Present/future tense variation in contemporary Italian
The role of settledness
Mark Hoff | Universiteit Gent
According to normative descriptions of Italian future-framed adverbial clauses, the future tense is the only
option (Quando verrai [F], ti presterò il libro ‘When you come, I’ll lend you the book’).
However, the present tense may also be used (Quando vieni [P], ti presto il libro). I
demonstrate that choice and acceptance of the present in future-framed adverbials are conditioned by the speaker’s presumption of
settledness; that is, in every future world compatible with the speaker’s beliefs the eventuality necessarily occurs. The data
come from an online questionnaire consisting of a forced-choice and an acceptability judgment task completed by 429 native
speakers of Italian, and were analyzed using mixed-effects regression. Results show that the present is chosen most and rated
highest when the future eventuality is presumed settled ([+certain, +immediate, +temporally specific]). These findings demonstrate
that speakers use the present to express confidence in the realization of future eventualities.
Keywords: Italian, pragmatics, present, future, subordinate clauses, settledness
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Previous literature
- 2.1The Italian present & future tenses
- 2.2Settledness
- 3.Research questions & hypotheses
- 4.Methods
- 5.Results
- 6.Discussion
- 7.Conclusions & future directions
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
Published online: 25 May 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/rro.19022.hof
https://doi.org/10.1075/rro.19022.hof
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