EMPHATIC CONSTRUCTIONS DISLOCAZIONE A DESTRA AND DISLOCAZIONE A SINISTRA IN COMEDIES OF THE 16th CENTURY TUSCAN AUTHORS

Abstract

The modern Italian language of informal communication is characterized by a rather active use of emphatic syntactic means, in particular the constructions right dislocation (dislocazione a destra) and left dislocation (dislocazione a sinistra), which are considered innovative. But it is quite difficult to determine the real time of occurrence of these phenomena in the speech of Italian speakers: the number of reliable written samples of oral informal communication of the past is very small, and in the case of communication that took place several centuries ago, there are no such sources at all. Comedies are very valuable material for analysis, as comic theatre is closely connected with the phenomenon of «parlato recitato» - colloquial speech in stage performance, which uses a complex of linguistic means associated with informal oral discourse. So, it is possible to trace examples of relatively accurately reproduced verbal communication of past centuries in the texts of comedies. The presence of emphatic constructions allows us to confirm the hypothesis that the Italian language nowadays does not develop new constructions and structures, but rather undergoes a process of restandartization, in which phenomena that were considered characteristic of colloquial usage change their position and become normative.