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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. 157–200

Chapter 6
Mapping additivity through translation

From French aussi to Italian anche and back in the Europarl-direct corpus

 | Università di Torino
 | Universität Basel
Many languages have an overabundant set of additive focus adverbs (AFAs), whose differences are mostly investigated in semantic (e.g. scalarity) or syntactic (scope phenomena and restrictions for specific domains of association) terms. The present study adopts a discourse perspective on the issue, comparing two cross-linguistic, near-equivalent AFAs (Italian anche and French aussi) in original texts and their translations in the Europarl corpus. Specifically, this study describes the relation established between the constituent in the scope of the AFA and its alternatives, which can be either co-textually available or contextually inferable. Comparing the frequencies of anche and aussi in original texts and taking into account their translation equivalents confirms important differences between these adverbs. While aussi is more restricted to the syntagmatic function of linking co-textually available alternatives in adjacent sentences, anche appears in a wider array of uses, including cases in which the identification of alternatives requires more complex inferential steps, as they are distant or even implicit to the domain of association.
Keywords: French, Italian, additive focus adverbs, alternatives, paradigmatic relations, syntagmatic relations, translation equivalent, Europarl corpus
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Additive focus adverbs: semantic, syntactic and discourse properties
    • 2.1 Setting defining parameters in the description of AFAs: domain of association, scope and alternatives
    • 2.2Semantic classification of AFAs in French and Italian
      • 2.2.1Polarity and scalarity
      • 2.2.2 Semantic properties of Fr. aussi and It. anche
    • 2.3The role of alternatives in the use of AFAs
  • 3.Comparing AFAs in discourse
    • 3.1Mapping AFAs discourse functions through translation equivalents
    • 3.2Europarl as a parallel corpus
    • 3.3 The selected directional corpora: French aussi > Italian and Italian anche > French
      • 3.3.1Tables of translation paradigms
      • 3.3.2Translation divergences
  • 4. Mapping additivity of aussi and anche in the Europarl-direct corpus
    • 4.1Parameters for the analysis: Availability of alternatives and set of alternatives
      • 4.1.1Co-textually available alternatives
      • 4.1.2Co-textually non-available alternatives
    • 4.2 Results of the analysis: aussi and anche in source texts and translations
      • 4.2.1 Aussi and anche in source texts: overview
      • 4.2.2 Cross-linguistic differences in source texts and translation paradigms of aussi/anche with co-textually available alternatives
        • 4.2.2.1Source texts.
        • 4.2.2.2Translation paradigms.
      • 4.2.3 Cross-linguistic differences in source texts and translation paradigms of aussi/anche with co-textually non-available alternatives
        • 4.2.3.1Source texts.
        • 4.2.3.2Translation paradigms.
    • 4.3Mapping the discourse functions of aussi/anche in the Europarl-direct corpus
      • 4.3.1 Aussi/Anche as syntagmatic AFAs
      • 4.3.2 Aussi/Anche as paradigmatic AFAs
  • 5.Final remarks and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 August 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.278.06and
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2022. Unstressed versus stressed German additive auch – what determines a speaker’s choice?. Linguistics Vanguard 8:1 ► pp. 177 ff. DOI logo
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