similarly, (17b) represents a fairly neutral request that the addressee finish his/her meal; incidentally, notice how both sentences carry a mitigated tone conveyed respectively by dovresti ‘should’ and per favore ‘please’. (17) a. Dovresti smettere di fumare, lo sai che ti fa male. “You should quit smoking; you know it’s bad for you.” b. Finisci di mangiare, per favore, così sparecchio e guardiamo il film. “Finish eating, please, so I clear the table and we can watch the movie.” The example (17a) does not necessarily imply that the speaker does not care about the addressee’s health. What is crucial is that the speaker’s emotional involvement does not transpire. The same holds for (17b), which is a benign exhortation and does not express irritation at all, independently of the presence/absence of per favore ‘please’. The neutral, detached connotation of smettere and finire is also evinced by the fact that the intonation they receive in the imperative constructions is not the same as the intonation that smetterla and finirla receive. The sentences in (18), on the contrary, are unquestionably stronger and express unequivocally the speaker’s direct involvement in the situation, typically in a negative sense (e.g., disappointment, annoyance, etc.).

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(18) a. Devi smetterla di fumare dentro casa, c’è sempre puzza di fumo. “You must stop smoking inside the house; there’s always a smell of smoke.” b. Finiscila di mangiare! “Finish with eating!” Therefore, (18a) is more appropriate if the speaker is actually bothered by the smell, directly because s/he does not tolerate it, or indirectly because someone else in the household, or even some regular visitor of relevance, does not. As for (18b), it would, for example, be entirely inappropriate if uttered by a mother to a child who suffers from an eating disorder because it conveys the message that the child’s eating is causing her distress. Moreover, as it will be discussed in more detail later, finirla exhibits a precise semantic divergence from finire, which results directly from incorporation of la. Additional evidence for the assumption that la represents a marker of subjectivity is provided by examples like those in (19): (19) a. Versate le patate nel passaverdure e aspettate 2 minuti, finché smettono di emettere vapore. (CORIS, STAMPAPeri) “Put the potatoes in the masher and wait for 2 minutes until they stop steaming” b. Se si coltivano cellule normali in condizioni nelle quali non è loro permesso di aderire, costruire le molecole del loro ambiente e scambiare con esso messaggi, le cellule normali smettono di proliferare e muoiono. (CODIS, PRACC_4) “If normal cells are grown in conditions where they cannot adhere, built the molecules of their own environment and exchange messages with it, the normal cells stop proliferating and die.” The sentences above categorically reject la because they are a priori incompatible with subjectivity since the speaker (narrator) cannot possibly be affected by the fact that the potatoes have to stop steaming or that the cells may stop multiplying. In fact, the two examples are taken from highly objective, descriptive texts, a cooking recipe and a biology academic writing. In (19) the subject of smettere is an inanimate entity and the main verb denotes a spontaneous, uncontrollable process, so the incompatibility with la could be attributed to these two factors. However, examples like those in (20), which involve inanimate subjects (20a) and (20b), animate subjects

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and uncontrollable events (20c,), and the combination of both (20d) and (20e), posit a significant challenge to such a claim: (20) a. Un fiotto di acqua sale nel cielo. Brilla nella luce del mezzogiorno e non la smette più, fiume luccicante sparato nell’aria. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “A gush of water rises in the sky. It glistens in the midday light and won’t stop; a sparkling river shot in the air.” b. Anche se la pioggia non la smette e i corvi invidiosi urlano. (CORIS, MON2001_04) “Even though it won’t stop raining and the envious crows are screaming.” c. L’aveva abbracciata e tenuta stretta per un po’, ma siccome lei non la smetteva di tremare, era andato a prendere in soffitta le sue pastiglie di Lexotan e l’aveva costretta a mandarne giù due. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “He had embraced her and held her tight for a while but since she wouldn’t stop shaking he had gone up in the attic to get the Lexotan tablets and had made her swallow a couple.” d. Il ragazzo era proprio messo male, sbatteva braccia e gambe per terra, e la testa gli andava per conto suo, con gli occhi di traverso e quella bava che non la smetteva di imbrattargli la faccia. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “The boy was really in bad shape: he was banging his arms and legs on the floor and his head would go its own way, his eyes crossed and that dribble that wouldn’t stop smearing his face.” e. Peter Stollinka era d’accordo. In effetti, il suo stomaco non la smetteva di brontolare, perché non aveva neanche fatto colazione. (CORIS, NARRATrRo) “Peter Stollika agreed. In fact, his stomach wouldn’t stop growling because he hadn’t even had breakfast.” Inanimacy and the semantics of the infinitive, then, may contribute to the rejection of la but cannot be considered determining factors. If the main function carried out by la is that of signaling the speaker’s negative attitude towards some state of affairs, it would be expected that la occurs more frequently and more consistently in contexts that involve humans or at least sentient entities, which are responsible for and/or are able to control their actions. It is quite reasonable to assume that we are annoyed

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more by situations for which people are responsible than we do by situations over which no control can be exercised. More accurately, it is not unreasonable at all to assume that we are more likely to manifest our feelings to receptive participants. The subject’s ability to control the event denoted by the complement of smettere seems indeed to have some relevance since sentences like Devi smetterla di sudare ‘You must stop sweating’ or La smetti di crescere? ‘Will you stop growing up?’ are felicitous only in very specific contexts, where they acquire rhetorical value. For instance, Ma quando la smetti di crescere? ‘Will you ever stop growing?’ and similar sentences are fine if they are meant to convey the speaker’s surprise, either real or affected (e.g., if the addressee is a child/youth and the speaker intends to compliment them on their growth). Anyhow, this issue is fairly complex and before any satisfactory conclusions can be drawn, it would be necessary to conduct a detailed analysis of the types of verbs that are compatible with smetterla and those that are not, which is a task that goes beyond the scope of the present study. What matters for our purposes is that la is a marker of subjectivity, with a substantially negative connotation. It is not unexpected, then, that the contrast between smettere and smetterla becomes much stronger in bare imperative structures (i.e., imperative forms not followed by the infinitival clause), a context in which smetterla appears to be preferred to smettere by far. This is shown by the frequency values of the imperative forms of smettere vs. smetterla found in CORIS/CODIS reported in Table 43 below. Table 43. Frequency of imperative forms of smettere and smetterla in CORIS/CODIS. PERSON/NUMBER 2SG (informal) 1PL (informal) 2PL (informal) 2SG (informal) 2PL (informal)

Smettere FORM OCCURRENCES Smetti! 1 Smettiamo! 0 Smettete! 0 Smetta! 0 Smettano! 0

smetterla FORM OCCURRENCES Smettila! 52 Smettiamola 0 Smettetela! 6 La smetta! 8 La smettano! 0

The disproportion between the number of occurrences of smettere and smetterla for 2SG informal imperative is undoubtedly revealing. Perhaps

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even more enlightening is the fact that no occurrences are found in the corpus of negative imperative forms for smetterla. This should not come as a surprise: if smetterla inherently carries a negative subjective connotation, it is not expected to occur in negative imperative since it is quite implausible that the speaker commands the addressee to not stop doing something that is unpleasant, annoying, etc. to him/her. I would now like to call attention to one last set of examples: (21) a. Intanto la nonna e io (*la) finiamo di aiutare Turi. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “Meanwhile, grandma and I will finish helping Turi.” b. «Andate pure» annuì lei con un sospiro. «(*La) Finisco di bere e vi raggiungo.» (CORIS, NARRATrRo) “‘Please, go’ she assented with a sigh. “I’ll finish drinking and catch up with you.’” It is not possible to add la in (21) because doing so would totally alter the meaning of the sentences: la finiamo di aiutare Turi means ‘we will stop helping Turi’, whereas (21a) expresses the speaker’s intention to carry on the action of helping Turi until the action is brought to conclusion. And finirla di bere means ‘to quit drinking’, normally in the specific sense of giving up the habit of drinking alcohol, unless a different type of drink is overtly expressed, e.g. finiscila di bere tanto caffè, che ti fa male ‘stop drinking so much coffee, it’s bad for you’. But in (21b) the speaker simply states that she intends to complete the action of drinking some beverage, not necessarily an alcoholic one. The fact that the presence/absence of la brings about a different conceptualization of the event suggests that finirla is more than just a variant of finire marked for subjectivity. The semantic difference between the two verbs becomes most evident in the context of imperative forms: the imperative of finire conveys an order to the addressee to finish doing something, with finire retaining its actual meaning of ‘to bring to end/completion’, as in (15b). In contrast, the imperative of finiscila imparts a command to the addressee to stop doing an ongoing activity; that is, finirla and smetterla are actually close synonyms while finire and smettere are not. This might be the reason why no contrast is observed between finire and smettere with respect to their selectional properties; as illustrated in (22) and (23), finirla and smetterla can both select prepositional (22) and infinitival complements (23) while, of course, neither can take nominal objects.

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(22) a. Teiser era in preda all’inquietudine, veniva ad ogni prova e non la finiva mai con le critiche.(CORIS, NARRATTrRo) “Teiser was very anxious; he would come to each rehearsal and would not stop criticizing.” b. Anche il giorno dopo, mentre stavano lì a lavare la roulotte, non la smetteva più con quella storia che era una brava persona. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “The next day too, while they were washing the camper, he would not stop with that story of how he was a good person.” (23) a. Quando riesci a rilassarti e la finisci di fare lo scemo ti presento la signora che sta alla tua destra e che è mia moglie. (CORIS, MON2001_04) “When you manage to relax and stop being a fool I’ll introduce you to the lady at your right, who is my wife.” b. Se non la smetti di fare il signorino quello ti fa tornare a casa con la faccia di un altro. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “If you don’t stop being sissy he’s going to send you home with somebody else’s face.” In summary, the primary function carried out by la in smetterla and finirla appears to be that of a semantic-pragmatic marker, which expresses a decrease in objectivity or, viewed from the opposite perspective, an increase in subjectivity, with subjectivity to be understood as involving essentially the expression of self and the representation of a speaker’s (or, more generally, a locutionary agent’s) perspective or point of view in discourse, i.e. the “speaker’s imprint” (Finegan 1995:1; see also Traugott and Dasher 2002). In the case of finirla, however, incorporation of la also brings about a significant context induced modification of the meaning of the source verb. Incorporation of la can be related to a process of lexicalization and pragmaticization (see Chapter 2), which has reached its completion for finirla but is still on going for smetterla because la has not yet become an entirely obligatory element of the verbs. Hence, smettere and smetterla can still alternate but finire and finirla cannot. It is clear, though, that even in the context of smetterla, la cannot be assigned pronominal value. That is, la cannot be attributed the function of pronominalizing an actual sentence constituent, i.e., the infinitival clause or the con prepositional phrase denoting the state of affairs to be stopped, because la can pronominalize only

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nominal feminine singular referents. The only clitic pronoun that can replace a clausal direct object is lo (24a), while ci can refer to resultatives (24b). (24) a. “Ma se io ti aiuto a salvarti, mi prometti di non darmi più noia e di non corrermi dietroi?” – “Te loi prometto! Te loi prometto!” (Le avventure di Pinocchio, 104) “But if I help you to escape, will you promise me that you will never bother me again and that you will not follow me? – “I promise! I promise!” b. L’anno scorso ho tentato di tutto per qualificarmi in slalomi, anche se poi non cii sono riuscita. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “Last year I tried everything to qualify for the slalom, even though then I wasn’t able to.” Obviously, the infinitival of smettere and finire is not an actual direct object hence pronominalization by means of lo would not be expected; and the rejection of ci can be explained by the fact that smettere and finire are more auxiliary-like than riuscire; that is, the periphrases finire/smettere di + inf. are more grammaticalized compared to riuscire a + inf. Yet the question of why the clitic form involved in this development is the feminine la remains. This is a key issue, which will receive due attention in the next section, after other verbs affected by lexicalization of la will be introduced. On an anticipatory note, I will point out how claiming that la has been totally emptied of any referential content seems untenable; quite the opposite, smetterla is intuitively related to a conceptual schema that involves ‘some/a thing’ to be stopped, and cosa ‘thing’ happens to be a feminine noun. The process of lexico-pragmaticization observed for smetterla and finirla appears to be extending to another aspectual verb, cominciare, as shown by the following attested examples: (25) a. Quando la cominci con queste scemenze ti prenderei a schiaffi. “When you start with this foolishness you make me want to slap you.” b. Adesso la cominci, dai su, vai. “Now you start it, all right, go.” The utterance in (25b) is taken from a mother-daughter conversation and was produced by the mother when the daughter started with her usual com-

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plaints about issues of physical appearance. The presence of la gives the sentence a stronger connotation in terms of the speaker’s strong disapproval of and irritation caused by the referent expressed by prepositional complement, which just as in the case of smettere and finire is in fact the complement of a recoverable covert predicate, namely parlare di ‘to talk about’ (or even just pensare a ‘think about’). The presence of la brings forward and at the same time emphasizes the implication that the speaker is not looking forward to hearing once again the same trite stories, which is further highlighted by the main clause ti prenderei a schiaffi. On the other hand, if la is omitted, the sentence is more neutral with respect to such implication; that is, the inference that the speaker has no desire to listen to the ‘infamous’ stories does not become available (i.e., it is not ‘invited’) to the addressee or discourse participant in general. The sentence in (25b) was uttered by the husband in response to an individual instance of a habitual, recurrent negative criticism by his wife. Again, the presence of la characterizes the utterance with a stronger, more effective communicative function by enabling a specific inference: that the addressee should stop at once. In the case of cominciare/cominciarla the process of lexicalization is still at a fairly initial stage. Thus, speakers make use of and/or perceive the contrast between cominciare/cominciarla less systematically than they do in case of smettere/smetterla and finire/finirla. To recapitulate, this section has shown that the clitic la has reached a fairly advanced stage of grammaticalization in two aspectual verbs, smetterla and finirla, and that this same process has also begun to affect another member of the same verb class, cominciare. In these verbs, la no longer carries pronominal value – at least not in the traditional sense of replacing/relating to a constituent – but has become a morpheme characterized by a precise pragmatic-semantic function, which provides specific information about the speaker’s state of mind about the situation denoted by the lexical predicate introduced by the phrasal verbs. Given that the main function of the specific phasal verbs involved in this process is to convey aspectual information (which is determined by the semantics of the phasal verb itself) and that the process has affected primarily two verbs that refer to termination and conclusion/completion, la could also be interpreted as an aspectual marker whose function is to signal the request for a more definite and/or perhaps more immediate termination of an event.62 Finally, it should be pointed out that there are no signs that the incorporation of la has affected the two other members of the sub-class of termina-

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tive phasal verbs (verbi fasali terminativi, perifrasi terminative ‘terminative periphrases’, Bertinetto 2001: 156–257), which are terminare ‘finish, conclude’ and cessare ‘stop, suspend’. As inferred by the glosses, these two verbs are very close synonyms of finire and smettere, respectively, but they have slightly richer, more composite semantics and are much less frequent or, perhaps more accurately, they have a more restricted range of application (written language and/or higher, more specialized registers). That cessare and terminare may have been snubbed by la is nothing out of the ordinary, then, because grammaticalization targets more basic and more frequent items.

7.2.2. The farla type In standard Italian, besides the verbs discussed in the previous sub-section, we find some other relatively frequent verbs and verbal periphrases that exhibit a fully lexicalized (i.e., categorically obligatory) la. Some illustrative examples are given in (26)–(30), but see also (1)–(7) and refer to Table 42 on page 176 for the infinitive forms and glosses: (26) a. Era pieno di gioia soffocata dalla paura; ma ad ogni passo la paura se ne andava e la gioia gli dava voglia di ridere e forza per andare avanti. Ottantaquattro anni. Gliel’aveva fatta, a quelli di Casa Serena! (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “He was full of joy suffocated by fear; but at each step fear would go away more and more and joy would make him want to laugh and give him the strength to go on. Eighty-four years old! He had fooled them, the people at Casa Serena!” b. È solo un gran ragazzone, e se me la fa sporca, gli faccio saltar via la testa.(CORIS, NARRATRoma) “He’s just a big boy, and if he tricks me (lit. he makes it dirty to me), I’m going to blow up his head.” (27) a. “Tranquillo”, pensa, “Si è vestita così solo per te”, ma poi: “Svegliati, pirla, a chi la racconti?” (CORIS, STAMPASupp) “‘Stay calm’ he thinks, ‘She dressed like that just for you’, but then: ‘Wake up, you idiot, who are you trying to fool?’” b. A quel punto mi sono arreso. Ho la netta impressione che qualcuno non ce la racconti giusta. Già, ma chi? (CORIS, MON2001_04)

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“At that point I gave up. I have the clear impression that somebody is fooling us. But who?” (28) a. Prendiamo ad esempio Juventus - Porto. Match quasi a senso unico per i bianconeri padroni di casa che, al Delle Alpi, liquidano gli avversari con tre reti ad una. I tifosi portoghesi la prendono bene. In campo sono sportivi, fuori cercano di dimenticare la disfatta con qualche birra di troppo. (CORIS, MON2001_04) “Let’s take, for instance, Juventus – Porto; almost a one-way game for the hosting team who, at the Delle Alpi, defeat the adversaries three to one. The Portuguese fans take it well; they behave like sportsmen on the field and outside they try to forget the loss with one beer too many.” b. Brindo enfaticamente alla sua dimostrabile intelligenza, ma lui la prende male. Mi guarda negli occhi soffiandomi rabbia addosso, come fossero parole. (CORIS, MON2001_04) “I toast emphatically to his demonstrable intelligence but he takes it badly. He looks at me in the eyes hissing rage as if it were words.” (29) a. Ma - dice - sul voto non ha influito il mio essere disabile. Chi mi ha votato ha scelto me per come la penso, non perché sono su una sedia a rotelle. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “But – he says – my disability had no bearing on the vote. Those who voted me chose me for my opinions not because I’m on a wheelchair.” b. Mentre in una società totalitaria era perseguitato chi la pensava diversamente, in una società ricca di idee e di ideologie, […] sarà perseguitato chi non produce, chi non rema, ma pesa troppo sulla barca. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “While a totalitarian society persecutes the people who think differently, a society rich with ideas and ideologies, […] will persecute those who are unproductive, those who don’t row and put too much weigh on the boat.”

