Cover not available
Part of
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 13: Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ 29, Nijmegen
Edited by Janine Berns, Haike Jacobs and Dominique Nouveau
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 13] 2018
► pp. 55–74

On ben in Trentino regional Italian

| Sapienza University of Rome | University of Cambridge

The aim of the present article is to discuss the syntactic distribution and semantic/pragmatic interpretation of the discourse particle ben (lit. ‘well’) as used in the Trentino regional variety of Italian. Regarding its distribution, the results of our investigation with native speakers show that ben is admitted in any of the tested TAM contexts (save for non-root embedded clauses) and always sits between the lexical/auxiliary/restructuring verb and the non-finite form. As for its interpretation, it is shown that ben is used to negate an implicit or explicit negative presupposition, i.e. it is primarily connected with negation. These syntactic and interpretative properties are captured by claiming that ben sits in NegPresuppositionalP, where it is licensed by the (c)overt operator no located in ForceP.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The data
  • 3.Towards an analysis for Trentino ben
    • 3.1Previous works on Italian ben
    • 3.2Propositional vs expressive level
    • 3.3The semantic contribution
    • 3.4On anaphoricity
    • 3.5On emphatic polarity
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 July 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.13.05cog
References
Baardewyk-Resseguier, Jacqueline van
1991 “Les particules de modalité wel et bien. Une approche contrastive néerlandais-français”. Cahiers de lexicologie 59: 39–49.Google Scholar
Batllori, Montserrat, and Maria-Lluïsa Hernanz
2013 “Emphatic Polarity from Latin to Romance”. Lingua 128: 9–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Belletti, Adriana
1990 Generalised Verb Movement. Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier.Google Scholar
1994 “Verb Positions: Evidence from Italian”. In Verb Movement, ed. by David Lightfoot and Norbert Hornstein, 19–40. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cardinaletti, Anna
2011 “German and Italian Modal Particles and Clause Structure”. Linguistic Review 28: 493–531. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 “What do you do if you do not have Modal Particles?” In Charting the landscape of linguistics. On the scope of Josef Bayer’s Work, ed. by Ellen Brandner, Anna Czypionka, Constantin Freitag and Andreas Trotzke, 16–21. Konstanz: University of Konstanz.Google Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo
1991 “Mica: Note di sintassi e pragmatica”. In Teoria linguistica e sintassi italiana, ed. by Guglielmo Cinque, 311–323. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
1999 Adverbs and Functional Heads. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Coniglio, Marco
2008 “Modal Particles in Italian”. University of Venice Working Papers in Linguistics 18: 91–129.Google Scholar
Cognola, Federica, and Norma Schifano
2015 “Italian ben: a Case Study on Romance Discourse Particles”. Paper presented at Romance Linguistics Seminars, 20 November 2015, University of Cambridge.Google Scholar
2018 “On the Marking of Negative Presupposition in Regional Varieties of Italian”. In Romance Syntax. Comparative and Diachronic Perspectives, ed. by Gabriela Pană Dindelegan, Rodica Zafiu, Adina Dragomirescu, Alexandru Nicolae, Irina Nicula Paraschiv, 435–455. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
forthcoming “From macro to nano: a Parametric Hierarchy Approach to the diatopic and diachronic variation of Italian ben”. In Clausal Architecture and Its Consequences: Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives (Vol 1), ed. by , Theresa Biberauer, Jamie Douglas, András Bárány and Sten Vikner.Google Scholar
Cruschina, Silvio
2010 “On the Syntactic Status of Sentential Adverbs and Modal Particles”. Language Typology and Universals (STUF) 63 (4): 345–357.Google Scholar
Fintel, Kai von
2008 “What is Presupposition Accommodation, Again?” Philosophical Perspectives 22 (1): 137–170. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane
2006 “Conditionals, Factives and the Left Periphery”. Lingua 116: 1651–1669. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hernanz, Maria-Lluïsa
2010 “Assertive bien in Spanish and the Left Periphery”. In Mapping the Left Periphery, ed. by Paola Benincà and Nicola Munaro, 19–62. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Holmberg, Anders
2001 “The Syntax of Yes and No in Finnish”. Studia Linguistica 55: 141–175. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Laka, Itziar
1990 Negation in Syntax: On the Nature of Functional Categories and Projections. Ph.D. Dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Ledgeway, Adam
2010 “The Clausal Domain: CP Structure and the Left Periphery”. In Syntactic Variation and the Dialects of Italy, ed. by Roberta D’Alessandro, Adam Ledgeway and Ian Roberts, 38–51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lonzi, Lidia
1991 “Il sintagma avverbiale”. In Grande grammatica italiana di consultazione vol. 2, ed. by Lorenzo Renzi and Giampaolo Salvi, 341–412. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Munaro, Nicola, and Cecilia Poletto
2004 “Sentential Particles and Clause Typing in Veneto Dialects”. ZAS Papers in Linguistics (ZASPiL) 35: 375–397.Google Scholar
Padovan, Andrea, and Nicoletta Penello
2014 “On the Element ben in Trentino Dialects”. Poster presented at CIDSM 2014, Universities of Padua and Venice.Google Scholar
Pecoraro, Walter, and Chiara Pisacane
1984 L’avverbio. Zanichelli: Bologna.Google Scholar
Poletto, Cecilia
2008 “The Syntax of Focus Negation”. University of Venice Working Papers in Linguistics 18: 179–202.Google Scholar
Vinet, Marie-Theiese
1996 “On Certain Adverbs of Quantification in Quebec French”. Probus 8: 207–221. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Waltereit, Richard, and Ulrich Detges
2007 “Different Functions, Different Histories. Modal Particles and Discourse Markers from a Diachronic Point of View”. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 6: 61–80.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Weydt, Harald
1969 Abtönungspartikel: Die deutschen Modalwörter und ihre französischen Entsprechungen. Bad Homburg: Gehlen.Google Scholar
Zanuttini, Raffaella
1997 Negation and Clausal Structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zimmermann, Malte
2004 “Discourse Particles in the Left Periphery”. ZAS Papers in Linguistics 35: 543–566.Google Scholar
2011 “Discourse Particles”. In Semantics ( = Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft HSK (33.2)), ed. by Klaus von Heusinger, Claudia Maienborn and Paul Portner, 2011–2038. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Cognola, Federica & Silvio Cruschina
2021. Between Time and Discourse A Syntactic Analysis of Italianpoi. Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie occidentale :55 DOI logo
Cognola, Federica, Manuela Caterina Moroni & Ermenegildo Bidese
2022. Chapter 8. A comparative study of German auch and Italian anche. In Particles in German, English, and Beyond [Studies in Language Companion Series, 224], ► pp. 209 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.