Destinato a sparire? L’uso del congiuntivo a 150 anni dall’unità d’Ita- lia sull’esempio de “La Repubblica”. Uno studio corpus based

Abstract

Destined to disappear? Use of congiuntivo 150 years after unification of Italy. Study based on „La Repubblica” corpus Since Italian became the language of everyday communication, its grammar has evolved. One of the often cited new tendencies is decreasing use of congiuntivo. The aim of this study is to verify whether we can observe such tendency in language of newspapers exemplified by the newspaper “La Repubblica”. The study is based on “La Repubblica” corpus which collects texts published in this newspaper during 15 years (approximately 380 million tokens). The analysis shows that the position of congiuntivo in Italian verbal system is not threatened. However there are some differences between diverse contexts and single expressions which can be followed by congiuntivo. This may indicate that the principles of use of congiuntivo are slowly changing.