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(30) a. Tu non me la dai a bere, Aurora. Non sei capace di far finta di essere cinica e insensibile. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “You don’t fool me, Aurora. You can’t pretend to be cynical and insensitive. b. L’azienda, decisa a non darla vinta al dipendente, impugnò la sentenza e adesso la suprema Corte ha fatto ha fatto ripartire tutto quanto da zero. (CORIS, EPHEMOpusc) “The company, determined not to give in to the employee, impugned the sentence and now the Supreme Court has had everything restarted from the beginning.” The occurrence of feminine la in the predicates illustrated above appears less puzzling than in the case of smetterla and finirla because it can be related to the presence, at the conceptual level, of the overt feminine NP una/la cosa ‘a/the thing’, which acts as the direct object complement of the verb, as sketched in (31). (31) a. farlai [[Ø]i ADJ] b. darlai [[Ø]I ADJ] c. darlai [Ø]i [a bere] d. raccontai [[Ø]i ADJ] e. prenderlai [Ø]i ADV








fare [[una cosa]i ADJ] dare [[una cosa]i ADJ] dare [una cosa]i [a bere] raccontare[[una cosa]i ADJ] prendere [una cosa]i ADV

We can hypothesize that the nominal constituent DET + cosa (ADJ) came to replace a more specific object referent, for instance una/la storia ‘a/the story’ in the case of raccontare ‘tell’, una/la situazione ‘a/the situation’ in the case of prendere ‘take’, etc., due to a gradual process of generalization of the semantics of the object referent (Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer 1991: 128). This process of semantic generalization must have involved a transfer of the meaning of the original referent – which was fairly general to begin with and in some cases (e.g., raccontare ‘tell’) directly recoverable from the verb’s meaning – to the V + la + {ADJ/ADV/infinitival phrase} compound. This semantic transfer would then lead to full absorption of the semantic content of the relevant NP into the periphrasis and eventually to the loss of the object NP. Consequently, the direct object is unconditionally replaced by the clitic la, even when the main condition for pronominalization (i.e., previous overt reference in the discourse) is no longer met. This is possible because the semantic content of the NPs is suf-

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ficiently retained by the clitic la, which thus becomes an obligatory morpheme of the verb. The verbs in (31) have thus reached a more advanced stage of lexicalization than the phasal verbs discussed in the preceding section and in some cases the process has involved an additional element besides the clitic, such as an adjective (farla and raccontarla) or an adverb (prenderla). Farla and darla are of particular interest because they have also developed highly specialized meanings (i.e., farla ‘defecate’, darla ‘of a woman, have sex easily’, see examples [3b] and [6d] above). These meanings, however, are compositional and easily derivable once we posit a process of semantic specialization that assigns la two very specific referents (feces and the female genitalia, respectively), which are consistently expressed by feminine referents in Italian, regardless of register and/or geographic factors. The high degree of idiomaticization and specialization that characterizes these particular connotations can be linked to the fact that the intended referents of la are linguistic taboos. Assimilation of la into the verb may have been driven by a euphemizing force, which to some extent reminds us of the case of starcib and farci examined in Chapter 6. As for the core meaning of the source verb, it does not undergo any substantial alteration. A euphemizing process can be called in also for the predicates in (29) if we consider that they are overall characterized by a negative connotation because they express negative notions such as deceit and pretense, or disappointment (prenderla male). Even prenderla bene, which may suggest a positive implication, actually presupposes a negative situation: that is, from an objective perspective, the situation that is taken well is not good at all for subject. This suggests that the locus originis of verbs in la other than darla and farlab is to be identified in constructions denoting negative or negatively perceived states of affairs. In other words, the context was utterly relevant for determining the specific path the trajectory of grammaticalization and lexicalization embarked upon. Incorporation of la can be viewed, I will propose, as an instance of metonymy. The pronoun, an element contiguous to the nominal referent at the discourse level, always conceptually and in the environment of dislocation also physically, comes to replace the noun, thus serving the purpose of avoiding overt expression of a taboo concept. This type of metonymic relation is reminiscent of the euphemistic metonymies discussed in Koch (2004), an example of which is the Italian noun bustarella ‘bribe’, literally ‘small, little envelope’. These metonymies hinge heavily on weak implicatures because the contiguity or part/whole

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tures because the contiguity or part/whole relationship between the source concept (small envelope) and the target concept (bribe) is not obvious: envelopes can contain a variety of items and a bribe is certainly not the most likely among them. Furthermore, euphemistic metonymies are characterized by minimal or no expressivity, because they are euphemisms for taboos concepts and are purposely intended to hamper conceptual access by switching to more neutral concepts. Yet, exactly for this reason, they carry strong pragmatic effects (Koch 2004:35). The case of la, though, cannot be taken as a perfect parallel to bustarella because the source element lacks concrete referential value and, except for darla and farlab, so does the target concept. If we compare the verbs and periphrases in la examined in this section to their sources (i.e., the corresponding verbs and periphrases without la) we notice that the latter are transitive while the former are intransitive in that they are strictly incompatible with a direct object complement. As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, on the basis of this observation, la may be attributed the function of signaling a change of valence, comparable to the function of ci in sentirci and vederci. However, this hypothesis loses much of its appeal if we take into consideration the fact that la actually instantiates an incorporated direct object of the verb. In other words, la-verbs cannot take a direct object not because they are intransitive, but because they have an inherent one.

7.3. Verbs in sela In the introductory section, it was pointed out that verbs that show lexicalized la in conjunction with the clitic si are found in Italian. Table 44 (page 200) gives a tentative list of frequent sela-verbs. The list is considered tentative because it includes two verbs that are not found in De Mauro (1999– 2000) and may constitute regionalism or instances of italiano popolare. Even so, I have decided to include them because they are present in attested data. Moreover, some verbs/periphrases, which are essentially variants of verbs/periphrases present in (1999–2000), have been excluded because, although they are generally recognized and accepted by speakers, they have very limited distribution and could not be exemplified through attested data. Like the la of the verbs discussed in the previous section, the cluster sela is strictly obligatory (e.g., *(te la) prendi per niente ‘you take offence

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for nothing’). Notice that la incorporates to both ‘pseudo’ reflexive verbs (si-verbs, which are labeled intransitive in Table 44 following De Mauro 1999–2000) and verbs that lack a corresponding ‘reflexive’ form (e.g., filarsela < filare ‘run off’ vs. *filarsi). In this case, then, the process actually involves si and la concomitantly so that it is perhaps more appropriate to speak of si + la incorporation. Table 44. Verbs in sela.* VERB

GLOSS

SOURCE

FIRST ATTESTED

farselaa (common) farsela addosso/sotto (common, coll.)

intendersela (common)

‘have a close relationship (typically sexual and illicit) with somebody’ ‘do it in one’s pants’ (literally and metaphorically, i.e. ‘to be extremely scared’) – ‘make a deal (mostly illegal) with somebody – ‘have a (typically secret and illicit) romantic relationship with someone’ (close synonym of farselaa)

battersela (common, coll.) filarsela (common)

farlab

intendersi rec. (common) ‘come to an agreement; to get along’; (obsolete) ‘flirt’

battere tr. and intr. (fund.) ‘beat; to hit’ filare int. (fund.) ‘go away quickly’ ‘go away rapidly and/or in secret’

svignarsela (common) squagliarsela (common, coll.) godersela (common)

farsi tr. (common, vulgar) ‘have sex with somebody; to bang somebody’

‘live pleasantly’

svignare intr. (low usage)*; same as svignarsela squagliarsi intr.; same as squagliarsela godere, godersi (common) tr. ‘enjoy’

1934

no date

1310–1312

1646 1919

1837 1960

1793

Verbs in sela spassarsela (common)

‘spend time in a very funny way’

prendersela (common)

‘take offence’

cavarsela (common)

sentirsela (common)

tirarsela (common) credersela (low usage**) bersela (common) *

– ‘come out of grave danger (miraculously)’ – ‘overcome or avoid difficult a situation superare (cleverly)’ – ‘do well in something; to manage’ ‘be up to do something, typically hard (physically or psychologically) ‘give oneself airs’

‘believe to something untrue, foolish’

199

spassarsi intr. (common) ‘have fun’

1851

prendere tr. (fund.) ‘take’; prendersi tr. ‘take for oneself’

1707

cavare tr. (common) ‘to pull/take out’

1828

sentirsi int. (common) ‘feel’

tirarsi intr. (common)‘dress smartly’ credersi intr. (common)‘consider oneself highly’ bere, bersi ‘drink’

20th cent.

20th cent. 20th cent.

? indicates a speculative derivation. ‘Low usage’ (It. basso uso) indicates rare items still found with some frequency in twentieth century written and spoken language.

**

Looking at Table 44, we see that, as in the case of farla etc., no major semantic reanalysis of the verb sources comes into play. Obligatorification of (se)la has altered the core meaning of the source only minimally or not at all (e.g., farsi ~ farsela; svignare ~ svignarsela, filare ~ filarsela).63 Yet, it is not always possible to reconstruct the meaning of the sela-verbs compositionally by ‘summing up’ the meaning of the source and the meaning of the covert (intrinsic) referent of la – which, in essence, is characterizable as ‘a negative thing’ – because most of the source verbs are intransitive. A ‘compositional’ analysis, thus, is viable only for two types of verbs:

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1. Verbs that have a transitive source, precisely: farsela, battersela, godersela, prendersela, cavarsela and bersela. 2. Verbs whose source is an intransitive pseudo-reflexive that has a transitive non-reflexive counterpart, namely: sentirsela and credersela and tirarsela. For the remaining verbs, which, incidentally, are the highly synonymous filarsela, svignarsela, and squagliarsela, a scenario of analogical extension driven by battersela could be hypothesized in view of the fact that battersela is the oldest form. Two of the verbs in sela, however, show a higher degree of semantic divergence from their source: tirarsela and credersela. The scenario of ‘semantic absorption’ outlined above does not seem to apply to them because ‘a negative thing’ would not really work as inherent referent of la. Tirarsela and credersala cannot be decomposed as ‘to believe something negative about oneself’, definitely not from the subject perspective because somebody who se la crede is not a person who thinks badly or negatively of himself; quite the opposite, they have an unwarrantedly high and positive opinion of themselves. From a subject external perspective, though, credersela is indeed perceived negatively since if we state that somebody se la crede we clearly intend to convey a negative perception and express unfavorable judgment. The verb cavarsela, re-illustrated for convenience in (32), is also a somewhat difficult case because, even though it is a standard transitive, it does not seem to fit into the general pattern where la is the ‘remnant’ of an inherent direct object. (32) a. Me la cavo più o meno in tutte le materie. (CORIS, NARRATVari) “I manage more or less in all subjects (in school).” b. Se ci inseguono, siete morti tutti e tre. Se ce la caviamo, vi mollo appena tutto sarà finito. (CORIS, NARRATTrRo) “If they follow us, you three are dead. If we manage/get out, I’ll drop you as soon as everything’s finished.” Cavare is a transitive verb in the canonical sense, in that it takes a nominal direct object; but, as shown in (33), it also entails a source locative complement (i.e., the location from which the direct object is pulled out), which

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may be left implicit when inherently recoverable through the object referent (33b) or by the discourse context (33c). (33) a. A un certo punto avrei cavato [dalla tasca in petto]LOC [il portafogli]DO e mi sarei messo a contare sul tavolino i miei biglietti da mille. (Il fu Mattia Pascal, VII p. 39) “At some point, I would have pulled out my wallet from my breast pocket and started to count my one-thousand bills on the little table.” b. Intanto dovevo farmi cavare [il dente]DO, che ora non mi doleva più. (CODIS, NARRAT_7) “Meanwhile, I had to have my tooth pulled out, now that it didn’t hurt anymore.” c. Cavò [uno scatolino per mentine]DO1 [Ø]LOC1 e, [dallo scatolino]LOC2, [una pasticca]DO2 che non era una mentina. (CODIS, NARRAT_13) “He pulled out a small mint box and, from the box, a tablet that was not a mint.” As illustrated in (34), cavarsi can be construed as a reflexive ‘proper’, in which case it receives the specific meaning ‘come out, free oneself from a difficult, delicate, etc. situation’. The fact that a prepositional phrase headed by da ‘from’ is obligatory and that the verb allows only for a quite small number of nouns denoting unpleasant situations, suggests that we are dealing with a complex expression rather than a verb. (34) Lui ha pensato a cavarsi dai guai senza valutare gli effetti politici. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “He took care of getting out of troubles without thinking about the political consequences.” Cavarsi can also take a direct object, if the object is not co-referential (either totally or partially) with the subject, as shown in (35). Cavarsi differs from cavare with respect to the following: (i) the locative source is fixed, (i.e., one’s body or personal domain, e.g., clothing); and (ii) the object can be an abstract entity, most commonly a desire, need, hunger, etc.

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(35) a. Il vecchio mugnaio si cavò rispettosamente [il berretto.]DO (CODIS, NARRAT_7) “The old man took off his hat, respectfully.” b. Ha ricevuto una grossa eredità e cosi si è cavato [il capriccio]DO di comprarsi una Ferrari. “He inherited a large sum and so was able to satisfy his whim of buying a Ferrari.” Based on the examples above, a syntactic-semantic frame can be posited as in (36), which comprises both cavare and cavarsi. The only difference between the two is that the source entailed by cavarsi is co-referential to the subject. (36) Cavare/cavarsi ‘pull, take out’ a. NP1 cavare NP2 PP a’. NP1 cavarsi NP2 PP = NP1 b. NP1 = subject; NP2 = object; PP = oblique c. NP1 = agent; NP2 = patient; PP = source Notice that examples like (34b), which involve an abstract direct object, call for a construal of the subject referent as both the source from where the object is being removed (metaphorically, of course) and a benefactive. Given this state of affairs, it becomes indeed possible to relate the la of cavarsela to an inherent ‘negative thing/situation’ direct object NP.

7.4. Verbs in cela I will now briefly examine two very widespread predicates characterized by lexicalized la and ci (i.e., cela): farcela ‘manage; succeed’ (then, by extension, ‘live, survive’ and ‘die’ in negative constructions) and avercela ‘be angry, mad, upset’, which are illustrated in the examples in (37) and (38). (37) a. Non ce la faccio ad essere sempre il più bravo. (CORIS, STAMPAPeri) “I can’t be the best all the time.” b. Vedremo: la vettura è valida, il pilota è formidabile. La Ferrari potrà farcela, me lo auguro, lo spero. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot)

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“We’ll see: the car is good, the pilot exceptional. Ferrari can make it; I wish it does, I hope so.” c. Il momento della nascita si era però trasformato in un incubo: una delle due bimbe ce l’aveva fatta, l’altra era finita in rianimazione subito dopo il parto ed era morta il giorno dopo. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “The moment of birth though had turned out into a nightmare: one of the girls had made it, the other had ended up in reanimation right after the delivery and had died the next day.” (38) a. Gli italiani non ce l’hanno con i marocchini, ce l’hanno con i marocchini delinquenti. Che è tutta un’altra cosa. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “Italians don’t have a grudge against Moroccans; they have a grudge against criminal Moroccans. It’s a whole different story.” b. Ma De Mita ha ragione ad avercela su con i giornalisti. Anche gli amici piú cari lo tradiscono. (CORIS, NARRATVari) “But De Mita is right to be angry at journalists; even his dearest friends are betraying him.” c. Leggendo la prima lettera ho creduto a un semplice scherzo di cattivo gusto, ma visto che e il giorno dopo è arrivata la seconda, ho avuto i primi sospetti che qualcuno ce l’avesse con me. (CODIS, EPHEM_2) “Reading the first letter I thought it was just a bad joke but when a second one arrived the next day, I started to suspect that somebody was mad at me.” The status of averci and farci in contemporary Italian was discussed in Chapter 6, where we saw that averci is preferred to avere as a lexical verb (as opposed to the auxiliary avere). In view of the previous discussion, the analysis of avercela is quite straightforward: the la of avercela can be related to a fixed feminine direct object NP (e.g., averci rabbia ‘have ‘anger’), or simply to the negatively characterized indefinite qualcosa ‘something’, or una cosa ‘a thing’. In other words, the same scenario emerges as the one proposed in (21) for the other verbs in -la. The analysis of farcela appears to require additional investigation hence I will look at this verb superficially. It appears that farcela fits only partially into the broad scenario delineated above. In particular, it is not possible to establish a correlation between farcela and farci ‘play dumb’; fur-

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thermore, it is the only verb in la that carries an overall positive connotation since it denotes succeeding in doing something reasonably difficult, which typically implies the overcoming of some considerable obstacle. Possibly, farcela is related to the farci occurring in contexts such as those illustrated by the examples in (39). (39) a. Mah! Dio l’aveva fatto così: gliene aveva dato pochino di cuore. Che poteva farci, povero Berto. (Il fu Mattia Pascal, V 23) “Well, God had made him like that, He had given him just a little bit, of heart. What could he do, poor Berto.” b. I dirigenti dell’Arcigay della Toscana si rivolgono ai responsabili delle forze dell’ordine. Risposta: “La piazza del lago è aperta a tutti. Non possiamo farci niente”. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “The managers of the Arcigay of Tuscany address the police. The answer is: ‘The square on the lake is open to everybody. We cannot do anything’. c. Il pensionato, per l’ennesima volta, ha bussato alla porta dell’ufficio dell’assessore e, per l’ennesima volta, alle proteste si è sentito rispondere che quei lavori erano stati regolarmente autorizzati e che il Comune, quindi, non avrebbe potuto farci proprio nulla. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “The retired man, for the umpteenth time, knocked on the town councilor’s office door and, for the umpteenth time, got the same answers to his protests, that those works had been legally authorized by the town council, therefore, there was nothing at all he could do.” In the sentences in (39) ci refers to some relevant state of affairs, which is perceived as ‘being in need to be resolved’. In this specific case, the situations are understood as helpless, unsolvable but this is not necessarily the case. Although interrogative (39a) and negative (39b, c) constructions are by far the most common, sentences like so cosa farci ‘I know what to do about it’ and forse posso farci qualcosa ‘I may be able to something about it’ are indeed possible and not uncommon. Structurally speaking, ci is not obligatory in this context, but omitting it weakens considerably the inference that some solution to the state of affairs is at stake.

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7.5. Conclusion This chapter has examined the most common Italian verbs characterized by incorporation of la. It has been proposed that lexicalized (i.e., fully obligatory) la be viewed as an object-like (clitic) marker derived from the pronominalization of a fixed generic feminine direct object NP, which was originally selected by the verb or construction, had minimal lexical content but a strong negative connotation, and eventually disappeared after having transferred its intrinsic negative value to the clitic-verb compound. This process constitutes a composite phenomenon that can be broken up into two complementary sub-processes: (i) full obligatorification of the clitic, which becomes a semantic-pragmatic marker of subjectivity; and (i) lexicalization; that is, the emergence and the introduction into the lexicon of the verb-clitic-(adjective and/or adverb) construction as an independent individual item. The most interesting aspect of this process lies, perhaps, in the fact that it appears to challenge to some extent the notion of semantic bleaching because the clitic does not lose semantic content; rather, it ends up acquiring specific (nuances of) meaning depending on the verb or verb construction to which it attaches. Finally, it has been proposed that incorporation of la be considered a metonymic development triggered by a euphemizing force. That is, the verbs in la have been claimed to be comparable to euphemistic metonymies like Italian bustarella ‘bribe’, where a neutral source concept is employed to refer to a taboo target (Koch 2004). I will end this chapter illustrating a metonymic phenomenon of lexicalization that corresponds very closely the one proposed for the verbs in la and involves the verbs dare ‘give’ and prendere ‘take’ – which, incidentally, embody the event frame of transfer in its entirety – and the third plural feminine direct object clitic le. The outcomes of the development are thus darle ‘beat up’ and prenderle ‘be beaten’, both physically and in the sense of ‘defeat’ and ‘be defeated’.64 (40) a. L’arbitro è Mitch Halpern, cioè lo stesso che ha diretto l’incontro del novembre scorso, quando Tyson le ha prese, e loro non vogliono che la storia si ripeta. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “The referee is Mitch Halpern, the same one who refereed last November match, when Tyson was beaten (defeated), and they don’t want this to happen again.”

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b. Bisogna guardare l’intervista televisiva di Magalli a Del Piero. Il quale ride gioioso, forse non gli hanno detto che la Juve le ha prese di nuovo. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “You must watch Magall’is television interview to Del Piero, who laughs gaily; perhaps nobody told him that Juve lost again badly.” c. Così Giovanni, senza la madre, era cresciuto a forza di calci nel culo e a manate sulla testa. Suo padre quando beveva forte gliele dava con la cinghia di cuoio. (CORIS, NARRATRacc) “So that Giovanni, without a mother, had grown up with kicks in the ass and slaps on the head. When he had drunk a lot, his father would beat him with a leather belt.” d. Lavorano come buttafuori. Ed è stato con loro che Pironti e i suoi amici se le sono date di santa ragione. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “They work as bouncers; and it was with them that Pironti and his friends beat up each other savagely.” The le of darle and prenderle is to be related to nominal referents as botte, bastonate, legnate ‘blows, thrashing’. The process is identical to that posited for darla and farlab: the clitic is linked to a very specific referent and the ‘selection’ of le is due to the fact that very general nouns denoting blows are consistently feminine in Italian (both in the standard and in the dialects).

Chapter 8 Clitics or affixes?

