Andrea Sansó

List of John Benjamins publications for which Andrea Sansó plays a role.

Title

Subjects Pragmatics | Semantics | Syntax | Theoretical linguistics

Articles

This commentary discusses some aspects of Haider’s model of grammar change that are problematic from the perspective of usage-based approaches to language change. These aspects include (i) the postulated equivalence between intentionality and teleology, (ii) the metaphorical nature of Darwinism… read more
Antipassive constructions may be polysemous, with aspectual and modal functions other than patient demotion, and may differ with respect to the way agents and patients are coded. This paper explores the hypothesis that at least some of these differences can be explained by taking into account the… read more
Intensification is a more pervasive phenomenon than usually thought, involving modification and scaling at different levels. Besides adjectives and adverbs, also the epistemic stance and the illocutionary force of speech acts can be modulated (Bazzanella et al. 1991; Ghezzi 2013). The strategies… read more
Giacalone Ramat, Anna, Caterina Mauri and Andrea Sansó 2017 Chapter 12. Dubitative-corrective constructions in ItalianPragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles: New perspectives, Fedriani, Chiara and Andrea Sansó (eds.), pp. 335–367 | Chapter
This paper investigates the properties of a set of poorly described Italian constructions characterized, at the same time, by (i) a dubitative component, challenging a presupposition generated by the preceding context and (ii) a corrective function. These constructions revolve around four… read more
The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the main sources of antipassive constructions based on a 120-language sample. The sample includes the 48 languages with an antipassive in the WALS (Polinsky 2013) + 72 further languages in which an antipassive or a functionally equivalent… read more
Nominalized verb phrases have been identified as a possible source of passive and impersonal constructions by Langacker & Munro (1975), Langacker (1976), and Givón (1981), with exemplification drawn almost exclusively from Uto-Aztecan languages, but have received relatively less attention than… read more
Giacalone Ramat, Anna and Andrea Sansó 2011 From passive to impersonal: A case study from Italian and its implicationsImpersonal Constructions: A cross-linguistic perspective, Malchukov, Andrej L. and Anna Siewierska (eds.), pp. 189–228 | Article
In contemporary Italian, there is a passive si-construction in which the patient governs agreement on the verb and an impersonal si-construction in which either the verb is intransitive or the patient is not promoted to subject. The coexistence of the two constructions is the result of a… read more
This paper focuses on the areal distribution of indefinite man -constructions (i.e. impersonal active constructions in which the subject position is filled by a noun meaning ‘man’) in European languages. It is shown that man -constructions are a widespread phenomenon across Europe: they show up… read more
Sansó, Andrea 2006 'Agent defocusing' revisited: Passive and impersonal constructions in some European languagesPassivization and Typology: Form and function, Abraham, Werner and Larisa Leisiö (eds.), pp. 232–273 | Article
This article presents some descriptive generalisations about the distribution of passive and impersonal constructions in five European languages (Italian, Spanish, Polish, Danish, and Modern Greek). The constructions analysed include (but are not limited to) passive/impersonal constructions in… read more
Sansó, Andrea 2003 The network of demotion: Towards a unified account of passive constructionsMeaning Through Language Contrast: Volume 1, Jaszczolt, Katarzyna M. and Ken Turner (eds.), pp. 245–259 | Article