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Revue Romane
Vol. 58:1 (2023) ► pp.88–127
articles linguistiques

Present/future tense variation in contemporary Italian

The role of settledness

ORCID logo | 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
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rro.19022.hof
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