8.1. Introduction In Chapter 1 (§ 1.1), it was pointed out that the morphosyntactic status of clitics has been a topic of active discussion in the linguistics literature, at least since the appearance of Zwicky (1977) seminal article. Nonetheless, a consensus has not been reached yet about the definition and categorization of clitics. Indeed, the heterogeneous nature of these elements, combined to their complex and often seemingly idiosyncratic behavior, have led to the formulation of interesting definitions of clitics, which nicely highlight the problematic status of these bound morphemes. An interesting one is the ‘working’ definition proposed by Sadock (1995: 260): “A clitic is a [sic] element whose distribution linguists cannot comfortably consign to a single grammatical component.” Nor has the issue been resolved as to whether there is enough evidence for positing a unified category of clitics; that is, whether clitics should be granted independent morphosyntactic status, or whether they should instead be integrated in the same category as affixes, or perhaps grouped with words. Establishing the morphosyntactic status of Italian pronominal clitics is relevant to the analysis of the grammaticalization and lexicalization process they have been undergoing because doing so makes it possible to clarify which stages of grammaticalization clitics have reached synchronically. If we are able to determine that in contemporary Italian pronominal clitics have undeniably become inflectional, objective (in particular, accusative) affixes, which are equal in terms of status to the verbal affixes of tense/aspect and person/number, we can then claim that their grammaticalization has advanced towards the last stages of the continuum. Such a claim cannot be made, at least not categorically, if differences still exist between pronominal clitics and the canonical verbal affixes found in Italian. Developing a theoretical account of the placement and distribution of Italian pronominal clitics would go far beyond the scope of this work, which is to examine, primarily from a descriptive perspective, the stages of grammaticalization Italian clitic pronouns may have reached and the patterns of lexicalization that lead to the emergence of verbi procomplementari. Therefore, the main goal of this chapter is to examine the morphosyn-

208 Chapter 9: Clitics or affixes? tactic status and function(s) of the grammaticalized/lexicalized clitics discussed in Chapters 5, 6 and 7. However, I will also discuss the status of ‘true’ pronominal clitics in order to show that significant differences exist between these two types of clitics. This contrast between pronominal clitics and lexicalized clitics highlights, I believe, the ‘continuum’ nature of grammaticalization, and most importantly the following claim made by Klausenburger (2000: 103): There is ... a conflict and tension always in existence, between a (unidirectional) evolutionary process and the extant continuum … the determination of the ‘completion’ of grammaticalization [is] especially difficult, as it may not really exist, and a new cycle of grammaticalization may certainly commence without a completion.

The chapter is organized as follows: in Section 8.2, I review some of the numerous arguments that have been adduced in support of affixal (inflectional) status of Italian clitics – in particular by Monachesi (1996a, 1996b, 1999), who has researched this matter thoroughly and has extended her analysis to all Romance languages (Monachesi 2005) – in order to show that they are not sound enough to definitely rule out a ‘clitic’ analysis. In particular, I will argue that the idiosyncratic properties that have been presented as incontrovertible evidence in favor of an affix analysis loose much of their idiosyncratic nature when examined from a diachronic and semantic pragmatic perspective, so that in the end they are quite less conclusive than they might appear at first. In Section 8.3, I propose that a grammaticalization approach allows us to achieve a more comprehensive representation of the morphological status and function(s) of Italian clitics, especially because it shows that they do not represent a uniform category. More precisely, grammaticalization bridges over a range of differences, corresponding to different grammaticalization stages, between clitics that synchronically retain full anaphoric value and those clitics (i.e., ci, ne, si and la) that still function as canonical pronominal forms in some environments but have lost their anaphoric function in others. Thus, two major groups of clitics can be posited for Italian, which differ significantly in terms of the range of morphosyntactic functions they cover. On one hand, we find clitics that only function as standard anaphoric/cataphoric elements or discourse pragmatics marker in dislocated constructions, for instance li, le, lo and second person plural vi. On the other hand, we have clitics that, in addition to these two functions, can also carry more strictly grammatical functions (e.g., ‘locative’ ci and si) or even lexico-pragmatic value (ci, ne and la). The differences between these two

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major groups, though, are not clear-cut and would not be easily captured if we subsume all clitics under a single affixal category. Furthermore, Italian clitics differ crucially from canonical Italian affixes, both derivational and inflectional, with respect to their placement. Affixes occur in a rigorously fixed position (prefixes vs. suffixes), whereas clitics alternate between proclitic or enclitic position depending on the morphosyntactic nature of the verb host (see Chapter 3, § 3.2). The fact that clitics are the only bound morphemes of Italian characterized by a range of diverse morphosyntactic and semantic-pragmatic functions and by linearization flexibility substantiates the assumption that they be considered an autonomous morphological class, separate from that of affixes. In Section 8.4, I focus on the morphological function of the clitics that have become lexicalized formatives and attempt at establishing whether they display primarily inflectional properties, derivational properties, or a combination of both. I conclude that Italian lexicalized clitics offer strong evidence in favor of the claim put forward by Bybee (1985) that the opposition inflectional vs. derivational can be viewed as a morphological continuum rather than a clear-cut dichotomy.

8.2. Italian clitic pronouns as inflectional affixes Monachesi (1996a, 1996b, 1999, 2005) argues that Italian monosyllabic object clitics should not be treated as independent syntactic forms but are better analyzed as inflectional affixes carrying featural information,65 which combine with the verb host as the result of morphophonological processes (cf. also Bonet 1995). Monachesi claims that extensive evidence in support of the affixal status of Italian clitics comes from the fact that, when we apply some of the criteria proposed by Zwicky and Pullum (1983) to distinguish between clitics and affixes, Italian clitics appear to behave like affixes.

210 Chapter 9: Clitics or affixes? (1)

Criteria for distinguishing clitics from affixes (Zwicky and Pullum 1983: 503–504) a. Selectional properties: Clitics can exhibit a low degree of selection with respect to their hosts, while affixes exhibit a high degree of selection with respect to their stems b. Combinatory arbitrariness: Arbitrary gaps in the set of combinations are more characteristic of affixed words than of clitic groups. c. Morphological idiosyncrasy: Morphophonological idiosyncrasies are more characteristic of affixed words than of clitic groups d. Semantic idiosyncrasy: Semantic idiosyncrasies are more characteristic of affixed words than of clitic groups e. Syntactic behavior: Syntactic rules can affect words, but cannot affect clitic groups f. Attachment properties: Clitics can attach to material already containing clitics, but affixes cannot

My main objective in this section is to review how the criteria in (1) have been applied to the Italian clitics in order to prove their affixal status. My conclusion will be that a ‘clitic’ analysis remains feasible because the arguments proposed in favor of the affix analysis appear to be less substantial and uncontroversial than it has been claimed. Showing that the evidence offered in support of the affixal status of Italian clitics is at best inconclusive is, in my opinion, quite important because it leads to a reevaluation of the claim that clitics find no place within morphological theory as an independent morphological/morphosyntactic category.

8.2.1. Selectional restriction with respect to the host We saw in Chapter 3 that Italian clitics attach exclusively to verbs and to the presentative particle ecco ‘here’.66 With respect to criterion (a), then, Italian clitics do seem to side with affixes because they exhibit a high degree of host selectional restriction, much higher, for example, than English (auxiliary) clitics such as ’s ‘is’ and ’ve ‘have’, which can attach to a variety of lexical categories (see Zwicky and Pullum 1983: 504). However, recall from Chapter 1 (§ 1.1) that Zwicky (1977) distinguishes between two main clitic categories, namely simple clitics, such as English reduced auxiliaries and pronouns, and special clitics, namely the unstressed pronouns of modern Romance languages, which categorically

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select a verb (or another pronominal clitic in the case of clitic sequences) as their host (see also Halpern 1998). If we take into account Zwicky’s distinction, restrictedness of host selection by itself cannot be considered a sufficient criterion to grant these bound morphemes affixal status.

8.2.2. Arbitrary gaps in clitic sequences Italian clitic pronouns have been judged to be more affix-like also with respect to criterion (b) based on the fact that a number of arbitrary gaps, that is, unjustified and unaccauntable absences are found among the possible clitic combinations. (Besides Monachesi 1998, 1999, on the issue of (im)possible clusters, see also Wanner 1977, 1987; Evans, Lepschy, Newman, and Watson 1978; Lepschy and Lepschy 1984; Gerlach 1998; Cordin and Calabrese 2001, among many others) Thus, it has been claimed that sequences comprising the third person singular indirect object clitic gli67 and a first or second person direct object clitic, either singular or plural (i.e., mi, ti, ci, vi, as shown in [2a]), are not acceptable (yet see Evans, Lepschy, Newman, and Watson 1978; Lepschy and Lepschy 1984 for the opposite position!). Instead, tonic pronominal forms must be used in this case, either for the indirect object only (2b), or for both direct and indirect (2c). (2)

a. *Carlo gliIO (mi/ti/ci/vi)DO ha presentato. “Carlo introduced me/youSG/us/youPL to him/her/her.” b. Carlo mi/ti/ci/vi ha presentato a lui/a lei. c. Carlo ha presentato me/te/noi/voi a lui/a lei.

On the other hand, sequences consisting of 3SG IO and 3SG DO (also reflexive) clitics are perfectly (and unanimously) acceptable, as we see in (3) and (4) respectively. (3)

a. Carlo glieIO-(lo/la)DO ha presentato/a. “Carlo introduced himi/heri to himj/herj.” b. Carlo glie-(li/le)DO ha presentati/e. “Carlo introduced themM/themF to him/her.”

(4)

a. Carlo gliIO siDO, RFLX è presentato. “Carlo introduced himself to him/her.”

212 Chapter 9: Clitics or affixes? b. Loro gliIO siDO, RFLX sono presentati/e. “They introduced themselves to him/her.” In addition, it has been pointed out repeatedly that the 1SG IO–2SG DO sequence in (5) is open to discrepant acceptability judgments and opposite interpretations. (5)

?Mi ti ha raccomandato. a. “S/he recommended you to me.” b. “S/he recommended me to you.”

Sentences like the one in (5) are usually, although by no means categorically, perceived as unacceptable or rather ‘though to process’ by native speakers. If they are accepted, the clitic cluster above can receive either the ‘expected’ interpretation IO–DO (5a) or the DO–IO interpretation (5b). In fact, the majority of speakers remain undecided between both interpretations. The issue of which acceptable clusters can be obtained from the combination of first/second, singular/plural, direct and indirect clitics is even more complex than suggested by (5), as clearly evinced by the scenario in (6) and (7) (based on Monachesi 1999; but again, cf. Evans, Lepschy, Newman, and Watson 1978; Lepschy and Lepschy 1984 for a different position). (6)

Acceptability judgments about the possible sequences involving 1SG/PL and 2SG/PL a. ?Mi vi ha raccomandato. “S/he recommended youPL to me.” ~ “S/he recommended me to youPL.” b. ?Ci ti ha raccomandato. “S/he recommended youSG to us.” ~ “S/he recommended youSG to us.” c. *Ci vi raccomandato. “S/he recommended youPL to us/us to youPL.”

(7)

Acceptability judgments about the possible sequences involving 2SG/PL and 1SG/PL a. *Ti mi ha raccomandato. “S/he recommended me to youSG.”

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b. ?Ti ci raccomandato. “S/he recommended us to youSG.” ~ “S/he recommended youSG to us.” c. *Vi mi ha raccomandato. “S/he recommended me to youPL/youPL to me.” d. ?Vi ci ha raccomandato. “S/he recommended us to youPL.” ~ “She recommended youPL to us.” The acceptability and interpretation contrasts shown in (6) and (7) cannot be taken as conclusive evidence (in the form of random paradigmatic holes) in favor of the affixal status of clitics because they are highly subjective. Divergent, indeed quite inconsistent, grammaticality judgments are registered both across speakers and within the same speaker; and discrepancy and confusion emerge with respect to interpretation as well. Moreover, for some of the sequences above, the degree of acceptability seems to be linked a specific interpretation; that is, some sequences are more (or only) acceptable if interpreted as direct-indirect object sequences while others are ruled out tout court. When approaching this issue from a semantic-pragmatic perspective, we must realize that we are dealing with combinations that are characterized by a relatively low frequency of occurrence, both concrete and potential, due to the limited number of verbs that can actually select them. In other words, we are dealing with a weak conceptual schema, as well as with a weak construction type. The most common verbs involved are probably presentare ‘introduce’ and raccomandare ‘recommend’, although neither actually shows a relevant occurrence frequency. In LIP, for instance, we find 190 occurrences of presentare (which include the reflexive form) and 35 occurrences of raccomandare, 21 of which are actually instances of the fixed expression mi raccomando (< raccomandarsi ‘to entrust oneself to somebody’), as in: (8)

a. Le verdure sono nel frigo, il pane nel freezer. Non dimenticare le medicine, mi raccomando! Ci rivediamo lunedì mattina. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “The vegetables are in the fridge, the bread is in the freezer. Don’t forget the medications, please! See youMonday morning.”

214 Chapter 9: Clitics or affixes? b. Se ci sono riusciti gli altri, puoi farlo anche tu, Andrea. Aspetto una risposta, mi raccomando. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “If the others made it, you can do it too, Andrea. I’ll be waiting for an answer, don’t forget.” Of course, theoretically speaking, there are definitely more verbs that can select these specific clitic combinations, since it practically includes any verb of transfer (e.g., dare ‘give’, consegnare ‘deliver’, affidare ‘entrust’, etc.). Practically though, the set would reduce to predicates that denote abstract metaphorical transfer (i.e., the presentare and raccomandare type), due to obvious socio-culturally based conceptualization constraints. That is, given a transfer image schema (as, for instance, in Langacker 1987, 1991) that involves human participants, the ‘preferred’ conceptualization is going to be one that entails abstract rather than concrete transfer because physical transfer of individuals is not a common fact in our society. Thus, if we reevaluate the acceptability judgments given in (6) and (7) from a strictly conceptualization perspective, they appear in fact quite logical. It should be asked, then, whether the gaps observed among possible clitic sequences are indeed arbitrary or simply follow from semantic, cognitive and/or pragmatic factors. Finally, it must be pointed out that some of the combinations illustrated in (6) and (7) are found in OI, where they were interpreted either as indirect-direct object (9) or as direct-indirect object sequences (10). (9)

a. Se dare miIO tiDO degnano, menami a lo mosteri/ e sposami davanti da la iente. (Cielo d’Alcamo Contrasto 68, 13th century, in Contini 1995:180) “If they consent to give you to me, take me to church/ and marry me in front of the people.” b. Oimè, figliuolo mio, lume de gli occhi miei, perché la ci hai così fatta, perché ti se’ portato con esso noi così crudelmente? Tu vedevi lagrimare il padre tuo e me, misera, e non ciIO tiDO mostravi? (Leggenda Aurea, Anonymous 1400; from OVI) “Alas, my son, light f my eyes, why did you d this to us, why did you behave so cruelly to us? You saw your father and myself, poor me, cry and didn’t show yourself to us.”

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(10) a. E priego quelli iddii, i quali, vinti da' molti prieghi, graziosamente tiDO ciIO donarono, che essi ti guardino e conservino sempre, e a noi tosto con allegrezza ti rendino. (Filoloco, 73 3) “And I pray to those gods, who, won by many prayers, kindly gave you to us, that they may look over you and always preserve you, and at once happily give you back to us.” b. Di me non puoi dubitare che amore d’altra donna miDO tiIO tolga. (Commedia delle ninfe fiorentine, p. 101) “About me you cannot doubt that another woman’s love will take me away from you.” The existence of these clitic sequences in OI weakens the assumption that they are truly arbitrary gaps. Rather, it can be hypothesized that these combinations, which as I just mentioned are not strongly entrenched conceptually, have declined and/or disappeared because of their weakness and their ambiguity, that is, their ambivalent IO– DO ~ DO–IO interpretation. Arbitrary gaps have been claimed to exist also at the level of possible participle-clitic combinations, in participio assoluto ‘absolute participle’ constructions (Benincà and Cinque 2001; Monachesi 1999). (11) a. Il libro dato-mi/-ti/-gli/-le/-ci/-vi da Carlo. “The book given to me/ youSG/ him, them/ her/ us/ youPL by Carlo.” b. I compensi spettanti-mi/-ti/-gli/-le/-ci/-vi. (Monachesi 1999: 27; Benincà and Cinque 2001: 609) “The compensation belonging to me/ youSG/ him, them/ her/ us/ youPL.” The examples in (11) show that any indirect object clitic can attach to both past (10a) and present participles (11b). In contrast, the examples in (12) indicate that restrictions apply to the possible combinations of present participles and direct object clitics. (12) a. Gli argomenti riguardanti-mi/-ti/-ci/-vi. “The topics concerning me/ youSG/ us/ youPL.” b. Gli argomenti riguardanti-*lo/-*la/-?li/-*le. (Monachesi 1999: 27; Benincà and Cinque 2001: 609) “The topics concerning him/her/themM/themF.”

216 Chapter 9: Clitics or affixes? A sharp contrast seems to emerge between first and second person DO clitics (12a) and third person DO clitics (12b), in that the former can combine freely with a present participle whereas the latter cannot. Moreover, (12b) reveals a puzzling inconsistency at the level of acceptability, since riguardanteli ‘concerning themM’ is supposedly more acceptable than the remaining combinations The contrast between (12a) and (12b) is actually less radical then it has been claimed because native speakers strongly (and consistently) tend to reject this type of participial constructions per se; and if ‘forced’ to use them, speakers replace the clitic pronoun with its tonic counterpart, as shown in (13). (13) L’argomento riguardante me/te/ lui/lei/noi/voi/ loro. “The topics concerning me/you/him/her/us/youPL/them.” The ungrammaticality, or low level of acceptability, of absolute present participial constructions that include a direct object clitic most likely stems from the highly marginal status of this type of structure in CSI, where it is restricted to highly formal, mostly bureaucratic registers (Benincà and Cinque 2001: 604). That these constructions have indeed a very restricted status in CSI is confirmed by the fact that no occurrences of the constructions in (12) are found either in LIP or in CORIS, which include samples of (highly) formal texts (see Chapter 1, § 1.4).68 A relative clause is normally used instead, for both present and past participle absolute constructions: (14) a. L’argomento riguardantemi/ riguardante me.  L’argomento che mi riguarda. “The topic that concerns me.” b. Il libro datomi.  Il libro che mi è stato dato/che mi hanno dato. “The book that was given to me/they gave me.” The incompatibility of present participle and third person direct object clitics could also result from the fact that the present participle forms that occur most frequently (hence being more entrenched in the linguistic inventory of speakers) are those that have become nominal forms. Since they function as adjectives or nouns (e.g., amante: è l’amante di Carlo ‘s/he is Carlo’s lover’, un motociclista amante del rischio ‘a motorcyclist who loves risks’), they reject clitics by definition (Benincà and Cinque 2001: 604). If this is the case, the examples in (11) are simply a further indication

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of compliance to criterion (a), that is, a high degree of selection with respect to the host. In conclusion, only one type of arbitrary gap is possibly found among the indirect-direct clitic sequences allowed in Italian, namely co-occurrence of gli and 1/2 DO (i.e., mi, ci, ti, vi).

8.2.3. Idiosyncratic behavior Let us now look at how Italian clitics behave with respect to criteria (c) and (d), which state that morphophonological and semantic idiosyncrasies are more characteristic of lexical items that comprise affixes than of clitic groups.

8.2.3.1. Morphological idiosyncrasies Zwicky and Pullum (1983: 505) point out that morphophonological idiosyncrasies are quite common among inflectional formations and give examples from English irregular plurals (e.g., dice, oxen, feet), past verbal forms (e.g., slept, thought, went), and superlative adjectives (e.g., best, worst). Conversely, host-clitic sequences do not appear to exhibit morphophonological idiosyncrasies because the morphophonological shape of the host is not altered by clitic attachment, although phonological and morphological properties of the hosts can trigger clitic allomorphy. In other words, there are “no cases where some particular host-clitic combination shows an unexpected phonological form” (Zwicky and Pullum 1983: 500 [emphasis mine, CR]) Deletion of the final vowel of direct object clitics before verbs that begin with a vowel has been viewed as a morphophonological idiosyncrasy and has been taken as positive evidence for the affix status of Italian clitics (e.g., Monachesi 1999: 28, 2005: 55). (15) a. Dunque che colpa ne aveva lui se qualche anno prima l’aveva amata e ora non l’amava più? (CODIS, NARRAT_13) “But how was it his fault if he had loved her a few years earlier and now didn’t love her any more?”

