Work

On the interaction of some mirative markers in Italian

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: This paper explores the syntactic and semantic properties of some mirative strategies in Italian, and their possibility to co-occur without producing any redundancy in the utterance. By proposing a specific setting and an event that triggers the speaker's unprepared mind, we analyse the nature of some (syntactic) markers used to convey mirativity, from Ethical and Conversational Datives, to GO and TAKE periphrases, to the expletive negation within a rhetorical question, first individually and then in some combinations. We build a featural geometry to explain why markers of different origins can yield a mirative interpretation. We assign a +ZONAL feature to the markers in question, which represents a semantic space tied to the speaker's expectations. Lastly, we investigate the issue of why mirative obliques might be featurally more complex than other markers. We conclude that the acceptable stackability of two or more mirative markers depends on the fact that mirativity is a pragmatic inference arising as a byproduct of the manipulation of the speaker's expectations.

Source: Linguistica Brunensia

DOI: 10.5817/lb2025-38530

Authors: Vincenzo Nicolò Di Caro, Angelapia Massaro, Luca Molinari

Institutions: University of Siena, University of Wrocław

Language: English

Topic: Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

Subfield: Language and Linguistics

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: diamond