Chapter 11
Et cetera, eccetera, etc. The development of a
general extender from Latin to Italian
This paper discusses the range of functions of
et cetera in Latin, as well as the
multifunctionality and evolution of eccetera in
Italian. Both forms pertain to the category of general extenders, i.e.
markers whose main function is to ‘extend’ otherwise grammatically
complete utterances. We will propose a qualitative analysis based on
data from Latin, Old Italian, and contemporary written and spoken
Italian. In particular, we will discuss the semantic-pragmatic
expansion of et cetera and eccetera,
highlighting how both expressions tend to develop intersubjective and
procedural meanings in addition to their original functions. Moreover,
since the original components of eccetera are by now
blurred in contemporary Italian, we will show how recent developments
allow its use in disjunctive contexts.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.
Et cetera in Latin
- 2.1Functions of et cetera
- 2.1.1Completing lists and marking sets
- 2.1.2Sharing knowledge and building categories
- 2.1.3Pragmatic and interpersonal functions
- 2.2The evolution of et cetera
- 3.From Latin to Italian
- 3.1Previous studies on Italian eccetera
- 3.2Functions of eccetera in contemporary spoken
Italian
- 3.2.1‘There is more’: Completing lists and building categories
- 3.2.2‘You know what i mean’: Indexing shared knowledge
- 3.2.3‘There are alternatives’: Disjunctive uses
- 3.3Recent developments
- 4.Discussion and conclusive remarks
-
Acknowledgements
-
Notes
-
References
References
Ariel, Mira & Mauri, Caterina
2018 Why use or? Linguistics 56(5): 939–993.
Barotto, Alessandra
2018 The role of exemplification in the construction of
categories: The case of Japanese. In
Linguistic Strategies for the Construction of Ad Hoc
Categories: Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives,
Caterina Mauri &
Andrea Sansò (eds). Special issue of
Folia Linguistica 52(s39–1): 37–68.
Barsalou, Lawrence W.
1983 Ad hoc categories.
Memory and Cognition 11(3): 211–227.
Béguelin, Marie-José & Corminboeuf Gilles
2017
Ou comme ça, machin et autres
marqueurs d’indétermination dans les listes.
Discours 20.
Channell, Joanna
1994 Vague Language. Oxford: OUP.
Cheshire, Jenny
2007 Discourse variation, grammaticalization, and stuff
like that.
Journal of Sociolinguistics 11(2): 155–193.
Cortés Rodríguez, Luis
2006 Los elementos de final de serie enumerativa en el
discurso oral.
Investigaçoes 19(2): 9–36.
Croft, William & Cruse, Alan D.
2004 Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: CUP.
Cucchi, Costanza
2010 Vague expressions in the European Parliament: A
marker of cultural identity? In
Discourse, Identities and Roles in Specialized
Communication,
Giuliana Garzone &
James Archibald (eds), 85–107. Bern: Peter Lang.
De Mauro, Tullio, Mancini, Federico, Vedovelli, Massimo & Voghera, Miriam
1993 Lessico di frequenza dell’italiano parlato. Milano: Etaslibri.
Dines, Elizabeth R.
(
1980)
Variation in discourse: ‘And stuff like
that’.
Language in Society 9(1): 13–31.
Diewald, Gabriele
2011 Pragmaticalization (defined) as grammaticalization
of discourse functions.
Linguistics 49(2): 365–390.
Du Bois, John W.
2014 Towards a dialogic syntax.
Cognitive Linguistics 25(3): 359–410.
Fiorentini, Ilaria
2018
Eccetera eccetera e così via di
seguito. I general extenders
dell’italiano contemporaneo.
CLUB Working Papers in Linguistics 2: 20–39.
Fiorentini, Ilaria
2019 E le rimanenti cose. Eccetera tra
reticenza e inferenza. In
Spazi bianchi. Le espressioni letterarie, linguistiche e
visive dell’assenza,
Alfonsina Buoniconto,
Gerardo Salvati &
Raffaele Cesaro (eds), 249–260. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino.
Fiorentini, Ilaria & Sansò, Andrea
2019 Reformulation markers and their functions. Two
case studies from Italian.
Journal of Pragmatics 120: 54–72.
Fraser, Bruce
1999 What are discourse markers? Journal of Pragmatics 31: 931–952.
Galli de’ Paratesi, Nora
1969 Le brutte parole. Milano: Mondadori.
Ghezzi, Chiara
2013 Vagueness Markers in Contemporary Italian:
Intergenerational Variation and Pragmatic
Change. PhD Dissertation, Università di Pavia.
