From linguistic innovation to language change
A corpus-based investigation of the response marker non c’ è problema
This study investigates the diachrony of the Italian expression non c’ è problema ‘no problem’ when used as a response marker (e.g., Tottie 1991; Ward 2006) to establish if it represents a case of language change (Milroy, 1992: 171). If on the one hand, the expression was indeed reported to be a neologism by Radtke in 1990, a careful exploration of the relevant literature on the other has revealed that a diachronic, quantitative and pragmatic investigation of its distribution has not been conducted yet. Methodologically, the study conducts lexicographic, quantitative and qualitative analyses over a range of historical and contemporary dictionaries and corpora and it performs statistical significance tests, such as the Log Likelihood and the Fisher’s exact test. The results will reveal not only that this marker started to be used in 1977, but also that today, it is the response marker preferred by language users, thus qualifying as a case of language change. Furthermore, by analysing the diachronic distribution of no problem in English, the article will also explore the possibility that English may have been the source language for such change.
Keywords: language change, pragmatics, corpus linguistics, Italian, discourse markers
Published online: 28 March 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/rro.17021.vio
https://doi.org/10.1075/rro.17021.vio
References
References
Alfieri, G., Motta, D., and Rapisarda, M.
(2008) “La fiction”. In Alfieri, G. and Bonomi, I. (eds.), Gli italiani del piccolo schermo. Lingua e stili comunicativi nei generi televisivi, 235–340. Firenze: Franco Cesati Editore.
Battaglia, S.
(1961–2002) Grande dizionario della lingua italiana. Torino: UTET.
Biber, D. , Finegan, E. & Atkinson, D.
(1994) “ARCHER and its challenges: Compiling and exploring A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers”. In Udo Fries, Peter Schneider & Gunnel Tottie (eds.), Creating and using English language corpora. Papers from the 14th International Conference on English Language Research on Computerized Corpora, Zurich 1993, 1–13. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Retrieved from http://www.projects.alc.manchester.ac.uk/archer/. Last accessed 04/09/2018.
Cannella, M.
(ed.) (2007) Lo Zingarelli 2008. Vocabolario della lingua italiana di Nicola Zingarelli con CD-ROM. Bologna: Zanichelli.
Corpus of Historical American English (COHA)
. Retrieved from https://corpus.byu.edu/coha/. Last accessed on 04/09/2018.
Coşeriu, E.
(1997) Sincronie, diacronie şi istorie, Bucureşti: Editura Enciclopedică.
Cresti, E. & Moneglia, M.
(eds.) (2005) C-ORAL-ROM: Integrated Reference Corpora for Spoken Romance Languages. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 
Cusatelli, G.
(ed.) (1965) Dizionario Garzanti della lingua italiana. Milano: Aldo Garzanti Editore.
De Mauro, T.
(2000) Dizionario della Lingua Italiana De Mauro. Versione elettronica. Torino: Paravia.
De Mauro, T., Mancini, F., Vedovelli, M. & Voghera, M.
(eds.) (1993) LIP: Lessico di Frequenza dell’Italiano Parlato. Milano: Etaslibri. (= LIP.) Available at http://www.parlaritaliano.it/index.php/it/volip. Last accessed 16 May 2017.
Devoto, G. and Oli, G. C.
(2008) Il Devoto-Oli. Vocabolario della lingua italiana 2009. Versione elettronica. Serianni, L. and Trifone, M. (eds.). Firenze: Le Monnier.
(2013) Il Devoto-Oli. Vocabolario della lingua italiana 2014. Versione elettronica. Serianni, L. and Trifone, M. (eds.). Firenze: Le Monnier.
Drummond, K. and Hopper, R.
(1993a) Back Channels Revisited: Acknowledgment Tokens and Speakership Incipiency. Research on Language and Social Interaction 26:157–177.
(1993b) Some Uses of Yeah. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 26:203–212.
Fellegy, A. M.
(1995) Patterns and Functions of Minimal Response. American Speech 70:186–199.
Gabrielli, A.
(2011) Grande Dizionario Italiano – Speciale 150 anni. Milano: Hoepli. Retrieved from www.hoepli.it. Last accessed 16 May 2017.
Gaeta, L., Iacobini, C., Ricca, D., Angster, M., De Rosa, A. & Schirato, G.
(2013) MIDIA: A Balanced Diachronic Corpus of Italian. Paper presented at 21st International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Oslo, August 5–9 2013. (= MIDIA, Morfologia dell’italiano in Diacronia). Available at http://www.corpusmidia.unito.it. Last accessed 16 May 2017.
Gardner, R.
(1997) The Conversation Object Mm: A Weak and Variable Acknowledging Token. Research on Language and Social Interaction 30:131–156.
(2001) When Listeners Talk: Response Tokens and Listener Stance. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Grande dizionario di Italiano (2013) Milano: Garzanti Linguistica. Retrieved from www.garzantilinguistica.it. Last accessed 16 May 2017.
Il Grande Dizionario Garzanti della lingua italiana (1987) Milano: Garzanti.
Jefferson, G.
(1984) Notes on a Systematic Deployment of the Acknowledgement Tokens “yeah” and “mm hm”. Paper in Linguistics 17:197–216.
Lambertz, K.
