Theticity and sentence-focus in Italian: grammatically encoded categories or categories of language use?
This article aims to examine whether Italian has theticity and sentence-focus among its grammatically encoded categories. After the categories of theticity and sentence-focus are introduced, the concepts of grammatically encoded category and category of language use are operationalized along the lin...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
De Gruyter
2022-07-01
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| Series: | Linguistics |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2020-0141 |
| _version_ | 1827283590406209536 |
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| author | Belligh Thomas Crocco Claudia |
| author_facet | Belligh Thomas Crocco Claudia |
| author_sort | Belligh Thomas |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | This article aims to examine whether Italian has theticity and sentence-focus among its grammatically encoded categories. After the categories of theticity and sentence-focus are introduced, the concepts of grammatically encoded category and category of language use are operationalized along the lines of Integral Linguistics. For a functional category to qualify as a grammatically encoded category of a language, the language should have at least one construction that structurally encodes the category as its indefeasible semantics. The article provides a qualitative investigation of both corpus-based and constructed examples of the eight Italian sentential structures that have hitherto been recognized in the literature as thetic or sentence-focus constructions. It is shown that each of the constructions has information structural uses that are incompatible with a structurally encoded theticity or sentence-focus semantics, i.e., topic-comment structure and narrow focus construal. It is argued that theticity and sentence-focus are therefore categories of language use rather than grammatically encoded categories of Italian. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-24T09:39:24Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-04f7e8498f504bb7b5eb185ffd92be62 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 0024-3949 1613-396X |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-24T09:39:24Z |
| publishDate | 2022-07-01 |
| publisher | De Gruyter |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Linguistics |
| spelling | doaj.art-04f7e8498f504bb7b5eb185ffd92be622024-04-15T07:41:57ZengDe GruyterLinguistics0024-39491613-396X2022-07-016041241129310.1515/ling-2020-0141Theticity and sentence-focus in Italian: grammatically encoded categories or categories of language use?Belligh Thomas0Crocco Claudia1 Department of Linguistics, Section of General linguistics, Ghent University, Blandijnberg 2, Ghent, BelgiumDepartment of Linguistics, Section of Italian linguistics, Ghent University, Blandijnberg 2, Ghent, BelgiumThis article aims to examine whether Italian has theticity and sentence-focus among its grammatically encoded categories. After the categories of theticity and sentence-focus are introduced, the concepts of grammatically encoded category and category of language use are operationalized along the lines of Integral Linguistics. For a functional category to qualify as a grammatically encoded category of a language, the language should have at least one construction that structurally encodes the category as its indefeasible semantics. The article provides a qualitative investigation of both corpus-based and constructed examples of the eight Italian sentential structures that have hitherto been recognized in the literature as thetic or sentence-focus constructions. It is shown that each of the constructions has information structural uses that are incompatible with a structurally encoded theticity or sentence-focus semantics, i.e., topic-comment structure and narrow focus construal. It is argued that theticity and sentence-focus are therefore categories of language use rather than grammatically encoded categories of Italian.https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2020-0141construction grammargrammatically encoded categoryintegral linguisticsitaliansentence-focustheticity |
| spellingShingle | Belligh Thomas Crocco Claudia Theticity and sentence-focus in Italian: grammatically encoded categories or categories of language use? Linguistics construction grammar grammatically encoded category integral linguistics italian sentence-focus theticity |
| title | Theticity and sentence-focus in Italian: grammatically encoded categories or categories of language use? |
| title_full | Theticity and sentence-focus in Italian: grammatically encoded categories or categories of language use? |
| title_fullStr | Theticity and sentence-focus in Italian: grammatically encoded categories or categories of language use? |
| title_full_unstemmed | Theticity and sentence-focus in Italian: grammatically encoded categories or categories of language use? |
| title_short | Theticity and sentence-focus in Italian: grammatically encoded categories or categories of language use? |
| title_sort | theticity and sentence focus in italian grammatically encoded categories or categories of language use |
| topic | construction grammar grammatically encoded category integral linguistics italian sentence-focus theticity |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2020-0141 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT bellighthomas theticityandsentencefocusinitaliangrammaticallyencodedcategoriesorcategoriesoflanguageuse AT croccoclaudia theticityandsentencefocusinitaliangrammaticallyencodedcategoriesorcategoriesoflanguageuse |