218 Chapter 9: Clitics or affixes? b. Quando giravo l’Europa leggendo le mie poesie, Anna era sempre al mio fianco, si sedeva in prima fila e m’ascoltava. (CODIS, NARRAT_13) “When I used to travel around Europe reading my poetry, Anna was always by my side; she would sit in the first row and listen to me.” However, even though final vowel deletion applies quite consistently, especially in the case of third person pronouns, it is by no means obligatory (Serianni 1988: 212–213): (16) a. Lui la amava davvero, e credo che quello che le successe gli abbia davvero spezzato il cuore.(CODIS, NARRAT_13) “He really loved her, and I think that what happened t her broke his heart.” b. La zia era stanca, e io cercai di distogliere la mamma dal farle visita, ma non mi ascoltava. (CODIS, NARRAT_2) “My aunt was tired and I tried to dissuade my mom from paying her a visit, but she wouldn’t listen to me.” Final vowel deletion in the environment of a following vowel affects a variety of items, which would not necessarily be classified as affixes. For instance, it applies to the following: (a) Determiners: l’ospedale ‘the hospital’, un’avventura ‘an adventure’ (b) The adjectives bello ‘beautiful’ and buono ‘good’: bell’avventura ‘nice adventure’, buon’amica ‘good friend (c) The indefinite adjectives nessuno ‘no, any’, qualche ‘some’: nessun’emozione ‘no emotion’, qualch’altra cosa ‘some other thing’ (d) The prepositions di ‘of’ and da ‘from’: tasso d’interesse ‘interest rate’, prova d’amore ‘proof of love’.69 Determiners, demonstratives and prepositions/complementizers could be considered affix-like elements; but it is less clear that adjectives should be treated as such. The point is that there seems to be nothing idiosyncratic about clitic vowel deletion: it is simply the result of a phonological process – incidentally, possibly one of the most uncontroversial and most widespread cross-linguistically – which is triggered by a phonological property of the host; namely, the fact that it begins with a vowel. The morphophonological

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shape of the verb host remains unaltered, in absolute conformity to what is stated by criterion (c); namely, that “[h]osts are unaffected by these [i.e., ’s < is and ’ve < have, CR] clitics, and the clitics themselves have allomorphs distributed by general rules referring to phonological and morphological properties of the hosts.” (Zwicky and Pullum 1983: 505) The only instance in which clitic attachment results in alteration of the morphophonological shape of the verb host is in case of enclisis to infinitives (e.g., per vederlo ‘to see it’ < per vedere + lo). Loss of final vowel (or syllable) in the environment of following consonant is traditionally referred to as troncamento ‘truncation’ in Italian grammar. It is true that troncamento is lexically conditioned in that it applies only to infinitives, a small number of adjectives (una gran(de) perdita ‘a big loss’), and title nouns (Signor(e)/Dottor(e) Rossi ‘Mr./Dr. Rossi’), and certain masculine determiners (i.e., indefinite article and adjective: un/nessun amico ‘a/no friendM’ vs. un’/nessun’amica ‘a/no friendF’). Still, it is by no means restricted to pronoun enclisis. (17) a. L’Inter è insomma destinata a veder crescere gli incassi di una decina di miliardi l’anno. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “Inter is then destined to see grow its proceeds an average of ten billion per year.” b. Ogni tanto bisognava cambiare pelle, non rinunciando mai (a priori) a macchinoni di grande cilindrata, al computer portatile della nuova generazione e al mangiar bene. (CORIS, NARRATVari) “Once in a while it was necessary to change skin, but never renouncing (a priori) to big cars with powerful engines, the laptop computer of the new generation, and eating well.” Two other morphophonological idiosyncrasies that have been widely attributed to Italian clitics are: (a) the change -i  -e that affects clitic endings when they are followed by another clitic that begins with l- or nshown in (18); and (b) the use masculine gli instead of feminine le in case of clitic sequences illustrated in (19). (18) a. *Ti/te lo dirà. “S/he will tell it to you.” b. *Mi/me ne parlerà. “S/he will talk to me about it.”

220 Chapter 9: Clitics or affixes? c. *Gli-/glie-la comprerà. “S/he will buy it to him/her/them.” (19) *Le/glie-lo dirà. “S/he will tell it to her.” The use of masculine gli in (18) can be accounted for in terms of grammaticalization, as the result of gender neutralization (see Chapter 4, § 4.4.1). Besides, we have seen how the use of gli (or its variants li, le) as 3IO feminine is in fact a very old phenomenon. As for the pronomi doppi allomorphy, it can be explained diachronically as well (see Chapter 4 § 4.3). The last morphophonological idiosyncrasy typically proposed in support of affixal status is the non-occurrence of sequences comprising homophonous clitics, such as the impersonal–reflexive clitic sequence. As shown in (20), reflexive si surfaces as ci in this case. (20) Ci si sveglia che è ancora buio, *si si/ci si veste in modo totalmente diverso dagli altri giorni, [...] , si fa colazione in maniera diversa, ci si rincuora con un bicchiere di acquavite. (CORIS, NARRATTrRo) “One wakes up when it’s still dark, gets dressed completely differently from any ther day, [...], cheers up with a glass of brandy.” Following Castelfranchi and Parisi (1976) and Lepschy and Lapschy (1984), but contra Wanner (1977), Monachesi (1999:2 9) correctly points out that explaining the ban on impersonal si-reflexive si sequence in terms of phonological rules is problematic because an explanation along these lines cannot account for why ci is selected over other clitics to replace si. She, however, proposes that selection of ci in this context derives from the fact that impersonal si can acquire a first person plural interpretation (p. 104), which would suggest that non-occurrence of the impersonal-reflexive clitic sequence is not a morphophonological idiosyncrasy after all. The other unacceptable combinations of homophonous clitics are *ci1PL DO ciLOC and *vi1PL DO viLOC . The latter can be ‘repaired’ by replacing locative vi with locative ci but the former is beyond repair. (21) a. Non vi ciLOC posso accompagnare, all’aereoporto. “I cannot take you to the airport.”

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b. Carlo non ci/*ci ci LOC /*ci viLOC può accompagnare, all’aereoporto. “Carlo cannot take us there, to the airport.” The unacceptability of *vi1PL DO viLOC has actually been accounted for by reference to a general ban against locative vi-accusative clitic sequences (i.e., another case of arbitrary gap) illustrated in (22), which would also account for the irreparability of (b). (22) a. Mi ci/*vi accompagna Carlo. “Carlo takes me there.” b. Ti ci/*vi accompagna Carlo. “Carlo takes you there.” Then again, if *vi1PL DO viLOC do not exist because viLOC is incompatible with 1/2 DO clitics, we no longer have a morphophonological idiosyncrasy after all. Furthermore, the incompatibility between vi LOC and 1/2 DO clitics, would have to be a synchronic phenomenon: (23) a. Allora disse infra ssuo cuore T.: “Io veggio bene che lo ree non mi vi manda se nnoe perch’io vi muoia”. (Anonymous, Il Tristano Riccardiano 1300, p. 88; from OVI) “Then T. said to himself: ‘I can see very well that the king is sending me there just so that I die.” b. Io Marco Polo vi dimorai 5 mesi per lo mal tempo che mi vi tenea. (Marco Polo, Il Milione 14th century, p. 246; from OVI) “I, M. P., lived there for five months due to the bad weather that kept me there.” That the ungrammaticality of homophonous sequences (*ci ci, *vi vi) is not to be attributed to a lexical ban on homonym/homophone doublets seems to be supported by (24), which shows that sequences of two homophonous lexical items can occur in Italian. (24) a. Carlo ha preso tre tre in matematica. “Carlo got three threes in math.” b. E poi questo fatto di insistere sul rosso, come se una rosa rosa fosse una specie di scherzo di madre natura, e il suo essere rosa la rendesse meno rosa di un’altra. (CORIS, MON2001_04)

222 Chapter 9: Clitics or affixes? “Then this thing about insisting on red, as if a pink rose were some kind of joke from Mother Nature, and the fact that of being pink made her less of a rose.” c. ‘Condivido le parole di mio nipote’, dice. ‘Se se l’è presa con i politici, tra quelli ci sono anch’io’. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “‘I agree with my nephew’s words’, he says. ‘If he got mad at the politicians, I am among them.’” There is an important difference though between the homophones in (24) and the homophonous sequence locative ci vs. personal ci. The former truly are separate lexical items and belong to different grammatical categories:70 determiner/quantifier vs. noun (24a), noun vs. adjective (24b), and conjunction vs. reflexive pronoun (24c) whereas locative ci/vi and personal ci/vi constitute single lexical entries that carry out both locative and personal pronominal function.

8.2.3.2. Semantic idiosyncrasies Criterion (d) proposed by Zwicky and Pullum (1983) states that semantic idiosyncrasies are more characteristic of affixed words than of clitic groups. This criterion is not relevant to our case since there is never a difference in meaning between the verb-clitic sequences and the corresponding verb-tonic pronoun sequences, nor do clitic pronouns alter in any way the semantics of their hosts. As we saw in Chapter 3, things are different in the case of fully grammaticalized clitics such as ci, ne, and la, which can alter the meaning of their host (for instance, entrare ‘enter’ vs. entrarci ‘be relevant for/involved into’, fare ‘do’ vs. farla ‘trick’, etc.). Thus, lexicalized clitics seem to show the idiosyncratic semantics typical of affixes while true pronominal clitics do not.

8.2.4. Syntactic rules Criterion (e) states that syntactic rules can affect (inflected) words but cannot affect clitic groups; that is, clitic groups are not treated as units by syntactic operations. The evidence that Monachesi (1999) presents relating to this criterion comes from coordination and verb left-detachment (i.e. leftdislocation) facts. Referring to what has been noticed for French by Kayne

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(1975), she points out that if two coordinated verbs share the same clitic, omission of the clitic in one of the conjuncts leads to ungrammaticality, as shown in (25). (25) a. Carlo lo preparerà e *(lo) mangerà. “Carlo will prepare it and will eat it.” b. Carlo è uscito per comprarlo e portarlo/*portare a Mario. “Carlo went out to buy it and bring it to Mario. c. Carlo lo ha preparato e *(lo) ha mangiato. “Carlo prepared it and ate it.” Notice, though, that omission of the second clitic is possible in the case of coordination of two past participles (26a); moreover, the clitic need not be repeated in each conjunct in the case of coordination of X and ri-X verbs (26b) but not in the case of non-finite forms (26c). (26) a. Carlo lo ha preparato e mangiato. b. Carlo lo ascolta e riascolta, quel disco. “Carlo listens and re-re-listens to it, that record.”’ c. Carlo ha promesso di legger-lo e rilegger-lo (*leggere e rileggerlo, *leggerlo e rileggere) quell’articolo finché non l’avrà capito bene. “Carlo promised to read and re-read it, that article, until he gets it well.” Supposedly, the exception shown in (26b) does not affect the general claim that clitics cannot have wider scope over coordination due to the marginality (i.e., low frequency) of X and ri-X verbs coordination in Italian. Such a claim, though, might be too strong especially given that no empirical evidence (i.e., frequency data) is provided to support it. Furthermore, one may wonder what makes marginality relevant in the case of X and ri-X verbs coordination but not in the case of the present participle plus direct object clitic construction, which is at least as marginal. In any case, the fact that the second clitic can be omitted when coordination involves two past participles remains a problem for this argument. The same is true for the contrast between (26b) and (26c). Criterion (f), which states that a clitic can attach to material already containing clitics while affixes cannot seems irrelevant here because no other type of clitic is found in Italian besides pronominal clitics, and there are no

224 Chapter 9: Clitics or affixes? cases of affixes attaching to clitics or clitic clusters. However, this criterion might become relevant in the discussion on lexicalized clitics (§ 8.3.2). If lexicalized clitics are granted affix status, then we have to see whether lexicalized-pronominal clusters are possible. If this were the case, criterion (f) would indeed be violated. The major weakness in this line of argumentation is that it overlooks Zwicky’s (1985) own remarks about the inappropriateness of taking the diagnostic tests in (1) as “necessary and sufficient conditions for the applicability of a theoretical term, i.e. as definitions of the term.” (p. 285 [original emphasis]) This is then aggravated by ignoring any attempt at a comparative evaluation of the clitic pronouns vis-à-vis Italian canonical affixes.

8.2.5. Clitic ordering Monachesi (1999: 23 [emphasis mine, CR]) claims that “the most crucial evidence for the affix nature of Italian clitics comes from their ordering”, i.e., from the fact that the order of clitic sequences is fixed, with the indirect object clitic obligatorily preceding the direct object, even though this is not the canonical (pragmatically unmarked) order of full NP complements. (27) a. Carlo ha prestato la macchina DO a meIO. “Carlo lent his car to me.” b. Carlo meIO l DO’ha prestata vs. *Carlo la mi ha prestata. “Carlo lent it to me.” Based on analyses proposed for Swahili (Stump 1992) and Nimboran (Inkelas 1993), which account for the idiosyncratic order of affixes by assigning them to different ordered position classes, the fixed ordering of Italian pronominal clitic clusters is then accounted for by means of a template established for Italian clitics, which is reproduced in Figure 3.72

Italian clitics as inflectional affixes POSITION

I mi ti gli leIO ci vi

II ciLOC

III siREFLX

IV lo la li leDO

V siIMP

225 VI ne

Figure 3. Template for the Italian clitic clusters (Monachesi 1999: 23).

The ungrammaticality of direct-indirect clitic sequences (as well as of all ill formed sequences in general) would then result from the fact that indirect object clitics precede indirect object clitics in their position class. As we saw in Chapter 3 (§ 3.3), in Old Italian, clitic sequences were not characterized by ordering constraints, and both direct-indirect and indirectdirect clusters were possible. Therefore, a template account of clitic ordering would only be able to answer for synchronic orders of clitic clusters, where different orders characterizing different dialects or registers would be explained by positing dialect/register specific templates, but it would fail to justify the unconstrained order of older stages of the language. The free ordering of clitic sequences in Old Italian could of course be related to a phase of transition from an old template to a new one, during which both were active. Yet the question of what led to the development of a new template would still arise. A template account of the order of clitic sequences has no explanatory power, though: it simply amounts to a stipulation, formulated on account of the behavior of clitics. It predicts the orders in which clitic sequences will (or will not) surface based on actual data from the language, but it does not explain why some orders are possible while others are ruled out. An equally adequate description of clitic order could be obtained simply by stating that the order of any third person direct object–indirect object/locative sequences is the reverse of the order of their corresponding full complements, as in (28), (29), and (30). The order of first and second person direct object-locative sequences, on the other hand, parallels that of full complements, as shown by (30) vs. (31). (28) a. Carlo ha prestato la macchina DO a Maria IO “Carlo lent his car to Maria.” b. Carlo glieIO-la DO ha prestata.

226 Chapter 9: Clitics or affixes? (29) a. Carlo ha prestato la macchina DO a meIO “Carlo lent his car to me.” b. Carlo meIO la DO presta. (30) a. Carlo accompagna Maria DO all’aereoportoLOC “Carlo takes Maria to the airport.” b. Carlo ceLOC la DO accompagna. (31) a. Carlo accompagna meDO all’aereoporto LOC “Carlo takes me to the airport.” b. Carlo miDO ci LOC accompagna. The lack of parallelism between clitic combinations and full phrasal complements could be accounted for in terms of the ‘syntactic-semantic centrality’ hypothesis discussed in Chapter 4. The drive of direct object complements to remain closer to the verb would thus be responsible for the difference position of NPs and clitics. Nevertheless, the syntactic-semantic argument would not account for the different behavior of sequences involving first and second person direct object and a locative complement. It should be noticed though that the status of locative complements is different from that of indirect objects, as suggested by the fact that the former can be omitted without consequences whereas the latter cannot. (32) a. Chi ti ha prestato la macchina? – *(Me) l’ha prestata Carlo. “Who lent you the car?” – “Carlo lent it to me.” b. Chi ti ha accompagnato all’aereoporto? – Mi (ci) ha accompagnato Carlo. “Who took you to the airport?” – “Carlo took me (there).” Further evidence provided against the syntactic independence of clitics is claimed to come from verb left-detachment constructions and direction of attachment to the verb host. Verb-left dislocation is disallowed if full NP complements occur after the verb (33a) while bare and cliticized infinitives show identical behavior (33b). (33) a. *Vedere Martina, la vedo ogni giorno. “As for seeing Martina, I see her every day.”

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b. Vedere/Vederla, la vedo ogni giorno. “As for seeing her, I see her every day.” (Monachesi 1999: 31) Once again, the unacceptability of (33a) is at best controversial because many speakers indeed accept this type of construction. On the other hand, NP dislocation (both left and right), which Monachesi fails to take into consideration, may indeed represent the strongest evidence in support of the claim that pronominal clitics have reached affixal status since they are the only constructions in which clitic pronouns must co-occur with the phrasal complements they refer to. This point will be discussed in the next section, together with the issue of obligatoriness and its relevance to affixation. As for direction of attachment (i.e. enclisis vs. proclisis), which in modern Italian depends on the morphosyntactic features of the verb (see Chapter 3 for details on the enclisis/proclisis alternation), it would seem to make a strong argument against the claim that pronominal clitics should be considered inflectional affixes because Italian has only inflectional suffixes. However, Monachesi points out that the enclisis/proclisis alternation is not a real problem given that there are languages such as Arabic (Fontana 1993), Huave (Noyer 1994), and Afar (Fulmer 1991), which do show a prefix/suffix alternation. In addition, she mentions that the enclisis/proclisis alternation has more or less completely disappeared in some Italian dialects, such as Neapolitan (Bafile 1993, 1997) and some Piedmontese dialects (Tuttle 1992). Yet again, grammaticalization can explain the enclisis/proclisis alternation as the result of fixation; and it can account for dialectal differentiation as different (i.e., more or less advanced) stages of grammaticalization have been reached by different dialects. To conclude, it appears that, except perhaps the fact that a number of clusters do not (actually, no longer) exist (ciDO ciLOC; 3 SG.IO 1/2DO) or are (in fact, might) not be acceptable (1SG/PL.IO 2SG/PL.DO; 2SG/PL.IO 1SG/PL.DO), none of diagnostics applied prove the affixal status of Italian clitic pronouns offers sound, conclusive evidence.

228 Chapter 9: Clitics or affixes? 8.3. A clitic-affix continuum 8.3.1. Synchronic vs. diachronic approach If a researcher aims at a strictly synchronic analysis, s/he might decide to disregard the inconclusiveness of the arguments provided in evidence of the affixal status of Italian pronominal clitics for the sake of achieving a comprehensive theoretical account of the synchronic distribution of clitic pronouns. What becomes the primary goal in this case is to show that assigning Italian clitics the status of affixes allows the formulation of a stronger and more broad-based theory of clitic placement/linearization than theories we would be able to construct if Italian unstressed pronouns were treated as independent syntactic forms, either lexical or clitic. This is indeed what Monachesi accomplishes within the HPSG framework, for Italian (1999) and Romance clitics (2005). If, on the other hand, one embraces a diachronic perspective and is concerned primarily with the reconstruction and analysis of the stages of evolution of clitic pronouns, overlooking controversial evidence can be problematic because it may lead to overgeneralizations about the morphological status reached by clitics, and consequently obscure the possibility that clitics may have multiple grammatical functions. In other words, if we decide to attribute affixal status to the entire inventory of Italian clitics we end up portraying a scenario in which all clitics appear to have reached the same final stage of historical evolution, despite abundant evidence that such a scenario is misleading or at least oversimplified. The goal of this section is to show how a grammaticalization account of Italian clitics highlights their composite (i.e., heterogeneous) nature, which derives from the fact that different clitics have undergone different grammaticalization processes and/or reached different (more or less advanced) grammaticalization stages, as well as from the fact that the same clitic has gone through a range of grammaticalization/lexicalization paths.

8.3.2. Pragmatico-pronominal clitics We saw in Chapter 5 that dislocated constructions are quite relevant to the analysis of the morphosyntactic status and function of pronominal clitics because they represent the only case when clitic pronouns can, indeed must, co-occur with their full lexical referential expressions.

