Abstract

This paper investigates the history of -mente parlando, a construction that can be used in modern Italian either as a style disjunct (e. g. rigorosamente parlando ‘strictly speaking’) or as a domain adverbial (e. g. economicamente parlando ‘economically speaking’). This functional difference will be accounted for synchronically as a case of constructional polysemy, with different semantic types of adjectives (mainly relational vs non-relational) occurring in the -mente slot leading to a different reading of the whole construction. Diachronically, the constructional polysemy appears to be the result of a metonymic shift from the older STYLE reading to the newer DOMAIN interpretation. A corpus-based investigation will analyze the syntactic, pragmatic and discursive conditions from which the different uses arose. While both variants are attested from the 14th century on, a massive expansion of domain adverbials formed by -mente parlando is observed only in the first half of the 19th century, a tendency which can be explained as a new fashion for “rationalist” discourse organization and which corresponds to similar evolutions described for 19th-century English, French and Spanish.

Highlights

  • Standard Italian has a special type of adverbial, formed by an adverb in -mente and the gerundial form of parlare ‘to speak’

  • This paper has investigated the history of Italian -mente parlando, a construction generally considered as having two functions in the modern language, namely MPC1 (“style disjunct”) and MPC2 (“domain adverbial”)

  • This difference can be accounted for as a case of constructional polysemy, with different semantic types of adjectives put into the -mente slot leading to a different reading of the construction

Read more

Summary

Introduction

Standard Italian has a special type of adverbial, formed by an adverb in -mente and the gerundial form of parlare ‘to speak’ This construction is formally and semantically similar to analogous expressions in other European languages, neither its contemporary use nor its diachronic development have yet been systematically described to my knowledge. #Molto economicamente (parlando) è stato un gran successo ‘#Very economically speaking, it was a big success’; cf Grossmann 1999: 415; De Cesare/Albom/Cimmino/Lupica Spagnolo ms.) As such relational adverbs do not express manner (syntactically speaking, they don’t serve the core adverbial function of verb modification), it seems likely that, diachronically, the -mente parlando construction has gone through a process of semantic change, whereby the older, literal meaning (‘speaking in a certain manner’) has faded out in favor of the more abstract DOMAIN reading represented by the examples listed under (2).

State of research
MPC denoting a MANNER OF SPEAKING on the plan du dit
MPC denoting a MANNER OF SPEAKING on the plan du dire
From STYLE to DOMAIN: the rise of MPC2
Conclusion
Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call