Publications and Research
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2017
Abstract
The Italian adverbial clitics vi and ci, both routinely glossed ‘there,’ are not synonymous but instead are signals of opposing meanings in a grammatical system of Restrictedness of Space. Vi means more Restricted, and ci means less Restricted. Operating at the discourse level, the two meanings function to direct attention onto the relevant conceptual space for each event in a narrative. Conceptual space includes physical places, subject matter complements, and realms of existential constructions. The semantic hypothesis accounts both for quantitative patterns observed in stretches of discourse and for the respective interpretive effects of the two clitics and for their absence. The Italian adverbial clitics vi and ci, both routinely glossed ‘there,’ are not synonymous but instead are signals of opposing meanings in a grammatical system of Restrictedness of Space. Vi means more Restricted, and ci means less Restricted. Operating at the discourse level, the two meanings function to direct attention onto the relevant conceptual space for each event in a narrative. Conceptual space includes physical places, subject matter complements, and realms of existential constructions. The semantic hypothesis accounts both for quantitative patterns observed in stretches of discourse and for the respective interpretive effects of the two clitics and for their absence.