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(34) Se non me *(lo) compera la mia mamma il gelato non *(lo) mangio mai. (CORIS, NARRATRoma) “If my mom does not buy it for me, I never eat ice-cream.” Both in left-dislocation and right-dislocation, then, omission of the clitic pronoun lo leads to ungrammaticality.73 That is, in dislocated constructions clitic pronouns have become obligatory elements, which carry a precise discourse-pragmatic value and, in addition, grammatically mark the verb for object agreement (Berretta 1985a, 1989; Lehmann 1982, 1995). Their anaphoric value, on the other hand, has weakened due to the presence of their lexical referent in the same clause. Thus, dislocation appears to be the only environment in which Italian clitic pronouns may have actually reached true affixal status. In this context, they function as (inflectional) discourse and object markers, and therefore must be obligatorily expressed, just like, for example, person/number verb inflections. That discourse pragmatics plays a crucial role in grammaticalization processes is widely acknowledged in a number of core studies on grammaticalization. For instance, Hopper and Traugott (2003: 95) maintain that “the lexical item that becomes grammaticalized must first serve commonly needed discourse functions”; and Hyman (1984: 73) refers to grammaticalization as “the harnessing of pragmatics by grammar” (see also Givón 1976; Hopper 1979, 1987; Herring 1988; Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer 1991; Traugott and Heine 1991). Lehmann (1982) discusses in detail the role that anaphoric relations play in grammaticalization and proposes the grammaticalization continuum for anaphoric elements given in Table 45. Table 45 shows that in order to reach full affixal status (Stage 7), anaphoric elements must completely lose anaphoric function so that they are able to co-occur with their referential expressions. This is the case, for instance, of the Tok Pisin suffix –im, which has evolved from variable (inflectional) morpheme marking object agreement on the verb to invariable (derivational) affix that marks the verb as transitive (Lehmann 1982: 239).

230 Chapter 9: Clitics or affixes? Table 45. Grammaticalization continuum of anaphoric forms and external agreement (Lehmann 1982: 239). PROCESS anaphoric/ agreeing relational anaphoric element function is possible co-occurrence with NP is possible grammatical status GRAMMATICALIZATION

ANAPHORA anaphoric agreement

syntactic agreement

mere relationality

+

+

+

+

+

–

–

–

–

–

+

+

+

+

full NP none

free pronoun minimal

1

2

clitic pronoun

variable affix

3

5

4

6

invariable affix maximal 7

Lehmann places Italian clitic pronouns at Stage 3 and assigns them the same anaphoric agreement value as free pronouns and full NPs. Interestingly, he separates Italian clitics from the corresponding Spanish clitics, which are placed at Stage 4 and assigned syntactic agreement value, based on the contrast illustrated in (35). (35) a. Giovanni, l’ho visto ieri. “Giovanni, I saw him yesterday.” b. Ayer lo vi a mi amigo. “Yesterday I saw my friend.” (Lehmann 1982: 234) Lehmann maintains that in (35a) the NP Giovanni is located outside the sentence containing the referring clitic lo, as indicated by the comma following it (more accurately, by the pause that the comma indexes; see Chapter 5). This indicates that lo in Italian does not actually co-occur with its nominal (extraposed, i.e., dislocated) referent and therefore still carries anaphoric value. On the contrary, the clitic pronoun in (35b) is considered to be totally integrated into the sentence, both intonationally (as indicated by absence of a comma after the verb vi ‘I saw’) and syntactically (the NP mi amigo ‘my friend’ is preceded by the preposition a). This means that Spanish lo, although it still retains anaphoric (referential) value, has acquired the status of syntactic agreement affix.

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As we recall from Chapter 5, though, Italian LD constructions need not be intonationally distinct from the canonical corresponding construction: the comma is only an orthographic convention to mark the clause boundary and is not meant to denote a pause. Lehmann’s line of argumentation, then, is not viable although his conclusion that Italian clitic have not reached the same stage reached by Spanish clitics is definitely sound. Things would not have changed much even if he had contrasted (35b) with an Italian RD construction, given that RD can be uttered as a single intonation unit as well (Berruto 1986; but cf. Benincà, Salvi and Frison’s (2001) opposite claim). (36) a. Ayer lo ví a mi amigo. “Yesterday I saw my friend.” b. L’ho visto ieri(,) il mio amico. “I saw him yesterday, my friend.” The crucial piece of evidence to discriminate between Spanish and Italian is that in Spanish co-occurrence of clitic pronoun and corresponding referential expression (i.e., clitic-doubling) is not causally dependent on (i.e., determined by) dislocation whereas it is in Italian (see Chapter 1, §1.2.2). Spanish, in all its contemporary varieties, requires clitic-doubling when the relevant participant (either direct or indirect object) is expressed by a strong pronoun (37). When lexical constituents are involved, cliticdoubling appears to be the norm with indirect objects but is restricted to animate specific direct objects (38) (among others, Jaeggli 1982, 1986; Suñer 1988, Franco 2000; Company Company 2001, 2003). (37) a. *(Loi) ví a éli. “I saw him” b. *(Lei) hablé a éli. “I spoke to him.” (38) a. Le hablé a Juan/a un a los niños/al perro/a la marioneta. “I spoke to Juan/a boy/the boys/the dog/the puppet.” b. Lo oí a Juan/al niño/a un niño que cantaba. “I listened to Juan/the boy/a boy who was singing.” c. (*Lo) ví a un niño/al perro/esa pelicula. “I saw a boy/a dog/this movie.”

232 Chapter 9: Clitics or affixes? In Italian, on the other hand, neither indirect object nor direct cliticdoubling has become obligatory yet, and structures equivalent to (37) and (38) are uncontroversially pragmatically marked. However, Italian seems to behave more similarly to Spanish with respect to indirect object clitic-doubling in constructions like (39) and (40). (39) a. A mí *(me) gusta. b. A me (mi) piace. “I like it.” (40) a. A Juani ??(lei) gusta. b. A Carloi (glii) piace. “Juan/Carlo likes it.” Sentences like (39b) and (40b) can apparently be discourse unmarked. Moreover, although the most common view about this issue is that they still do not have a place in CSI being typically restricted to spoken and/or informal, familiar registers, discordant judgments have be expressed, for instance by Cortellazzo (1984:27), who maintains that a me mi piace is the only spontaneous form in present-day Italian (see also Berruto 2004; Berretta 1989; Koch 1994b). Dufter and Stark (forthcoming) conducted an empirical investigation of the distribution of indirect object clitic-doubling constructions involving high frequency verbs (dare ‘give’, dire ‘say’, parere/sembrare ‘seem’, piacere ‘like’) in spoken Italian vis-à-vis Spanish, which revealed the following general tendencies: a. Clitic-doubling occurs more often with verbs of liking (piacere). b. It favors predicates that select an experiencer indirect object. c. Constructions involving first singular indirect object appear to be preferred; among all the pre-verbal instances of indirect object doubling (i.e., the type in (37) and (38)), over 50% are 1SG IO.74 Overall, however, Dufter and Stake’s (forthcoming) findings reveal “that clitic-only marking continues to be the most frequently used type, even in informal spoken Spanish and Italian.” (p. 20) Finally, it should be pointed out that the a me mi type, as well as dislocated structures of all types, have characterized the Italian language since its origins, witness the renowned attestations from Placiti cassinesi (10th century). Their fate is discussed in detail by D’Achille (1990).

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(41) Sao ko kelle terrei, per kelle fini que ki contene, trenta anni lei possette parte S(an)c(t)i Benedicti. (Carta di Capua, 960AD) “I know that those lands, in the boundaries that include them, have been the property of St. Benedict for thirty years.” In summary, what is most important to our purposes is that no decisive evidence yet exists in support of the claim that the obligatoriness of Italian clitic pronouns in dislocated constructions is a strictly grammatical phenomenon independent of pragmatic factors. To put it in slightly different terms, the primary function of clitics in the environment of dislocation is pragmatic not grammatical (object marking), which indicates that the grammaticalization of Italian clitic pronouns into objective markers is “a sort of work in progress.” (Nocentini 2003a: 113) The grammaticalization continuum in Table 45, then, is too constrained for a comprehensive analysis of the grammaticalization of Italian clitics because it does not account for the fact that Italian dislocated clitics bear primarily discourse functions; that is, they are primarily pragmatic markers. In order to achieve a more inclusive grammaticalization scenario for Italian clitics, a scenario that would more accurately reflect the nonuniform nature of their morphosyntactic status and function, we could expand Table 45 by bringing in an additional dimension that makes reference to the degree of discourse pragmatic function carried by clitics. Table 46 shows that Italian clitics have reached different stages (precisely, Stages 3 and 4) along the grammaticalization continuum, based on the process they relate to: anaphora vs. topicalization and de-topicalization.

234 Chapter 9: Clitics or affixes? Table 46. Grammaticalization continuum of Italian clitics (a). TOPICALIZATION DE-

ANAPHORA

PROCESS

TOPICALIZATION

anaphoric/ agreeing relational element

anaphoric function co-occurrence with referent morphosyntactic status

GRAMMATICALIZATION

+ –

anaphoric agreement + + – –

full NP none

free pronoun min

1

2

syntactic agreement + + clitic pronoun max

3

4

The grammaticalization continuum of Table 46 differs from that of Table 45 with respect to the number of stages included. More precisely, Table 46 does not include a separate stage for [+anaphoric function, +NP cooccurrence] variable affixes (Stage 5 of Table 45). Moreover, it excludes the stage of invariable affixes (Stage 7 of Table 45) because it is not relevant at this point. The merging of Stages 4 and 5 of Table 45 results from the addition of discourse at the level of process, and it is meant to suggest that in Italian clitics constitute a category per se, internally differentiated but separate from the affix category. Even if we were to adopt the hypothesis that Italian clitics do not represent an independent category and should instead be considered as affixes, we would still want to account for the different behavior shown by clitics in dislocated constructions and clitics in unmarked constructions in terms of obligatoriness and degree of anaphoric and discourse function. Table 47 provides a representation of the morphological status of Italian clitic pronouns that would reflect such an assumption.

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Table 47. Grammaticalization continuum of Italian clitics (b). PROCESS

ANAPHORA

TOPICALIZATION DETOPICALIZATION

anaphoric/ agreeing relational element

anaphoric function co-occurrence with referent morphosyntactic status grammatical function

GRAMMATICALIZATION

+

+

–

–

+

+

variable affix clitic object prodiscourse noun marker min 1

2

(in)variable affix

? max 3

In Table 47, the dimension of morphosyntactic status portrayed in Table 43 has been divided into two sub-dimensions: (i) morphological status and (ii) grammatical function. In terms of morphological status, we have only one category, that of variable affixes. Variable affixes, however, differ both in terms of grammatical function, i.e., anaphoric agreement vs. discourse marker and in terms of syntactic agreement. The grammaticalization continuum of affixes given in Table 47 also includes a stage at which the formative would carry syntactic agreement and/or other more specific syntactic features but lack true anaphoric function. The grammatical function (or, possibly, the range of functions) of the formatives at this stage as well as their morphological status (variable or invariable) will be discussed in the next section. To recapitulate, in this section, I proposed that the syntactic-pragmatic phenomenon of dislocation provides the strongest evidence in favor of the claim that the morphological status of Italian clitic pronouns is not homogeneous. Hence, speaking of a morphological range, which clitics have come to cover due to different stages of grammaticalization they have gone through, would be more appropriate than labeling them categorically as true affixes or clitics. The process of grammaticalization of clitic pronouns was steadier and more uniform in its earliest stages; that is, during the development from demonstratives to pronouns, although ramifications are found at these

236 Chapter 9: Clitics or affixes? stages too, given that the Latin demonstratives grammaticalized into both Romance pronouns and definite articles. At more recent stages, however, the grammaticalization of Italian clitics appears to have followed different paths (or moved at a different pace), in the sense that, depending on factors such as discourse pragmatics, it has advanced farther in some structures than in others. The result is that a same clitic pronoun is more or less grammaticalized in different contexts. To conclude, given that dislocation was a pervasive phenomenon already in OI and some of the verbi procomplementari have a long old history as well, it would seem that the grammaticalization and lexicalization of Italian clitics have been largely dormant for quite a while. Signs of activity can perhaps be registered in the expansion of the verbi procomplementari category, both in terms of increased frequency of the individual members and expansion of the class itself (i.e., increased productivity of the lexicalization pattern/s), as well as in the raising frequency of dislocated constructions, which might then be extending their communicative functional range by developing new pragmatic/pragmatic-semantic functions (cf. Frascarelli 2004; also Nocentini 2003a, b).

8.3.3. The lexicalized clitics in the clitic-affix continuum Tables 46 and 47 only offer partial accounts of the grammaticalization continuum of Italian clitics. In Chapters 5–7, we have seen that some clitics (i.e., ne, ci, la) have undergone lexicalization leading to creation of new lexical verbs. In the case of la, we have noticed that the clitic has retained the semantic content of an original, maximally general lexical referent, which has been incorporated into the verb. Table 48 expands the grammaticalization continuum proposed in Tables 46 and 47 to account for the lexicalized clitics. At the extreme end of the grammaticalization/lexicalization continuum, we find the clitics ne (infischiarsene, andarsene, etc.), ci (entrarci, volerci, sentirci, etc.), and la (farla, dirla, etc.). These clitics can all be considered invariable formatives but they differ regarding the parameters of cooccurrence with a referent NP/PP complement and semantic content; that is, the degree to which they modify the meaning of the verb to which they incorporate.

237

A clitic- affix continuum Table 48. Grammaticalization continuum of Italian clitics (c). PROCESS

anaphoric function co-occurrence with referent semantic/pragmatic content

ANAPHORA anaphoric agreement + + – +

–

morphosyntactic status grammatical function

–

–

+/–

variable formative object

phonological item GRAMMATICALIZATION

DISCOURSE syntactic agreement + +/– – +/–

discourse

clitic benefactive aspectual si

minimal

+/– +/–

LEXICON mere relationality – +

+/–

–

invariable formative ? ne ci la maximal

With respect to the first parameter, we notice that ne can always cooccur with its referent PP: (42) a. Carlo se ne è andato dalla festa. “Carlo left the party.” b. Carlo se ne infischia dell’esame di matematica. “Carlo does not care about the math exam.” As discussed at length in Chapter 5 (§ 5.3), the examples in (42) cannot be taken as instances of discourse marked constructions (RD, in the specific case) because the obligatoriness of the clitics is not linked to the expression of a discourse pragmatic function: cf. lo mangia(,) il gelato vs. mangia il gelato as opposed to se ne è andato dalla festa vs. *si è andato dalla festa. Rather, in the examples above ne seems to function as an obligatory marker of the PP complement of the verb; that is, ne can be considered a morphosyntactic instantiation of an internal argument of the verb. We have also seen that in the case of verbs like sapere ‘know’ and intendersene ‘have knowledge /expertise’, ne has not become obligatory yet, although its function seems to be in the process of shifting from that of de/topicalizing marker to a more strictly pragmatic one of indicating the subject’s attitude.

238 Chapter 9: Clitics or affixes? In contrast to ne, la can never co-occur with an NP since it has lost any anaphoric reference, its ‘original’ referent having been completely absorbed by the verb (or verb adjective/adverb compound): (43) a. Carlo se la faceva (*una storia) con la segretaria. “Carlo had an affair with the secretary.” b. Carlo me l’ha fatta (*una cosa) grossa. “Carlo really tricked me.” At this point, we may want to determine if a specific grammatical function can be attributed to la. As just pointed out, the (originally direct object) clitic la categorically disallows NP co-occurrence since its incorporation (together with an adjective, an adverb, or si/ci) makes the predicate intransitive (e.g., fare qualcosa ‘do something’  farla ‘deceive’, farcela ‘manage’, farsela ‘have an affair’). Hence, la could be categorized as an intransitive marker. However, la seems also to carry some semantic content, which is determined by the verb or verbal compound to which it attaches so that it functions as a lexical (derivational) morpheme as well. In addition, in smetterla/finirla ‘stop’ (Chapter 7, § 7.2), the value of la is more properly pragmatic. As for ci, co-occurrence with NPs is predicate specific: (44) a. Carlo non c’entra affatto (con questa faccenda). “Carlo has nothing to do at all with this matter.” b. Ci ho messo due ore (per arrivare a casa di Carlo). “It took me two hours to arrive at Carlo’s.” (45) a. Non ci ho sentito (*un urlo). “I did/could not hear a scream.” b. Non ci vedeva *niente/per niente senza occhiali. “S/He couldn’t see anything/at all without eye-glasses.” The examples in (44) indicate that, like ne in (42), ci functions as a morphosyntactic instantiation of the argument of the verb. In this case, though, ci is also responsible for a metaphorical extension of semantics of the verb (entrare ‘enter’: spatial domain  entrarci ‘be involved’: non-spatial domain). The same applies to metterci ‘take’: ho messo il libro sul tavolo ‘I put the book on the table’ (place a concrete object in a spatial domain)  ci ho messo tre ore per andare a casa ‘It took me three hours to go home’

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(put time into the realization of an event). In the case of perception verbs (44), ci precludes the realization of direct object because the derived verbs are stative intransitive predicates that may only call for adverbial (manner) modification. In this last section we have recalled that si, ne, la, and ci do not behave uniformly in terms of obligatoriness (i.e., they are (potentially) optional in some cases), and that ci covers a variety of functions depending on the (class of) verbs to which attach they and the degree of grammaticalization they have reached. In light of such functional heterogeneity, we could posit more specific micro-continua of grammaticalization for these clitics, as sketched in (46), which would be encompassed by the more general macrocontinuum given in (47). (46) Micro-continua of grammaticalization for ci, ne, la a. ci, ne PRONOUN > DISCOURSE > PRAGMATIC > INTRANSITIVE/UNACCUSATIVE > STATIVE b. la PRONOUN > DISCOURSE > PRAGMATIC > LEXICAL (47) Macro-continuum of the grammaticalization of Italian clitics OBJECT PRONOUN > DISCOURSE/PRAGMATIC MARKER > GRAMMATICAL/LEXICAL MARKER As we know from Chapter 2, each stage of the continua is to be understood as a cluster, which corresponding to a predominant feature/function. Nonetheless, the segmentation remains to some extent arbitrary and “it is often difficult to establish firm boundaries between the categories represented on a cline; in fact, the study of grammaticalization has emerged in part out of recognition of the general fluidity of so-called categories.” (Hopper and Traugott 2003: 7) Besides, transition from one stage to another is gradual and overlapping can occur. In the case of Italian clitics, the functional evolution is not matched by formal change, in the sense that the phonetic substance of the clitics has not undergone any further reduction/modification. The notion of a grammaticalization chain introduced by Claudi and Heine (1986) and subsequently developed in Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer (1991) and Heine (1992, 1994, 2000) has been found to better highlight (at least empirically) the continuous nature of grammaticalization processes in that chains more clearly represent overlapping functions,

240 Chapter 9: Clitics or affixes? which will ‘reside’ in the periphery of the circles. Moreover, the notion of chain underlines how the constructions involved are in a ‘feeding’ relation, given that “chaining happens when the outcome of a link becomes the source component of another link.” (Craig 1991: 456)

Stage I

Stage II

Stage III

Stage IV

Stage V

Figure 4. Grammaticalization chain (Heine 1992: 345).

Grammaticalization chains are defined as “linguistics categories involving a linguistic form or construction that is associated with a range of different, contextually defined uses” (Heine 2000: 177) and can be graphically represented as in Figure 4. The structure of grammaticalization chains is defined by the properties in (48). (48) Properties of grammaticalization chains (Heine 1992: 348–349; 2000: 177–178) a. No attribute is common to all members of the chain other than the fact that they share identical (or similar) form b. None of the members combines all the attributes distinguished c. Each member has at least one property in common with some other member d. The endpoints of the chain have no attribute in common. e. Immediately adjacent members have more attributes in common than non-adjacent members f. Non-peripheral members, in particular members located at the center of the chain, have the highest number of attributes in common

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with all other members, whereas peripheral members have the lowest number in common with other members. Figure 5 illustrates the grammaticalization chain subsuming the clines proposed in (45) and (46) above.

III I

II

pronominal

pragmatic marker

semanticopragmatic marker

IV

lexical marker

Figure 5. Grammaticalization chain for Italian clitic.