Goria, Eugenio & Mauri, Caterina
2018 Il corpus KIParla: Una nuova risorsa per lo studio
dell’italiano parlato. In
CLUB Working Papers in Linguistics, Vol. 2,
Francesca Masini &
Fabio Tamburini (eds), 96–116. Bologna: Circolo Linguistico dell’Università di Bologna (CLUB).
Grice, Paul
1975 Logic and conversation. In
Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3: Speech Acts,
Peter Cole &
Jerry L. Morgan (eds), 41–58. New York NY: Academic Press.
Guil, Pura
1999 Proformas alusivas en lengua oral. In
Linguistica testuale comparativa. In Memoriam
Maria-Elisabeth Conte,
Gunver Skytte &
Francesco Sabatini (eds), 89–98. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.
Hand, Ferdinand G.
1832 Tursellinus seu de particulis Latinis
commentarii, Vol. II. Leipzig: Weidemann.
Hansen, Maj-Britt Mosegaard
Hansen, Maj-Britt Mosegaard
1998b The semantic status of discourse markers. Lingua 104: 235–260.
Hansen, Maj-Britt Mosegaard
2006 A dynamic polysemy approach to the lexical
semantics of discourse markers (with an exemplary analysis
of French toujours). In
Approaches to Discourse Particles,
Kerstin Fischer (ed.), 21–46. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Hopper, Paul & Traugott, Elizabeth C.
2003 Grammaticalization (
2nd edn). Cambridge: CUP.
Jefferson, Gail
1990 List-construction as a task and
resource. In
Interaction Competence,
George Psathas (ed.), 63–92. Washington DC: University Press of America.
Langacker, Ronald W.
1977 Syntactic reanalysis. In
Mechanisms of Syntactic Change,
Charles N. Li (ed.), 57–139. Austin TX: University of Texas Press.
Magni, Elisabetta
2019 General extenders in Latin. In
Lemmata linguistica Latina, Vol. 2: Clause and Discourse.
Proceedings of the 19th International Colloquium on Latin
Linguistics (Munich April 24–28, 2017),
Lidewij van Gils,
Caroline Kroon &
Rodie Risselada (eds), 697–714. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Mauri, Caterina
2014 What do connectives and plurals have in common?
The linguistic expression of ad hoc
categories. In
Linguistic Papers Dedicated to Jacques Moeschler,
Joanna Blochowiak,
Stéphanie Durrlemann-Tame,
Cristina Grisot &
Christopher C. Laenzlinger (eds), 1–21. Genève: Université de Genève.
O’Keeffe, Anne
2004 ‘Like the wise virgins and all that jazz’: Using a
corpus to examine vague categorization and shared
knowledge.
Language and Computers 52(1): 1–26.
Overstreet, Maryann
1999 Whales, Candlelight and Stuff Like That: General
Extenders in English Discourse. Oxford: OUP.
Pichler, Heike & Levey, Stephen
2011 In search of grammaticalization in synchronic
dialect data: General extenders in northeast
England.
English Language and Linguistics 15: 441–471.
Pons Bordería, Salvador
2006 A functional approach to discourse
markers. In
Approaches to Discourse Particles,
Kerstin Fischer (ed.), 77–99. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Prandi, Michele
1990 Una figura testuale del silenzio: La
reticenza. In
Dimensioni della linguistica,
Maria-Elisabeth Conte,
Anna Giacalone Ramat &
Paolo Ramat (eds.), 217–239. Milano: Franco Angeli.
Sacks, Harvey
1972 On the analyzability of stories by
children. In
Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of
Communication,
John Gumperz &
Dell Hymes (eds.), 325–345. New York NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Tombeur, Paul
(ed.) 2013 LLT-Series A. Library of Latin Texts. Turnhout: Brepols.
Traugott, Elizabeth C.
2010 Revisiting subjectification and
intersubjectification. In
Subjectification, Intersubjectification and
Grammaticalization,
Kristin Davidse,
Lieven Vandelanotte &
Hubert Cuyckens (eds), 29–70. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Voghera, Miriam
2012 Chitarre, violino, banjo e cose del
genere. In
Per Tullio De Mauro. Studi offerti dalle allieve in
occasione del suo 80°compleanno,
Anna M. Thornton &
Miriam Voghera (eds), 341–364. Roma: Aracne.
Voghera, Miriam, Iacobini, Claudio, Savy, Renata, Cutugno, Francesco, De Rosa, Aurelio & Alfano, Iolanda
2014 VoLIP: A searchable Italian spoken
corpus. In
Complex visibles out there. Proceedings of the Olomouc
Linguistics Colloquium: Language Use and Linguistic
Structure,
Ludmila Veselovská &
Markéta Janebová (eds), 628–640. Olomouc: Palacký University.
Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 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.