From “textual” to “interpersonal”: On the diachrony of the Italian particle mica

Abstract

This paper investigates the development of the Italian negative particle mica as an increase in “intersubjectivity”, in the sense of an increasing coding of the speaker’s awareness of the interlocutor’ attitudes and beliefs (cf. e.g. Traugott, in press). Extending to a diachronic perspective Schwenter’s (2003, 2005, 2006) hypotheses on the relationship between marked, or “non-canonical”, negation and information structural constraints, the first part of the paper examines the relationship between the negated proposition and the preceding co-text in data from the XIII to the XX century. Two main trends are identified: (i) a decrease of the cases where the link with the preceding co-text is explicitly activated, as opposed to prompted by inferrable elements of the preceding co-text; (ii) an increase in “dialogual” (dyadic) contexts. The combination of these trends identifies a cline, from a cluster of monologual contexts in which p is discourse-old by virtue of explicit textual evocation, to a cluster of dialogual contexts in which an increasing amount of inferencing on behalf of the interlocutors is required. Such a cline is argued to be indicative of a more general shift in the use of mica: from a “textual” mode, pertaining to the level of text-construction, to an “interpersonal” mode, centered on the locutor–interlocutor interaction. This trend is confirmed by analysis of Present Day Italian data in the second part of the paper, where mica is shown to acquire both a polyphonic and a mitigating function in interrogative contexts. The role of dialogual contexts is highlighted in favoring the development of such polyphonic and intersubjective polysemies. The investigation has bearing on three main issues: (i) the discursive function of negation; (ii) the notion of ‘discourse-old’ and more in general the textual dimension of giveness; (iii) the methodological importance of an interactional approach to change, in the identification of dialogual vs. monologual contexts as a locus for the acquisition of salient properties in the evolution of the particle.