The first four properties in (48) do indeed characterize the chain proposed in Figure 5 because: a. Phonological shape is the only attribute shared by all the members that re-occupy each ring of the chain. b. None of the members simultaneously combines all the attributes (i.e., functions) distinguished. c. Each member of the chain as at least one property in common with another member: Stage I and II share anaphoric value (dislocated constructions); Stage II and III share pragmatic value; and Stage III and IV share more strictly semantic value. d. The endpoints of the chain (pronominal and lexical) have no attribute in common except their form. As for the last two properties, they seem to apply as well, but perhaps to a lesser extent given the limited number of rings that the chain comprises. One problem that seems to emerge is that, strictly speaking, the pronominal (or better pro-form) function is never completely lost because even in the case of fully grammaticalized clitics in lexicalized verbs/periphrases, the clitic may still be related to a phonologically unrealized but conceptually present complement. This aspect is perfectly captured in De Mauro’s

242 Chapter 9: Clitics or affixes? definition of the lexicalized verbs as verbi procomplementari, which roughly translates as “pro-complement verbs”, i.e. verbs that have ‘absorbed’ their complement via incorporation of the clitic that originally pronominalized it and have, to different degrees, developed new meanings. To conclude, verbi procomplementari may constitute a drawback for the grammaticalization chain given in Figure 5, thus compromising its ability to account successfully for the morphosyntactic domain covered by Italian clitics. Another important issue that remains to be ascertained is whether a chain account actually captures both the synchronic and the diachronic dimensions of the clitics. In order to make such a claim, it must be proved empirically that the four stages/functions present in CSI are chronologically ordered; that is, that each stage/function diachronically precedes the following others. This seems indeed to be the case for many (if not the majority) of the clitics since most of verbi procomplementari are younger than their sources. Further research is needed, though, to adequately develop a chain analysis and ground the hypotheses put forward here.

8.3.4. The inflectional-derivational continuum It is undeniable that lexicalized clitics no longer carry exclusively (nor, as a matter of fact, primarily) pronominal function. Therefore, it would not be quite appropriate to call them clitic pronouns/pronominal clitics. How should they be labeled then? Were we able to identify a (set of) semantic/syntactic feature(s) common to ci, ne and la we could decide to name them based on (the most prominent or distinctive of) such features. As it has emerged in the previous sections, the search for any unifying element appears to be an onerous task, given that each of the lexicalized clitics, maybe with the exception of ne, seems to cover multiple semantic or syntactic features (or even a combination of both). In any case, an attempt at finding appropriate functional/featural labels would require thorough and detailed examination of all the predicates in which they have fully grammaticalized as well as of their corresponding predicates without clitics, and cannot be pursued any further in this work. The issue of the derivational/inflectional nature of these no longer pronominal clitics appears to be even more complicated since they seem to be characterized by both features that are typical of derivational morphemes and features that are proper of inflectional morphemes. A crucial parameter, and perhaps the most important one traditionally used to differentiate

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between derivational and inflectional morphemes, is of course obligatoriness, as first proposed by Greenberg (1954) and later adopted by many others (e.g., Jensen 1990; Matthews 1991, Spencer 1991; Bauer 2003). Inflectional morphemes are considered to be obligatory but derivational ones are not: omission/removal of a derivational morpheme does not necessarily result in an ungrammatical (i.e., structurally deficient) form; in contrast, omission/removal of an inflectional morpheme does lead to ungrammaticality. Additionally, the lexical item that contains a derivational morpheme can be replaced with a monomorphemic word without altering the construction (sentence or phrase) from a strictly structural point of view. For instance, in (49a) below, the present indicative 3SG morpheme -e must be present for the sentence to be grammatical; on the contrary, leaving out inin (49b) only leads to semantic modification. (49) a. Carlo legg-e (*legg) molto. “Carlo reads a lot.” b. Carlo è (in)-felice. “Carlo is (un)-happy.” Thus, inflection yields different forms of a same lexeme, whereas derivation produces different lexemes. In short, it would seem that the discriminating difference between inflectional morphemes and derivational morphemes is that the former are required by syntax while the latter are not. That is, inflection belongs to syntax while derivation pertains to the lexicon (Bauer 2003: 91). With respect to the parameter of obligatoriness, lexicalized ci, ne, and la appear to qualify as inflectional given that, as pointed out repeatedly, their elimination leads to ungrammaticality (structural failure) rather than to semantic alteration. Another widely accepted criterion employed to differentiate between inflectional and derivational morphemes is whether or not they can change the syntactic category of the derived lexical item: derivational morphemes can (50a) although they do not necessarily do so (50b) but inflectional morphemes cannot (50c). (50) a. felic-eADJ ‘happy’ ~ felic-itàN ‘happyness’ ~ felicementeADV ‘happily’

244 Chapter 9: Clitics or affixes? b. feliceADJ ‘happy’ ~ in-feliceADJ ‘unhappy’; felicitàN ‘happyness’ ~ in-felicitàN ‘unhappyness c. felic-eADJ ‘happy.SG’ ~ felic-i ADJ ‘happy.PL’; allegr-oAD ‘cheerful.M’ ~ allegr-aADJ ‘cheerful.F’; d. rider-àV ‘laugh.3SG FUT’ ~ rider-ebbeV ‘laugh.3SG PC’ This criterion does not help much in our case because, given that alteration of syntactic category is never obtained, both definitions could apply. Another criterion commonly used to distinguish between inflection and derivation is that of the semantic load carried by the morpheme, i.e., how and to what extent it alters the meaning of the derived form. Inflectional morphemes typically carry information whose nature is strictly syntactic, such as gender, number, tense, mood, etc., as for instance in (50c). On the other hand, derivational morphemes involve semantic content, for instance ‘negative’ in the case of It. in- (50b). With respect to this parameter, the status of lexicalized clitics is not straightforwardly characterized. As discussed in detail in Chapters 5–7, there are cases in which the function of the clitics seems to be purely reinforcing, emphatic, with no actual semantic-pragmatic or syntactic content (infischiarsene, averne abbastanza). But there are also cases in which the clitic appears to carry purely syntactic meaning (sentirci, vederci, arrabbiarsi). Then there are cases in which the clitics create a completely new verb (farla, prendersela, cavarsela). Derivational and inflectional morphemes have also been differentiated based on their degree of productivity. Traditionally, infectional morphemes are considered fully productive whereas derivational morphemes are semiproductive, given that even extremely productive affixes like the English nominalizing suffix –er do not exhibit complete applicability, in the sense that they can be overthrown by other, less productive affixes (e.g., cycler vs. cyclist) or by lexemes (e.g., stealer vs. thief). Productivity, however, is a very complex and delicate issue (see, for instance, Bauer 2001), which should be relied upon very cautiously. In our case, productivity does not seem to be particularly relevant as a parameter given that the class of verbi procomplementari comprises a quite small number of members. Summing up, determining the morphological nature and function of these fully grammaticalized clitics does not appear to be an easy task. The difficulty of such a task, however, should not be surprising or upsetting, given that distinguishing between inflectional and derivational morphemes is “one of the most persistent undefinables in morphology.” (Bybee 1985:

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81) Furthermore, it can be overcome nicely if we look at the inflectional/derivational dichotomy as a morphological continuum. The question arises at this point, of whether we have evidence in support of a unified category of clitics. That is, could Italian clitics be granted independent morphosyntactic status and be considered a morphological category independent from affixes? From the discussion above, we concluded that clitics and affixes (both inflectional and derivational) contrast with respect to the following parameters: (i) obligatoriness: affixes are always obligatory, whereas clitics show degree of obligatoriness; and (ii) placement: affixes surface in fixed position while clitics are characterized by enclisis ~ proclisis alternation, i.e. clitics are in a sense less bound than affixes. A possible counterargument to (i) would be that in fact clitics are also always obligatory because, even in those cases in which they can be omitted without incurring in ungrammaticality, leaving them out somehow alters the meaning of the utterance (mostly in semantico-pragmatics terms). As for (ii), we could accept to consider them ‘mobile’ affixes, i.e. affixes that can surface alternatively as either suffixes or prefixes (see § 8.2). Notice, however, that there is (or has ever been) no other class of affixes in Italian that shows this behavior; this indicates that a class of this type would be highly marked in the system. Moreover, if clitics are to be analyzed as a sub-category of inflectional affixes, finding a unifying label for such a category seems quite problematic due to the range of functions that they cover. The only trait that actually unifies them seems to be where and how they surface in the language, but is this enough to make them a distinct category?

8.4. Conclusion This chapter has reviewed in detail some of the arguments put forward in favor of an analysis of Italian clitics as lexically attached inflectional affixes in order to show that they can appear controversial and on the whole, they cannot be taken as conclusive evidence against a ‘clitic’ analysis. In particular, the idiosyncratic features that have been presented as incontrovertibly strong evidence in favor of an affix analysis lose much of their idiosyncratic nature when examined from a diachronic perspective and therefore end up being less conclusive than they appear at first. I have then suggested that grammaticalization allows us to portray a more inclusive and exhaustive account of the morphological status and function of Italian pronominal clitics, since it uncovers their non-homogeneous nature as a

246 Chapter 9: Clitics or affixes? grammatical category. More precisely, grammaticalization reveals that in Italian two different groups of clitics can be identified, which are characterized by a range of morphosyntactic functions: anaphoric and discourse pragmatic function are to be located at one end of the continuum, while more strictly grammatical function are to be found at the other. Such a spectrum of functions would not be easily captured if all clitics were to be comprised under a single affixal category. Finally, I examined the possibility of determining whether Italian lexicalized clitics are to be attributed a precise morphological function, that is whether they should be considered inflectional or derivational morphemes, and showed that they seem to be characterized by a combination of both inflectional and derivational properties.

Chapter 9 Conclusion

The primary objectives of this study have been to present a general, recapitulative assessment of the overall grammaticalization of the Italian pronominal clitic system and to draw attention to grammaticalization processes that characterize contemporary standard Italian, which are particularly interesting because they also, or perhaps primarily, implicate lexicalization. Chapter 2 provided a general outline of the phenomenon of grammaticalization by reviewing the essential theoretical assumptions underlying grammaticalization processes as proposed in fundamental traditional (i.e., functionalist oriented) studies on the topic (Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer 1991; Hopper and Traugott 2003; Lehmann 1982, 1985, 1995). In addition, two somewhat controversial issues were examined, namely: (i) the relevance that analogy and reanalysis – two phenomena that play a crucial role in language change in general – can have in grammaticalization; and (ii) the epiphenomenal nature of grammaticalization processes (Newmeyer 1998). The latter issue in turn let to some brief remarks on whether and how grammaticalization studies can be integrated with synchronic linguistic analyses based on ‘formal’ frameworks. With respect to this last question, it has been suggested that it is possible to integrate grammaticalization studies with synchronic formalist accounts, and that such integration should go beyond a mere ‘translation’ of (functionalist) analyses of the grammaticalization into a formalist framework, as done by Roberts (1993) and Roberts and Roussou (1999, 2003). Rather, I proposed that analyses of grammaticalization processes complement strictly formal analyses, in that the former allow us to achieve important generalizations about language structure, which can subsequently function as testing grounds for theoretical principles formulated by the latter. In other words, given that grammaticalization processes create new linguistic structures, it could be argued that grammaticalization studies feed formal analyses by supplying them with new linguistic material to investigate. Chapter 3 introduced the clitic system of present-day standard Italian, illustrating the distribution and functions of its individual members. Then, the differences between the clitic systems of Old Italian (thirteenth and fourteenth centuries) and that of modern/contemporary standard Italian were outlined and discussed, with particular reference to the issues of clitic

248 Chapter 9: Conclusion placement and linearization. The diachronic discussion continued in Chapter 4, where the more general grammaticalization processes that took place during the evolution of the Italian clitic system were examined. Chapters 5, 6 and 7, which constitute the core contribution of this study, offered a fairly extensive description of the main semantic, pragmatic and, to a more limited extent, structural features of the most common Italian verbi procomplementari. Furthermore, they have highlighted the most important similarities and differences characterizing the grammaticalization or, more precisely, the grammaticalization-lexicalization trajectories that specific clitics or clitic clusters underwent (precisely, ‘partitive’ ne (Chapter 5), personal/locative ci (Chapter 6), and third person feminine direct object la (Chapter 7)). Chapter 8 examined the morphosyntactic function and status of Italian clitics. The issue of whether Italian clitic pronouns are more appropriately analyzed as affixes was discussed, and it was pointed out that the (highly popular) diagnostics traditionally employed to discriminate between clitichood and affix-hood turn out to be debatable when considered from a diachronic perspective. Attributing affixal or clitic status to Italian pronominal clitics, then, appears to be more a matter of ‘choice’ than an actual theoretical requirement, in the sense that it can be determined by the aspect/s of clitics under investigation and/or the kind of framework adopted. The central goal of the chapter, however, was to show that grammaticalization allows the portrayal of a more extensive and thorough account of the morphological status and function of Italian clitic pronouns by revealing a range of functions, which further highlights the difficulty of straightforwardly establishing, in the sense of ‘fixing’, their morphosyntactic (or morphosemantic) status. It was consequently argued that Italian clitics do not comprise a unified morphosyntactic class. Even though a basic distinction can be made between clitics that retain pronominal and discourse pragmatics function and clitics that, on the other hand, have come to fulfill a more strictly grammatical, or primarily lexical function, these two major classes are by no means discrete. On the contrary, they are to be taken as the two (opposite) ends of morphosyntactic function and morphological status continua. Investigating in some detail the array of morphosyntactic functions covered by Italian clitics and their affixal vs. clitic status has, in fact, been a second important objective of this study in that it has provided important material for an overall analysis of the Italian morphological system.

Conclusion

249

Numerous issues relating to the grammaticalization and particularly the lexicalization of Italian clitics remain, which require further investigation. For instance, to my knowledge, no empirical study has been conducted on the status of verbi procomplemantari in CSI, neither regarding the extent and or patterns of their diffusion (frequency) as a class nor concerning the possible domains of distribution (geographical, register, text type, etc.). Another interesting and highly prolific area of research is to be found in the description and reconstruction of the evolution patterns of both individual verbi procomplementari and the different classes. This line of investigation is made very exciting and promising by invaluable on-line databases like OVI and projects like Biblioteca della letteratura italiana and Biblioteca dei classici italiani, thanks to which numerous OI texts can be accessed and quickly searched. Finally, it would be quite interesting to conduct typological comparative investigations of the different Romance languages to establish whether and/or to what extent clitic lexicalization is a pan-Romance phenomenon. An implicit (and hopefully not too veiled) goal of this book was to bring to light and draw attention to the methodological issue of working with ‘real’ language, that is, attested data. It has been a long-standing practice in Italian linguistics research – especially, although by no means exclusively, in studies of formalist (generativist) orientation – to embrace a strictly ‘theoretical’ approach and, consequently, to give priority or strong preference to unattested, at times very ad hoc constructed, data. In other words, building up theoretical claims and founding analyses on data that are recognized by the analyst only has not been considered problematic; indeed, it has come to represent the accepted norm. As I have already mentioned more than once, linguistic analysis is inevitably bound to personal choices and preferences of the investigator. As disappointing as it may be for some researches, linguistics is not an exact science, perfectly comparable for instance to math or biology; and this is so because of the very subject matter that linguistics investigates: human language. Therefore, a choice has to be made between – or at least priority has to be given to – the one of the following: (i)

(ii)

Looking at real, live languages, i.e., language as it is actually produced and used by speakers for the purpose of communicating competently and effectively Focusing on studying an abstraction of language, which, in my opinion, basically amounts to forcing language to be a sterile entity and as dressing up linguistics as hard science.

250 Chapter 9: Conclusion I think it is absolutely clear that I chose the first path and I have made a point of presenting a slice of the ‘real’, presently or once alive, Italian; that is, the Italian that Italian speakers have used (or perhaps misused) for many centuries.

Notes

Chapter 1 1.

2.

3.

4. 5. 6.

7.

Zwicky (1977) also proposes the notion of bound word, which is a form that is prosodically dependent to adjacent items and may be subject to positional restrictions but lacks a corresponding full independent form; that is, it cannot be considered a reduced equivalent of another word. An example of a bound word would be the Latin conjunction –que ‘and’. This notion is abandoned in Zwicky (1985) but reappears in Zwicky (1994). Although traditionally accepted, the opposition strong vs. weak pronominal forms is rejected by Cardinaletti (1991, 1999), and Cardinaletti and Starke (1999), who identify three categories of pronominal elements: strong forms, clitic forms, and weak forms. Under their analysis, both weak and clitic elements are considered deficient elements and they stand in opposition to strong pronominal elements, which are not. Subject clitic pronouns are found in French and northern Italian dialects. In addition, Romance languages can have locative clitic pronouns (e.g., Italian ci) and some have a form derived from Latin INDE ‘thence’ (e.g., Italian ne, French en), whose main function is that of partitive pronoun (see Chapter 3, § 3.2.1 for the complete paradigm of Italian clitic pronouns). In Italian, the exclamative particle ecco ‘here is/are’ is also a possible host for clitics, e.g. Eccomi! ‘Here I am!’, ‘Here I come!’. The complete paradigm of Italian tonic pronouns is given in Chapter 3, § 3.2.1. The profuse body of valuable journal article contributions about the specific phenomena listed in (7), and not limited to Romance and Italian, which have appeared since the 1990s includes Kayne (1991), Anderson (1993), Uriagereka (1995), Cardinaletti and Shlonsky (2004), Ledgeway and Longobardi (2005) for placement; Napoli (1981), Comrie (1982), Davies (1997), Roberts (1997), for climbing; Everett (1987, 1989), Belletti (2005) for doubling; Wanner (1999) for clusters. More recent volume-size contributions (mainly on Romance and European languages) include Rizzi (1993), Halpern (1995), Halpern and Zwicky (1996), Monachesi (1999), van Riemsdijk (1999), Gerlach and Grijzenhout (2000), Gerlach (2002), Fischer (2003). Procomplementare possibly comes compounding pro < pronome, pronominale ‘pronoun, pronominal’ + complementare ‘that refers to a verb comple-

252 Notes

8.

9.

10.

11. 12.

13.

14.

15.

ment’. De Mauro (1999–2000, 2001) does not comment on the choice of this term; he simply defines these verbs as verbs characterized by a meaning that is not derivable from the meaning of their ‘source’, i.e., the corresponding verbs without clitic (De Mauro 1999–2000: xxxiv). Simone (1993: 95), who referred to them as verbi complessi ‘complex verbs’, has been among the first how to remark how these verbs, despite their undeniable importance, had not even been given a precise name. Notice that by identifying to ne as partitive and si as reflexive, I refer to their primary function. Both clitics, in fact, cover other functions, which will be presented in Chapter 3 and discussed as appropriate in later chapters. Gerlach (2002) also rejects the view that Romance clitics can be reduced to inflectional affixes and argues in favor of analyzing them as a separate category, which she calls simply special clitics. Her analysis, however, is conducted from a theoretical perspective completely different from the one I adopt here. That is, it is strictly synchronic and within the integrated frameworks of Minimalist Morphology (Wunderlich 1996a, 1996b, 1996c; Wunderlich and Fabri 1996), Lexical Decomposition Grammar (Joppen and Wunderlich 1995; Wunderlich 1997) and Grammar Correspondence Theory (McCarthy and Prince 1995). But see also Vanelli (1985), Rizzi (1986), and Goria (2004). Established references on the history of the Italian languages are Durante (1981), Migliorini (1994), Serianni and Trifone (1994); Devoto (1995). Among more recent ones, I would like to point out Tesi (2001, 2005), and Marazzini (2006). As for historical grammars, I will remind the well-known classics, i.e., Meyer-Lübke (1919), Rohlfs (1966-69), Tekavi (1980), and the more recent Castellani (2000). Finally, we cannot forget the remarkable linguistic history by Maiden (1995). The singular feminine definite article has two allomorphs: l’ before vowels and diphthongs (l’amica ‘the friend’, l’automobile ‘the automobile’), la and elsewhere. The plural feminine article has only one form, le. The search classe di parola + lemma + forma (‘word class + word + form’, i.e., .P.EGLI.egli) yields 40 tokens, but I excluded ah no era egli Napoli è, lit. ‘ah no, was he Napoli is’ (N A 1 389 C), since it seemed invalid; Renzi (1994: 247) also reports 39 occurrences of egli. The LIP corpus is also available in book format (De Mauro, Mancini, Vedovelli, and Voghera1993).