(2011) Back-channelling: The use of yeah and mm to portray engaged listenership. Griffith Working Papers in Pragmatics and Intercultural Communication 4, 1/2, 11–18.
Levshina, N.
(2015) How to do Linguistics with R: Data exploration and statistical analysis. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
McEnery, T. and Wilson, A.
(1996/2001) Corpus Linguistics. An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Migliorini, B.
(1950) “Appendice al Dizionario moderno”. In Panzini, A., Dizionario moderno (nona edizione), Milano: Hoepli, 765–997.
Milroy, J.
(1992) Linguistic variation and change. Oxford: Blackwell.
Milroy, J. and Milroy, L.
(1985) Linguistic change, social network and speaker innovation. J. of Linguistics 21(1985), 339–384.
Onelli, C., Proietti, D., Seidenari, C. & Tamburini, F.
(2006) The DiaCORIS Project: A Diachronic Corpus of Written Italian. Proceedings of 5th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, 1212–1215. (= DiaCORIS, Corpus diacronico di italiano scritto.) Genova: LREC. Available at http://corpora.dslo.unibo.it/DiaCORIS/. Last accessed 16 May 2017.
Panzini, A.
(1905) Dizionario Moderno delle parole che non si trovano nei dizionari comuni. Milano: Hoepli.
Radtke, E.
(1990) “Non c’è problema”. Italienisch, 23, 68–69.
Rossi, F.
(2010) Doppiaggio e lingua. Enciclopedia dell’Italiano. Roma: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana.
Rossini Favretti, R., Tamburini, F. & De Santis, C.
(2002) A Corpus of Written Italian: A Defined and a Dynamic Model. A Rainbow of Corpora: Corpus Linguistics and the Languages of the World ed. by Andrew Wilson, Paul Rayson & Tony McEnery, 27–38. (= CORIS, Corpus di italiano scritto.) Lincom-Europa: Munich. Available at http://corpora.dslo.unibo.it/TCORIS/. Last accessed 16 May 2017.
Sabatini, F. and Coletti, V.
(2008) Il Sabatini Coletti. Dizionario della Lingua Italiana 2007 Milano: Rizzoli Larousse. Retrieved from www.dizionari.corriere.it. Last accessed 16 May 2017.
Scarano, A. and Signorini, S.
(2005) “Corpus linguistics and diachronic variability. A study on Italian spoken language corpora from the 1960s until nowadays”. In Kabatek, J., Pusch, C. D., and Raible, W. (eds.), Romanistische Korpuslinguistik II: Korpora und diachrone Sprachwissenschaft / Romance Corpus Linguistics II: Corpora and Diachronic Linguistics, 191–202. Tübingen: Narr.
Sheskin, D. J.
(2011) Handbook of Parametric and Nonparametric Statistical procedures. Boca Raton/London/New York: Chapman & Hall.
Stammer, J., Tucci, I. & Signorini, S.
(2004) Il restauro e l’archiviazione elettronica del primo corpus di italiano parlato: il corpus Stammerjohann. Atti delle Giornate del Gruppo di Fonetica Sperimentale – XIV, 119–126. Roma: Esagrafica. Available at http://lablita.dit.unifi.it/corpora/imdi/stam/. Last accessed 16 May 2017.
Tommaseo, N. and Bellini, B.
“Dizionario della lingua italiana con oltre centomila giunte a precedenti dizionari. Raccolte da Nicolò Tommaseo, Giuseppe Campi, Giuseppe Meini, Pietro Fanfani e da molti altri distinti filologi e scienziati. 1861–1879”. In Cannella, M. (ed.) Lo Zingarelli 2008. Vocabolario della lingua italiana di Nicola Zingarelli con CD-ROM 2007 Bologna: Zanichelli.
Tottie, G.
(1991) “Conversational style in British and American English: the case of back-channels”. In Aijmer, K. and Altenberg, B. (eds.), English Corpus Linguistics, 254–271. London: Longman.
Viola, L.
(In press). On the diachrony of giusto? ‘right?’ in Italian: A new discoursivization. Journal of Historical Pragmatics.
(Forthcoming). On the use of sì? ‘yes?’ as invariant follow-up in Italian: A diachronic corpus-based account of pragmatic language change. Journal of Historical Pragmatics.
Vocabolario Degli Accademici Della Crusca. Quarta edizione (1729–1738) Firenze: Domenico Maria Manni.
Vocabolario Degli Accademici Della Crusca. Quinta edizione (1863–1923) Firenze: Tipografia Galileiana.
Vocabolario Treccani. Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana. Retrieved from www.treccani.it/vocabolario/ 16 May 2017.
Ward, N.
(2006) “Non-Lexical Conversational Sounds in American English”. Pragmatics and Cognition 14:113–184.
White, S.
(1989) Backchannels across cultures: a study of Americans and Japanese. Language in Society, 18:59–76.
Yngve, V.
(1970) On Getting a Word in Edgewise. Papers from the Sixth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 567–557.
Young, R. F., and Lee, J.
(2004) Identifying units in interaction: Reactive tokens in Korean and English Conversations. Journal of Sociolinguistics 8:380–407.
Zimmerman, Don H.
(1993) Acknowledgment Tokens and Speakership Incipiency Revisited. Research on Language and Social Interaction 26:179–194.