Cover not available
Part of
Focus on Additivity: Adverbial modifiers in Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages
Edited by Anna-Maria De Cesare and Cecilia Andorno
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 278] 2017
► pp. 79–106

Chapter 3
On the distribution of additive focus particles addirittura and perfino/persino in Italian

| Universität Heidelberg
The present contribution aims to investigate the distribution of the Italian adverbs addiritura and perfino/persino using authentic linguistic data. Different structural, semantic and argumentative factors that are said to correlate with, or influence the distribution of these adverbs, shall be examined. The current scientific state of knowledge regarding the specificities of addirittura and perfino/persino shall be compared with data from Repubblica Corpus and C-Oral-Rom. Such comparison will show that the distribution of addirittura and perfino/persino is influenced by the syntactic function of the element in the focus, its semantics in the specific context (in particular the existence of focus alternatives), as well as the type of argumentative reinforcement marked by the adverb. Addirittura tends to refer to the predicate or the sentence as a whole. It is mainly used for direct argumentative reinforcement and may occur in non-additive contexts. In contrast, perfino/persino tends to create a local focus, is far less common in non-additive contexts and can be used for direct, as well as indirect argumentative reinforcement. These differences in use confirm the overall results of previous research and may be due to the diachronic evolution of the two adverbs.
Keywords: Italian, additive focus particles, scalar particles, addirittura , persino/perfino , distribution, argumentation, argumentative reinforcement, corpus study
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.State of research and descriptive categories
  • 3.Corpora and frequencies
  • 4. Pilot study: Le monde diplomatique
    • 4.1Method
    • 4.2Initial results and hypotheses
  • 5. Main study: Repubblica Corpus
    • 5.1Evaluation system and core data
    • 5.2 ADD/PER at the beginning of a sentence
      • 5.2.1Overview
      • 5.2.2Influence of the focus
      • 5.2.3Influence of the argumentative reinforcement strategy
    • 5.3 ADD/PER in the middle of a sentence
      • 5.3.1Overview
      • 5.3.2Influence of the focus
      • 5.3.3Influence of the argumentative reinforcement strategy
    • 5.4Evaluation of the analysis and implications for the distribution
  • 6.Results and perspectives
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 August 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.278.03ata
References (26)
References
Andorno, Cecilia. 1999. “Avverbi focalizzanti in italiano. Parametri per un’analisi”. Studi Italiani di Linguistica Teorica e Applicata 28/1: 43–83.Google Scholar
. 2000. Focalizzatori fra connessione e messa a fuoco. Il punto di vista delle varietà di apprendimento. Milano: FrancoAngeli.Google Scholar
Anscombre, Jean-Claude, and Oswald Ducrot. 1983. L’argumentation dans la langue. Bruxelles: Mardaga.Google Scholar
Atayan, Vahram. 2006. Makrostrukturen der Argumentation im Deutschen, Französischen und Italienischen. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Atayan, Vahram, and Daniele Moretti. 2016. “Flankierende Argumentationsverfahren in Sprachvergleich und Übersetzung. Eine Studie am Beispiel des französischen Markers même”. Beiträge zur Fremdsprachenvermittlung, Sonderheft 22: 11–34.Google Scholar
Baker, Mona. 1996. “Corpus-based Translation Studies: The Challenges that Lie Ahead”. In Terminology, LSP and Translation: Studies in Language Engineering in Honour of Juan C. Sager, ed. by Harold Sommer, 175–186. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Cesare, Anna-Maria. 2013. “Gli avverbi focalizzanti scalari it. perf/sino e addirittura e fr. même”, talk at the Heidelberg University of Heidelberg, 23.1.2013.
De Cesare, Anna-Maria, and Margarita Borreguero Zuloaga. 2014. “The contribution of the Basel Model to the description of polyfunctional discourse markers. The case of It. anche, Fr. aussi and Sp. también”. In Discourse Segmentation in Romance Languages, ed. by Salvador Pons Bordería, 55–94. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
De Cesare, Anna-Maria. 2015. “Defining Focusing Modifiers in a cross-linguistic perspective. A discussion based on English, German, French and Italian”. In Adverbs – Functional and Diachronic Aspects, ed. by Karin Pittner, Daniela Elsner, and Fabian Barteld, 47–81. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gellerstam, Martin. 1986. “Translationese in Swedish novels translated from English”. In Translation Studies in Scandinavia, ed. by Lars Wollin, and Hans Lindquist, 88–95. Lund: CWK Gleerup.Google Scholar
La Forgia, Francesca. 2006. “Alcune osservazioni sui focalizzatori”. Studi Italiani di Linguistica Teorica e Applicata 35/2: 359–385.Google Scholar
Liverani Bertinelli, Fiorella. 1991. “Addirittura” e “perfino/persino” nella tradizione lessicografica e nell’italiano contemporaneo. Perugina: Guerra Edizioni.Google Scholar
Nølke, Henning. 1983. Les adverbes paradigmatisants: fonction et analyse. Revue Romane, numéro spécial 23.Google Scholar
Ricca, Davide. 1999. “Osservazioni preliminari sui focalizzatori in italiano”. In Grammatica e discorso. Studi sull’acquisizione dell’italiano e del tedesco / Grammatik und Diskurs. Studien zum Erwerb des Deutschen und des Italienischen, ed. by Norbert Dittmar, and Anna Giacalone Ramat, 146–164. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.Google Scholar
Schiemann, Anika. 2009. “Adverbial indizierte Implikationen: eine argumentationsbasierte Analyse von persino/perfino”. In Argumentation: Théorie – Langue – Discours. Actes de la section ‘Argumentation’ du XXX. Deutscher Romanistentag (Vienne, Septembre 2007), ed. by Vahram Atayan, and Daniela Pirazzini, 199–222. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Visconti, Jacqueline. 2004. “Sintassi e uso delle particelle perfino, persino e addirittura in italiano antico”. In La sintassi dell’italiano antico, ed. by Maurizio Dardano, and Gianluca Frenguelli, 445–463. Roma: Aracne.Google Scholar
. 2005. “On the origins of scalar particles in Italian”. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 6.2: 237–261. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Corpora
C-Oral-Rom = Cresti, Emanuela, and Massimo Moneglia (eds). 2005. C-ORAL-ROM, Integrated Reference Corpora for Spoken Romance Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
CoLFIS = Bambini, Valentina, and Marco Trevisan. 2012. “EsploraCoLFIS: Un’interfaccia Web per ricerche sul Corpus e Lessico di Frequenza dell’Italiano Scritto”. Quaderni del Laboratorio di Linguistica della Scuola Normale Superiore 11: 1–16. <[URL]>.
CORIS/CODIS – Corpus di Italiano Scritto <[URL]>.
EUROPARL = European Parliament Proceedings Parallel Corpus 1996–2011, <[URL]>.
LIP = De Mauro, Tullio et alii. 1993. Lessico di frequenza dell’italiano parlato. Milano: EtasLibri. <[URL]>.
LMD = Le Monde diplomatique. Archives (2011) (DVD-Rom).Google Scholar
NUNC = NUNC – A Multilanguage Suite of Newsgroups Corpora, <[URL]>.
La Repubblica Corpus, <[URL]>.
PAISÀ, <[URL]>.