Notes

253

Chapter 2 16. Although to a much lesser extent, some ‘heterogeneity’ can be found with respect to what actually constitutes grammaticalization; see for instance Joseph (2001), Bisang and Wiemer (2004), and the articles in Bisang, Himmelmann, and Wiemer (2004). 17. Exhaustive analyses of the development of Romance synthetic verbal forms are found in Vincent and Harris (1982), Klausenburger (2000), Squartini (1998), and Schwegler (1990), among others. 18. Carrasquel (1995) provides a detailed account of the grammaticalization of Romance (Spanish in particular) definite articles, while Diessel (1999) offers a typological survey of the grammaticalization of demonstratives. 19. An extensive and updated assessment of the different historical perspectives on lexicalization can be found in Brinton and Trougott (2005, Chapter 2); more concise and more general overviews are found in Brinton (2002), Himmelmann (2004), and Traugott (2005). 20. Lipka defines lexicalization as “the phenomenon that a complex lexeme once coined tends to become a single complete lexical unit, a simple lexeme. Through this process it loses the character of a syntagma to a greater or lesser degree.” (2002: 111, quoted in Brinton and Traugott 2005) 21. For extensive criticism to grammaticalization (processes and theory) see the special issue of Language Sciences edited by Lyle Campbell (2001, issue 23), in particular the articles by Lyle Campbell and Richard Janda, Lyle Campbell, and Brian Joseph.

Chapter 3 22. Recall that the two series or pronouns are in complementary distribution. See Chapter 1 (§ 1.1) for examples and details on the environments of distribution. 23. For instance: (i) E siccome i romani gli elefanti non l’hanno conosciuti prima della venuta di Pirro in Italia… (CORIS, PRACCVolum) “And since Romans didn’t know elephants before Pyrrhus came to Italy…” (ii) Era andato con l’avvocato Prini a prendere le bombe alla stazione e poi l’avevano portate nella palazzina della Nelly. (CORIS, NARRATRoma)

254 Notes

24.

25.

26.

27. 28. 29.

30. 31.

“He had gone with the attorney, Prini, to get the bombs at the train station and then they have brought them to Nelly’s building.” (iii) Discorsi sulla religione n’aveva ascoltati. (CORIS, MON2004_1) “He had listened to speeches on religion.” I take the position that loro is not a clitic because it exhibits significantly different properties compared to the other clitic pronouns. More precisely, loro is stressed, bisyllabic, and must occur in post-verbal position, whereas clitic pronouns are either proclitic or enclitic depending on the environment of occurrence (see Chapter 3, § 3.3). However, it should be pointed out that whether loro is to be considered a clitic or not is a subject of debate. For instance, Cardinaletti (1991, 1999) attributes it an intermediate status and Marotta (1993: 204; among several others) refers to loro as a pseudoclitic. Some studies that treat loro as a clitic with special properties are Wanner (1987) and Monachesi (1999). The occurrences of enclitic gli have been disregarded because they could not be identified with the search engine provided in the on-line version of LIP and counting them ‘manually’ would have required a considerable amount of time. Ergative and lexical si also inflect for number and person (e.g. mi sveglio sempre presto ‘I always wake up early’, ti arrabbi troppo facilmente ‘you get angry to easily’). Napoli (1976) and Burzio (1986), however, argue for two basic si’s for Italian. A more systematic analysis of the functions carried by si in reflexive transitive constructions can be found in Russi (2006a). Verbs of physical consumption like mangiarsi ‘eat’, bersi ‘drink’, fumarsi ‘smoke’ are listed separately in De Mauro (1999–2000) and are attributed valore intensivo ‘intensive value’, although it is not explained what type of intensification is meant. Participial absolute constructions are very rare and limited to formal (essentially bureaucratic) written registers. Detailed accounts of the Tobler-Mussafia Law are provided by Schiaffini (1926); Sorrento (1951); Ulleland (1960); Rollo (1993).

Notes

255

Chapter 4 32. Comprehensive treatments of the diachronic development of all Italian clitics are offered by Rohlfs (1966-69) and Tekavi (1980); see also Wanner (1987). 33. Wanner (1974) works on data from Melander (1929), Lombard (1936) and Castellani (1952). 34. In Modern French clitic sequences have undergone a reversal into DO-IO. This fact of course may pose a problem to the syntax-semantic parallelism hypothesis. 35. I would like to point out that my screening of Commedia and Vita nova did not yield any mi-3DO (e.g., mi lo), but it did not produce sequences of the me3DO type either (e.g., me lo); the only sequences type found was IO-ne (e.g., me ne). The screening of Decameron gave the same results. 36. On a side note, I would like to mention that I was able to witness the (very consistent) usage of 3IO ci among northern speakers during a visit to Reggio Emilia (in the region Emilia Romagna) in the summer 2006. I thank warmly my friend Simona Bondavalli and her wonderfully welcoming family for giving me this opportunity. 37. Of course, phonetic/phonological features are not to be taken into account here because monitoring them requires specific training or remarkable natural predisposition.

Chapter 5 38. Sala-Gallini (1996) does not discuss in any detail the issue of what kind of affix ne has developed into. However, the fact that he chooses the adjective flessionale ‘inflectional’ suggests that it should be interpreted as an inflectional affix. In Chapter 8, we will see that the behavior of ne, as well as other clitics that appear to have reached the affixation stage (or perhaps more properly have completed the process of obligatorification), does not seem to indicate that they are ‘purely’ inflectional. Rather, these clitics seem to share features of both inflectional and derivational morphemes so that clear-cut characterization of their morphological status is problematic. 39. Mi frego etc. are possible as forms of the verb fregarsi (see Table 33, Chapter 5, § 5.3). 40. See Benincà, Salvi and Frison (2001) for a recent in depth descriptive treatment of the (quite complex) phenomenon of dislocation in Italian. Other im-

256 Notes

41.

42.

43.

44.

45.

46. 47. 48.

portant non-descriptive studies include Cinque (1977), Duranti and Ochs (1979), Berruto (1985, 1986), Rizzi (1997), Benincà (2001). For an extensive cross-linguistic perspective, see Lambrecht (1994, 2001). The optional status of dative and locative resumptive clitics and of the preposition seems to be largely agreed upon in the relevant literature (e.g., Cinque 1977; Berruto 1985, 1986; Rizzi 1997, Benincà, Salvi and Frisoni 2001). To my knowledge, no study is presently available, which focuses entirely on the discussion of this issue, providing exhaustive empirical evidence for such a claim, neither in terms of speakers’ judgment nor in terms of comparative frequency of occurrence. However, Frascarelli’s (2003) analysis of dislocated constructions in LIP shows a very high frequency of occurrence of the resumptive clitic (93% overall; p. 551). Recall from Chapter 1 (§1.3) that lui ‘he’ and lei ‘she’ are regularly used as subject pronominal forms in contemporary Italian (spoken and written) instead of egli and ella. The same ‘foregrounding’ function can be attributed to the ne of uscirsene, though in the case of this verb we also observe a fairly high degree of idiomaticization (see Chapter 5, § 5.4). Some variants, however, seem to be much less common than others; for example, no occurrences of chi se ne sbatte are found in CORIS and LIP, while only two occurrences of chi se ne infischia are found in CORIS and none in LIP. The most common is chi se ne frega, with 81 occurrences in CORIS and 4 occurrences in LIP (out of 15 total occurrences of fregarsene). Finite (subjunctive) clause complements are also possible: (i) Mi piacerebbe che tu nuotassi con me. “I would like that you would go swimming with me.” (ii) Mi frega che tu arrivi in orario. “I care that you arrive on time.” Nulla occurs much less frequently than niente; niente, nulla can be substituted with NPs like un cavolo, un cazzo, and similar all equivalent to ‘a damn’. Modal sapere ‘be able to do something’ (e.g., sa nuotare ‘s/he can swim’) is not considered here. Sapere di XNP in the sense of ‘taste/smell/seem like something’ as in (i) is ignored here since it is not relevant to our discussion. (i) E quell’acqua sapeva di un odore così acuto di pesce fritto che gli pareva di essere a mezza quaresima. (Le avventure di Pinocchio, p. 150) “And that water smelled so strongly like fried fish that he felt like being in the middle of Lent.”

Notes

257

(ii) Sa di barzelletta ma c’è poco da ridere. (CORIS, STAMPAQuot) “It sounds like a joke but there isn’t much to laugh about.” 49. It should be noticed that if the focus material comprises complex constituents it is not the case that all the element of the constituent receive identical intonation; rather, the intonation peak falls on the last element of the phrase, Carlo in this case. 50. This example is modeled on an actual discourse setting which is in fact is highly recurrent in the specific household.

Chapter 6 51. Of course, (5b) is fine if ci is interpreted as 1PL clitic receiving a benefactive interpretation, i.e., ‘He put a bottle of spumante in the fridge for us’. Also, the presence of ci in (5c) and (5d) would be unproblematic under a right dislocation reading, provided that the proper intonation pattern applies; in other words, the unacceptability of the sentences is linked to their being pronounced as a single intonation unit (see Chapter 4 for more details). 52. In general, Italian grammars agree in considering dovere ‘must, have to’, volere ‘want’, and potere ‘can, be able to’ as the core members of the category of modal verbs (among others, Bruni 1984; Serianni 1988b; Dardano and Trifone 1995; Adorno 2003). But some controversy remains as to the modal status of volere followed by a finite clause; for instance, De Mauro (19992000) gives two classifications of volere: (i) transitive verb, as modal verb it is followed by a verb in the infinitive and (ii) transitive verb modified by a direct object complement or by an object proposition. Unfortunately, there are no comprehensive studies on Italian modals and modality comparable, for instance, to Coates (1983), Perkins (1983), or Palmer (2001) for English. Simone and Amacker (1977) is the only somewhat comprehensive study on Italian modal verbs; other studies (e.g. Ciliberti 1984; Harris 1985; Luciani 1944) have a narrower scope, focusing on specific modals and/or types of modality. 53. De Mauro (1999–2000) does not actually cite the occurrence of volerci on which he bases his dating. Battaglia (1961–) gives the following as oldest attestations of volerci: (i) Chi d’infamia d’alcuna macula si sozza, molta acqua vi(=ci) vuole a potersi lavare. (Il libro de’ vizî e delle virtudi, XII) “Whoever gets stained with infamy needs a lot a water to get clean.” (ii) Elle non ti metteranno in disputare o discutere quanta cenere si(=ci) voglia a cuocere una matassa d’accia. (Corbaccio, p. 40)

258 Notes

54.

55.

56. 57.

58. 59.

60.

“They will not dispute to you or discuss about how much ash is needed to cook a skein of raw linen” Notice that the example in (i) is potentially controversial since it could be interpreted as an impersonal construction of volere with deontic meaning (i.e., si vuole ‘one needs’), which was quite widespread in OI. Evidence in support of the impersonal reading comes from the fact that no other instances are found in Boccaccio’s language of si = ci (Stussi 1995). If we accept that (ib) does not involve volerci, the relevant clause should be then glossed ‘how many ashes one needs to cook a skein of raw linen’. A thorough discussion on the origin and emergence of volerci is found in Russi (forthcoming). Some B6 verbs take also finite clauses introduced by che, in which case the matrix object-embedded subject correspondence no longer pertains. Metterci of course does not. (i) La Fatina avvisò Pinocchio che stavano arrivando quattro conigli neri che lo avrebbero portato via. “The Fairy informed Pinocchio that four black rabbits were arriving to take him away. Regarding entrarci, it should be pointed out that Renzi (1989) and Berruto (1985) also posit an independent lexical entry centrarci (e.g., Cosa ci centriamo noi? What do we have to do with it?’, cited by Berruto 1985: 127), which they claim has emerged via speakers’ association of a second additional instance of ci to the lexicalized predicate. In other words, ci would have undergone a double process of complete grammaticalization and lexicalization. Note, however, that neither author indicates the source of the occurrences of centrarci they reports. As for myself, I have never encountered this predicate. The thematic relation of ‘mover’ is taken from Van Valin (2005: 55). In central and southern varieties of Italian (italiano regionale) we find a presentational starci equivalent to esserci (see Chapter 6, § 6.4.1), e.g., Quest’anno ci vuole gente come lui, ci sta una mosceria in giro! ‘This year we need people like him, there’s such apathy a around!’ The following strings were searched: ci + fare {present indicative, present subjunctive, imperfect indicative, imperfect subjunctive}. Blasco Ferrer (2003) offers a nice typological overview of Romance (mainly French, and Provençal) presentational constructions from a diachronic perspective. Cf. Hall (1955) for a similar proposal though specifically restricted to the Roman dialect/variety. As for the spelling ciavere, Pulgram himself (who probably borrows it from Hall) admits that it is questionable. Given that forms like ce l’ avevo ‘I had it’, c’ho/ciò avuto ‘I had’, and averci are actually attested whereas (l’) ho ciavuto, ciaverci are not it seems better to adopt the

Notes

259

form averci (Berruto 1983: 48; Christmann 1984). Besides, there would be no reason to not follow the same spelling convention adopted for the other lexicalized verbs, e.g., volerci. For further details, see D’Achille (1990) who gives a nice overview of the general discussion about averci and a few other verbs in ci. 61. The existential averci (i.e., equivalent to esserci) is strongly and consistently attested in Old Italian. As pointed out by Berretta (1985b: 124, fn. 9), this usage may certainly have played a significant role in the development and/or strengthening of possessive averci, given the well-known semantic relationship between existential constructions and the expression of possession (see Heine 1997 for a detailed treatment of this topic).

Chapter 7 62. Within this scenario, the preferred status of smetterla in the context of imperatives discussed above (see Table 43) becomes even more expected. 63. Whether the claim that svignare/svignarsela, squagliarsi/squagliarsela truly have the same status in contemporary Italian in terms of frequency remains to be proved empirically. No occurrences of any of them are found in LIP. In CORIS, on the other hand, we find 121 occurrences of svignarsela but none of svignarsi, then 59 of squagliarsela and 12 of squagliarsi, which seem to indicate that the variants without la have a less established status overall. 64. Prenderle has a more familiar equivalent in buscarle from buscare/buscarsi ‘take, especially something negative, e.g., mi sono buscata un bel raffreddore ‘I got a bad cold’.

Chapter 8 65. Although Monachesi separates loro from the rest of Italian object clitic pronouns, she still classifies it as a clitic “with very peculiar properties” (Monachesi 1999: 119). More precisely, she claims that loro “exhibits wordlike behavior and it will be considered a sign” (p. 120). See also note 3 about the ‘problematic’ status of loro. 66. Monachesi (1996, 1998, 1999) gives no mention of ecco as possible host for Italian clitics. It would be interesting to see what type of featural information would clitics be contributing in this case; or put it differently, why would ecco require an accusative feature while the presentational predicate esserci rejects

260 Notes

67.

68.

69. 70.

71.

72.

73.

it (ecco Carlo ‘here is Carlo’  eccolo ‘here he is’ vs. c’è Carlo ‘there is Carlo’  c’è/*ce lo è). Salvi (2001: 85) classifies ecco as a presentative verb belonging to the B0 verb class, i.e., a verb with a valence of zero that does not select a subject. It is possible then that Monachesi follows this same assumption. I have gli as singular only here because those who claim the existence of this gap do not recognize (or do not accept as standard) gli as third plural indirect object. The only types found in CORIS/CORIS are singular spettantegli ‘that is due to/deserved by him’ (12 occurrences in the administrative judicial sub-corpus) and spettantele ‘that is due to/deserved by to her’ (4 occurrences in the same sub-corpus). The search for the same type of construction with the participle of the verb concernere, sing. concernente ans pl. concernenti yielded no attestations as well. Such a striking absence should make one wonder, I believe, how appropriate (and constructive) it is to found theoretical assumptions on phantom data. A detailed account of vowel deletion and truncation in Italian is given by Vogel, Drigo, Moser, and Zannier (1983). Italian allows sequences of two homonyms belonging to the same grammatical category only for the purpose of emphasis and/or reinforcement: un gelato gelato ‘a real ice-cream’, un té caldo caldo ‘a very hot tea’. These, however, are cases of reduplication used iconically to express augmentative meaning. The idea of explaining Italian clitic ordering facts through templates or matrices is not new; see for instance Agard and Di Pietro (1965); Lo Cascio (1970); Hall (1971); Perlmutter (1971); Seuren (1974); Simpson and Withgott (1986). It should be noticed that a clitic-less structure like Il gelato ho mangiato is acceptable as an instance of contrastive focalization (Rizzi’s 1997 focuspresupposition articulation), provided that the appropriate intonation is given to the pre-posed constituent: IL GELATO ho mangiato (non la crostata) ‘I ate the ICE-CREAM (not the tart)’, with small caps indicating contrastive focus intonation. Italian is then characterized by two separate constructions in which constituents are found pre-verbally: LD proper, with clitic pronouns (CLLD, after Cinque 1977, 1990, 1997) and clitic-less contrastive focus structures. Dufter and Starke (forthcoming) also find that the type a me mi piace is significantly more frequent in informal than in formal Italian registers: 1.4% vs. 0.4% (p. 11), although they remark that the number of tokens may be too limited to allow drawing strong conclusions.

References

On-line Corpora/Databases Biblioteca della letteratura italiana: http://www.letteraturaitaliana.net/index.html Biblioteca dei classici italiani: http://www.classicitaliani.it/ CORIS/CODIS: http://corpora.dslo.unibo.it/ Corpus LIP: http://languageserver.uni-graz.at/badip/

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Index of names

Adorno, Cecilia, 49, 257 Cardinaletti, Anna, 251, 254 Agard, Frederick, 260 Carrasquel, José, 253 Alinei, Mario, 162, 163 Castelfranchi, Cristiano, 54, 220 Anderson, Stephen R., 251 Castellani, Arrigo, 66, 253 Anttila, Raimo, 35 Cennamo, Michela, 7 Arce, Manuel, 54 Christmann, Hans H., 163, 165, 259 Ascoli, Graziadio Isaia, 10, 11 Ciliberti, Anna, 257 Auwera, Johan van der, 38 Cinque, Guglielmo, 110, 215, 216, Bafile, Laura, 227 256, 260 Barcelona, Antonio, 35 Claudi, Ulrike, 8, 24, 26, 28, 30– 34, 37, Battaglia, Salvatore, 162, 257 74, 118, 155, 156, 229, 239, 248 Bauer, Brigitte, 30 Coates, Jennifer, 257 Bauer, Laurie, 243, 244 Cocchi, Gloria, 5 Belletti, Adriana, 125, 251 Comrie, Bernard, 251 Benincà, Paola, 10, 109, 110, 131, Company Company, Concepción, 231 215, 216, 231, 255, 256 Cordin, Patrizia, 13, 49, 61, 96, 97, 211 Berretta, Monica, 6, 96, 97, 100, Cortelazzo, Michele A., 49 101, 167, 229, 232, 259 Craig, Colette, 238 Berruto, Gaetano, 7, 13, 16, 96, 110, Croft, William, 2 231, 232, 256, 258, 259 Crysmann, Berthold, 5 Bertinetto, Pier Marco, 15, 180, 193 D’Achille, Paolo, 11, 13, 18, 17, 71, 161, Bisang, Walter, 1, 2, 253 166, 232, 259 Blasco Ferrer, Eduardo, 258 Dardano, Maurizio, 49, 163, 164, 257 Bonomi, Ilaria, 50, 55, 98 Davies, William D., 251 Bossong, Georg, 5 De Mauro, Tullio, 7, 13, 17, 106, 107, Brinton, Laurel, 8, 38, 39, 253 119, 125, 149, 157, 174, 197, 252, Bruni, Francesco, 257 254, 257 Boström, Ingemar, 13 Diessel, Holger, 253 Burzio, Luigi, 54, 61, 146, 161, 167, Diewald, Gabriele, 2 254 Di Pietro, Robert, 260 Bybee, Joan, 1, 8, 29, 33–35, 40, 83, Dressler, Wolfgang, 100 84, 209, 244 Drigo, Marina, 260 Calabrese, Andrea, 13, 48, 49, 96, Dufter, Andreas, 232, 260 97, 211 Durante, Marcello, 252 Campbell, Lyle, 253 Duranti, Alessandro, 256

