This paper focuses on the use of the Italian adverb abbastanza ‘enough, quite’ when it is used as a stand-alone reply to potentially problematic and face-threatening questions. Despite its positive semantics, in some contexts, this word can be perceived as vague or even ambiguous by speakers, in… read more
This paper aims at investigating the semantics of nominal reduplication cross-linguistically. Nominal reduplication is treated as an iconic morphological device expressing functions that have something to do with plurality. Nevertheless, in the languages of the world, other types of functions… read more
The aim of this paper is to examine how exemplification is used in real-time interactions to make reference to conceptual categories. Based on real occurrences of spoken Italian, it is shown that in conversations exemplification is used cooperatively by different participants to perform several… read more