Index of names Evans, J. K., 211, 212 Everett, Daniel, 252 Fillmore, Charles, 2 Finegan, Edward, 148, 190 Fischer, Susann, 251 Fontana, Josep, 227 Frascarelli, Mara, 131, 236, 256 Franco, Jon, 231 Francovich Onesti, Nicoletta, 11 Fulmer, S. Lee, 227 Gambarara, Daniele, 14 Gerderen, Elly van, 21 Gerlach, Birgit, 211, 251, 252 Giacalone Ramat, Anna, 15, 43 Givón, Talmy, 30, 31, 229 Goldberg, Adele, 2, 150 Goria, Cecilia, 252 Greenberg, Joseph, 243 Grijzenhout, Janet, 251 Hagège, Claude, 75 Haiman, John, 2 Hall, Christopher, 30 Hall, Robert J., 49, 50, 258, 260 Halpern, Aaron, 3, 211, 251 Harris, Christine, 257 Harris, Martin, 253 Haspelmath, Martin, 42, 43, 44, 45 Heine, Bernd, 8, 21, 24–26, 29–34, 37, 74, 75, 118, 155, 156, 172, 174, 195, 229, 239, 240, 247, 259 Herring, Susan, 229 Himmelmann, Nikolaus P., 8, 38 Hopper, Paul, 1, 8, 21, 24, 26, 28– 32, 34, 35, 41, 42, 229, 239, 247 Hünnemeyer, Frederick, 8, 21, 24– 26, 30, 31, 33, 34, 37, 74, 118, 155, 156, 195, 229, 239, 247

291

Hyman, Larry, 229 Inkelas, Sharon, 224 Janda, Richard, 33, 253 Jaeggli, Osvaldo, 231 Jensen, John T. 243 Johnson, Mark, 34 Joseph, Brian D., 33, 253 Kaisse, Ellen, 90 Kayne, Richard, 6, 222, 251 Kemmer, Suzanne, 53 Kempchinsky, Paula, 54 Klaiman, Miriam H., 53 Klausenburger, Jurgen, 1, 30, 31, 208, 253 Klavans, Judith, 3 Koch, Peter, 35, 123, 163, 196, 197, 205, 232 Kövecses, Zaltán, 35 Kuteva, Tania, 25, 75 Lakoff, George, 2, 34 Lambrecht, Knud, 4, 109, 111, 256 Langacker, Ronald, 2, 41, 55, 214 La Polla, Randy, 115 Ledgeway, Adam, 251 Lehmann, Christian, 8, 21, 27, 28, 30–32, 39–43, 229, 230, 248 Lepschy, Anna Laura, 162, 211, 212, 220 Lepschy, Giulio, 162, 211, 212, 220 Lipka, Leonard, 38, 253 Lo Cascio, Vincenzo, 260 Lombard, Alf, 255 Lombardi, Alessandra, 251 Loporcaro, Michele, 57 Luciani, Vincent, 257 MacCarthy, John, 252 Maiden, Martin, 67, 82, 83, 88, 252 Maldonado, Ricardo, 53 Mancini, Federico, 17, 253

292 Index of names Manzini, Maria Rita, 54 Marazzini, Claudio, 252 Marinucci, Marcello, 47 Marotta, Giovanna, 254 Matisoff, James, 1 Matthews, Peter H., 3, 243 Mayerthaler, Willi, 100 Melander, J., 255 Migliorini, Bruno, 252 Meurers, Detmar W., 18 Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm, 90, 252 Monachesi, Paola, 5, 9, 52, 53, 88, 208, 209, 211, 212, 215, 217, 220, 222, 224, 226–228, 251, 254, 259, 260 Moreno Cabrera, Juan, 39 Moser, Alessandro, 260 Muljai, arko, 11 Müller, Stephan, 18 Napoli, Donna J., 54, 251, 253, 254 Nencioni, Giovanni, 11 Nevis, Joël Ashmore, 6 Newman, J., 211, 212 Newmeyer, Frederick, 8, 42 Nishida, Chiyo, 54, 56 Nocentini, Alberto, 7, 233, 236 Noyer, Rolf, 227 Ochs, Elinor, 256 Pagliuca, William, 1, 8, 21, 29, 33– 35 Palazzi, Fernando, 97 Palmer, F. R., 257 Panther, Klaus-Uwe, 35 Parisi, Domenico, 54, 220 Perlmutter, David, 260 Perkins, Michael R., 257 Perkins, Revere, 1, 21, 29, 33–35 Pernicone, Vincenzo, 102 Poletto, Cecilia, 10

Priebsch, R., 25 Prince, Alan, 254 Pullum, Geoffrey, 209, 210, 217, 219, 222 Radden, Günter, 35 Ramsden, Herbert, 67 Reh, Mechthild, 25, 29, 30 Renzi, Lorenzo, 13, 252, 258 Riemsdijk, Henk van, 3, 251 Rizzi, Luigi, 125, 251, 252, 254, 258 Roberts, Ian, 21, 45, 247, 251 Rohlfs, Gerhard, 13, 76, 80, 87, 90– 92, 252, 255 Rollo, Antonio, 67, 254 Rosen, Carol, 54 Roussou, Anna, 21, 45, 247 Russi, Cinzia, 45, 143, 144, 147, 254, 258 Sabatini, Francesco, 11, 161, 163 Sadock, Jerrold M., 5, 207 Sala-Gallini, Mario, 6, 105, 113, 167, 255 Saltarelli, Mario, 11 Salvi, Giampaolo, 7, 109, 110, 131, 146, 151, 161, 180, 231, 255, 256, 260 Schlonsky, Ur, 254 Schwegler, Armin, 253 Serianni, Luca, 49, 218, 252, 257 Seuren, Pieter, 260 Simone, Raffaele, 7, 252, 257 Simpson, J., 260 Sorrento, Luigi, 254 Spencer, Andrew R., 243 Squartini, Mario, 251 Stark, Elisabeth, 232, 260 Stark, Michael, 252 Strozer, Judith, 54 Stump, Gregory, 224

Index of names Stussi, Alfredo, 258 Suñer, Margarita, 231 Svorou, Soteria, 26 Sweetser, Eve, 29 Tagliavini, Carlo, 90 Talmy, Leonard, 2 Taylor, John R., 35 Tekavi, Pavao, 80, 87, 90, 252, 255 Tesi, Riccardo, 252 Traugott, Elizabeth C., 8, 21, 24, 26, 29–32, 34–39, 41, 134, 147, 174, 191, 229, 239, 247, 253 Trifone, Pietro, 49, 163, 252, 257 Tuttle, Robert, 227 Ulleland, Magnus, 254 Uriagereka, Juan, 251

293

Vanelli, Laura, 12, 252 Van Valin, Robert D. Jr., 115, 250 Vedovelli, Massimo, 17 Vincent, Niegel, 253 Vogel, Irene, 260 Voghera, Miriam, 17 Wanner, Dieter, 67, 68, 72, 76, 79, 81, 85, 87, 88, 94, 211, 220, 251, 254, 255 Watson, D., 211, 212 Wiener, Bjèorn, 1, 253 Wischer, Ilse, 1 Wunderlich, Dieter, 252 Wurzel, Wolfgang, 100 Zagona, Karen, 52 Zannier, Irene, 258 Zwicky, Arnorld M., 3, 5, 208–210, 217 219, 222

Subject index

ablative, 22, 32 absolute participle, 215 abstract meaning, 34, 37 developing from concrete meaning, 34 abstraction, 31, 37, 172 conceptual, 150 language, 249 metaphorical, 121 adposition primary, 31 secondary, 31 subordination to secondary, 32 allomorphy of clitic pronouns, 8, 47, 71, 89–92, 216 of the masculine definite article, 12, 16 analogical extension, 35, 200 leveling, 60, 74, 76, 78 model, 42 analogy, 8, 20, 33, 40–42, 80, 99 and grammaticalization, 22, 35, 41–42, 44, 248 article allomorphy, 12, 16 definite, 26, 96, 236, 252, 253 indefinite, 219 affix, 5, 41, 83, 208, 217, 218, 222– 224, 228, 235, 245, 248 agreement, 230 adverbial, 22 agglutinative, 31

canonical Italian, 224 derivational, 2, 30, 229 fusional, 31 inflectional, 8, 24, 30, 227, 245, 252, 253 invariable, 230, 234, 235 placement, 245 productive, 244 variable, 230, 234, 235 verbal, 31 affixal category, 209, 234, 246 status, 9, 79, 208, 210, 211, 213, 217, 220, 224, 227–229, 248 affixation, 28, 78, 227, 252 aspectual function of si, 54–57, 117 verb, 180, 191–192 attrition, 28, 72, 101 autonomy, 24, 27–29, loss of, 27 syntactic, 28 auxiliary, 23, 27, 31, 160, 162–164, 172, 191, 203, 210 benefactive, 25, 56, 57, 119, 202, 237, 257 bleaching, 26, 29, 73, 205 bondedness, 28, 73 bound form, 73 formative, 23 word, 251 case, 22, 25, 32, 101

Subject index affix, 31 loss of, 72, 78 marking, 101, 113 chain, 30, 33, 74, 239–242 channel, 30 ci attualizzante, 161 comitative, 140 locative, 88, 48, 57–59, 74–76, 139, 66, 172, 208, 220, 222, 248 personal, 9, 48, 78, 222, 248 presentativo, 161 cline, 30, 239, 241 metaphorical, 118 subjectivity, 147 clitic allomorphy, 8, 47, 71, 217 arbitrary gaps, 210, 211–217 attachment properties, 210, 223, 224 configurational properties, 6, 103 climbing, 6, 251 clusters, 9, 50, 70, 78, 83, 87, 79, 90, 92, 212, 224, 225, 248 doubling, 6, 230, 232 emphatic, 1, 122, 123 167, 169, 244 fully grammaticalized, 39 idiosyncratic properties, 207, 209, 217, 218, 222, 224, 246 as independent category, 234 lexicalized, 40 linearization, 6, 8, 47, 63–65, 68, 76, 78, 79, 83, 92, 102, 209, 228, 248 object, 10, 47, 49, 71, 89, 92, 96, 99, 100, 102, 164, 173, 205,

295

209, 211, 215–217, 224, 232, 259 placement, 6, 8, 47, 51, 64, 65, 68, 70, 79, 102, 207, 209, 228, 248, 251 morphological idiosyncrasies, 89, 210, 217–222 morphosyntactic function, 9, 44, 47, 51, 104, 246, 248 morphosyntactic status, 207, 228, 233–235, 237, 245, 248 pleonastic, 1, 169 pragmatico-pronominal, 228– 236 Romance, 3, 4, 7, 252 selectional properties, 210 semantic idiosyncrasies, 210, 217, 222 simple, 3, 210 sequences, 38, 71, 76, 94, 103, 211, 214, 215, 217, 219–222, 225, 255 order of, 67, 71, 79–84, 88, 96, 102, 224, 225 special, 3, 210, 252 subject, 10, 251 syntactic properties, 6, 54 Tobler-Mussafia law, 65, 67, 68, 102, 254 coalescence, 28, 73, 78 cohesion, 27, 28 comitative, 25, 60, 98, 121, 140, 156, 172 condensation, 28, 72 conditional, 12, 23 context-induced reinterpretation, 37 contiguity, 35, 36, 196 continuum clitic-affix, 228, 245

296

Subject index derivational-inflectional, 242– 245

dative, 90, 94, 100, 146, 256 deictic, 26, 57, 73, 101, 116, 153 deixis, 75 demonstrative, 4, 26, 36, 71, 78, 90 deontic meaning, 258 modality, 35 necessity, 15 desemanticization, 173 detachment, see dislocation dislocation, 108–114, 140, 169, 196, 222, 226, 227, 229, 231, 233, 235, 236, 255 divergence, 21, 29, 40, 150 semantic, 143, 186 dynamic change, 200 elative, 62 enclisis, 63–69, 71, 76, 78, 79, 83, 84, 102, 219, 227, 245 enclitic, 63, 65, 73, 74, 78, 79, 83, 87, 209, 254 epistemic, 35 erosion, 26, 72, 101, 102 euphemization strategy, 123 fixation, 28, 78, 118, 119, 123, 227 of clitic-verb linearization, 78 of order of clitic sequences, 76, 79–82, 84, 88, 92, 102 of proclisis, 76 formalist, 21, 247, 251 fossilization, 79 fusion, 39, 90 frequency and language change, 84 functionalist, 8, 21, 43, 45, 247

gender, 49, 100, 102, 247 agreement, 22 neutralization, 8, 69, 92–96, 220 grammaticalization analogically oriented, 42 and analogy, 8, 22, 35, 42, 44 basic definition of, 22 and case functions, 25 chain, 30, 33, 74, 239–242 channel, 30 and cognitive processes, 21, 173 continuum, 9, 30–31, 229, 230, 233–235, 237 diachronic relevance of, 34, 35 as epiphenomenon, 8, 22, 42– 45, 247 and language use, 32, 33 and lexicalization, 39–40 and metaphor, 34 and metonymy, 21, 31, 36 model instances of, 22 as panchronic process, 33 parameters, 24, 25, 27, 28, 42 principles, 28, 29 and reanalysis, 8, 22, 41–42, 247 scale, 30 synchronic relevance of, 32, 33 human referent, 41, 144, 214 human participant implication of, 25 iconicity, 2, 83 idiomaticization, 103, 108, 119–127, 154, 159, 172, 196 idiomatization, 38 incorporation, 38, 141, 153, 182,

Subject index 191, 196, 198, 205, 238, 242 inference, 118, 134, 137, 192 causal, 36 conventional, 36 conversational, 36 context-induced, 21 metaphorical, 37, 174 pragmatic, 35–37 subjective, 146 instrument, 25, 60, 144, 145, 147, 151, 152 integrity, 28, 136 intonation, 110, 111, 124, 125, 129, 132, 133, 185, 231, 257, 260 italiano neostandard, 16, 49, 96 non-standard, 162 popolare, 96, 162, 197 regionale, 97, 258 substandard, 97, 98 language use, 2, 18 layering, 29 leveling, 28, 74, 102 analogical, 60, 74, 75, 78 lexical generality, 40 inheritance, 179 split, 163, 172 lexicalization defining properties of, 38–39 grammaticalization, 39–40 lexicalized ci, 58, 139, 172, 258 clitic, 40, 208, 209, 222, 224, 236, 242–244, 246 construction, 103 la, 79, 193, 197, 202, 205 ne, 113–119 verb/verbal periphrasis, 103,

297

137, 241, 242 linguistic category, 3, 4 locative, 62, 75, 100 ci, 9, 48, 57, 72, 78 ne, 64, 105, 113, 116, 118, 133, 154, 155, 161, 166, 172, 201, 202, 225, 226, 252, 256 loss, 29, 36, 90, 102, 196 of autonomy, 79 of case distinction, 73, 78, 100, 101 of demonstrative function, 101 of distal meaning, 73 of etymological subject forms, 12 of final vowel, 219 of gender, 100 of inflection, 30 of number, 100 phonetic/phonological, 28 paradigmatic polymorphism, 16 semantic, 28, 102 of syntactic independence, 22 of Tobler-Mussafia Law of weight, 72 marked dialectally, 154 morphologically, 101 pragmatically, 109, 113, 140, 232, 247 register, 131 markedness, 101 marker aspectual, 55, 192 case, 113 discourse, 235 inflectional, 105 lexical, 54, 103, 137, 171, 172,

298

Subject index

239, 241 morphological, 29, 103, 179 morphosyntactic, 169 nominal, 26 object, 229, 233 obligatory, 237 passive, 52, 53 personal, 54 pragmatic, 111, 112, 209, 233, 239, 241 semantic-pragmatic, 190, 205, 241 stative, 238 subject, 134, 185, 186, 188 topicalizing, 37 verbal, 105 metaphor, 21, 31, 34–35, 36 metaphorical abstraction, 121, 172 cline, 118 conceptualization, 120 continuum, 157 extension, 35, 118, 121, 238 shift, 150 space, 155 trajectory, 74 transfer, 34, 153, 154, 214 metonymic change, 36 development, 205 inferencing, 174 relation, 196 representation, 35 metonymy, 21, 31, 35–36 euphemistic, 197, 205 morpheme bound, 23, 207, 209, 211 derivational, 63, 238–244, 246, 255

inflectional, 229, 242–244, 255 obligatory, 7, 112, 117, 171, 195 naturalness economy, 101 morphological, 101 syntactic, 79 Natural Morphology framework, 100 ne, locative, 62, 105, 113, 116, 118, 133, 154, 155, 161, 166, 172, 200, 202, 225, 226, 252, 256 partitive, 9, 48, 104, 123, 130, 248 pragmatic, 112 neutralization of gender and number distinction, 8, 47, 71, 92–96, 102, 220 morphological, 29 phonemic, 11 obligatorification, 28, 40, 103, 154, 160, 162, 171, 199, 205, 255 obligatoriness, 106, 127, 131, 137, 160, 182, 227, 234, 235, 237, 239, 243, 245 paradigmatic, 27, 28, 41, 213 integration, 72 polymorphism, 16 simplification, 96 variability, 28, 74 paradigmaticity, 28, 93 paradigmatization, 42 passive periphrastic constructions, 15

Subject index persistence, 32, 137 of enclisis, 68, 79 of loro, 50 phasal verbs, 180, 192, 193, 196 phonogenesis, 38 phonologization, 38 pragmatic inference, 21, 36 strengthening, 30 pragmaticization, 135, 190, 191 prefix, 30, 209, 245 prefixation, 30, 90 proclisis, 67–69, 71, 76, 78, 79, 82, 83, 102, 227, 245 proclitic cluster, 83 form, 51 position, 63, 83, 254 pronoun atonic, 3 bound, 3 dative, 90 demonstrative, 26 direct object, 51, 82 free, 230 impersonal, 26 indefinite, 112 indirect object, 48–50, 52, 56, 97 Latin, 72 locative, 74 nominative, 114 object, 10, 162, 239 partitive, 251 personal, 3, 4, 74, 75, 78 phrasal, 135 reflexive/reciprocal, 3, 222 strong, 3, 231, 251 subject, 13, 77, 113

299

tonic, 48, 73, 76, 211, 216, 222, 251 unstressed, 3, 210, 228 weak, 3 reanalysis of enclisis, 68 and grammaticalization, 8, 22, 41–42, 45, 247 semantic, 199 redistribution of meaning, 29 relevance, 83 replacement, 74, 75, 82 selectional properties, 123, 189, 210 semantic absorption, 195, 200 centrality, 82–84 divergence, 143, 150, 186, 200 frame, 202 narrowing, 156, 159, 172 opacity, 179 specialization, 196 transfer, 35, 173, 195, 205 transparency, 179 weakening, 29, 73, 92 simplification, 12, 29, 53, 79, 100 space, 25, 31, 34, 35, 74, 75, 150, 151, 154, 155, 156, 172 specialization, 29, 40 speaker’s affectedness, 185 static change, 75 stative, 167–172, 239 strengthening of informativeness, 36 pragmatic, 30 structural scope, 28, 77, 102 subjectivity, 135, 137, 147, 148, 185, 186, 188–190, 205

300

Subject index

subjectification, 134 suffix, 23, 27, 209, 227, 230, 244, 245 diminutive, 37 suffixation, 30 syntactic adjacency, 83 agreement, 230, 234, 235, 237 autonomy, 26 branching typology, 30 centrality, 226 change, 79 frame, 125, 144, 202 freedom, 29 independence, 22, 78, 226 naturalness, 79 peripheralness, 83, 84 valence, 115 syntagmatic, 27, 28, 40, 41 syntax-semantics parallelism hypothesis, 84, 255 synthetic future, 23, 253 time, 25, 31, 34, 35, 56, 74, 118, 150–152, 155, 239 Tobler-Mussafia Law, 65, 67, 68, 102, 254 transfer, 34 metaphorical, 34, 153, 154, 214 semantic, 35, 173, 195, 205 verbs of, 214 unmarked, 102, 236 discourse, 110, 234

clitic linearization, 80 clitic order, 83 pragmatically, 224 univerbation, 38 valence, 115, 260 change of, 169, 172, 179, 197 variability, 27 paradigmatic, 28, 74 syntagmatic, 28, 76, 88 variation, 18, 33 dialectal, 10, 91 free, 32 structural, 43 synchronic, 32 verbi fasali/phasal verbs, 180, 192, 193, 196 verbi procomplementari, 7, 111, 154, 174, 180, 236, 242, 244, 248, 249 vi, locative, 57–59, 74, 75, 78, 90, 101, 161, 220, 221 personal, 48, 52, 72, 212 presentativo, 161 vowel deletion, 48, 90, 217, 218, 260 merger, 11, 90, 91 weakening, 14, 26, 30, 78, 89, 99 semantic, 29, 73, 92 weight, 27, 28 loss of, 72