Cover not available
Article published In:
Periphery – Diachronic and Cross-Linguistic Approaches
Edited by Yuko Higashiizumi, Noriko O. Onodera and Sung-Ock S. Sohn
[Journal of Historical Pragmatics 17:2] 2016
► pp. 307–337

Politeness markers from Latin to Italian

Periphery, discourse structure and cyclicity

 | University of Bergamo, Italy
This study compares the development of the Latin and Italian politeness markers quaeso and prego (‘please’). The markers, originally performative verbs meaning ‘I ask, I pray’, have developed politeness-related functions which index the action structure (i.e., polite requests) and the exchange structure (i.e., management of turns). Such developments correlate closely with the degree of integration of the markers and with their position within the sentence. In our analysis we describe these developments in both languages using diachronically balanced corpora of texts compiled at regular intervals. We discuss the pragmaticalization paths of politeness markers considering the role of left and right peripheries against the background of Schiffrin’s (1987) model of discourse and subsequent developments (the Val.Es.Co. model). The emergence of politeness-related functions can be accounted for by considering the interaction of exchange and action structures, the type of unit of discourse where prego and quaeso appear, and the position they occupy.
Keywords: politeness markers, periphery, pragmatic cycles, exchange structure, action structure
Published online: 6 April 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.17.2.07ghe
References (44)
Sources
Brepolis: Brepolis Cross-Database Search tool, relaying the Brepolis Latin databases. Available online at: [URL].
BTL: Bibliotheca Teubneriana Latina. Available online at: [URL].
C-Oral-ROM: Integrated Reference Corpora for Spoken Romance Languages. 2005. Edited by Emanuela Cresti and Massimo Moneglia. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liberliber: Liberliber biblioteca digitale. Available online at: [URL].
LIP: Tullio De Mauro et al. 1993. Lessico di frequenza dell’Italiano parlato. Available online at: [URL].Google Scholar
OVI: Corpus dell’Opera del vocabolario dell’Italiano antico. Available online at: [URL].
References
Aijmer, Karin and Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen. 2011. “Pragmatic Markers”. In Jan Zienkowski, Jan-Ola Östman and Jef Verschueren (eds), Discursive Pragmatics, 223–47. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Aijmer, Karin. 1997. “ I think: an English Modal Particle”. In Toril Swan and Olaf J. Westvik (eds), Modality in Germanic Languages, 1–47. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Akimoto, Minooji. 2000. “The Grammaticalization of the Verb Pray ”. In Olga Fischer, Annette Rosenbach and Dieter Stein (eds), Pathways of Change: Grammaticalization in English, 67–84. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Arnovick, Leslie K. 1999. Diachronic Pragmatics: Seven Case Studies in English Illocutionary Development. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Beeching, Kate and Ulrich Detges. 2014. Discourse Functions at the Left and Right Periphery: Crosslinguistic Investigations of Language Use and Language Change. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brinton, Laurel. 2006. “Pathways in the Development of Pragmatic Markers in English”. In Ans van Kemenade and Bettelou Los (eds), The Handbook of the History of English, 307–334. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Briz Goméz, Antonio and Salvador Pons Bordería. 2010. “Unidades, marcadores discursivos y posición”. In Óscar Loureda Lamas and Acín Esperanza Villa (eds), Los estudios sobre marcadores del discurso español, hoy [Studies on Discourse Markers in Spanish, Today], 327–358. Madrid: Arco Libros.Google Scholar
Briz Goméz, Antonio and Grupo Val.Es.Co. 2003. “Un sistema de unidades para el estudio del lenguaje coloquial” [A System of Units for the Study of Spoken Language]. Oralia: Análisis del discurso oral 61: 7–61.Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope and Stephen Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals of Human Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Busse, Ulrich. 2002. “Changing Politeness Strategies in English Requests – A Diachronic Investigation”. In Jacek Fisiak (ed.), Studies in English Historical Linguistics: A Festschrift for Akio Oizumi, 17–35. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Claridge, Claudia and Leslie Arnovick. 2010. “Pragmaticalization and Discursisation”. In Andreas H. Jucker and Irma Taavitsainen (eds), Historical Pragmatics, 165–192. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Company Company, Concepción. 2006. “Zero in Syntax, Ten in Pragmatics: Subjectification and Syntactic Cancellation”. In Angeliki Athanasiadou, Costas Canakis and Bert Cornille (eds), Subjectification: Various Paths to Subjectivity, 375–397. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Cresti, Emanuela and Massimo Moneglia (eds). 2005. Integrated Reference Corpora for Spoken Romance Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Degand, Liesbeth and Jacqueline Evers-Vermeul. 2015. “Grammaticalization or Pragmaticalization of Discourse Markers? More than a Terminological Issue”. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 16 (1): 59–85. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dostie, Gaétane. 2004. Pragmaticalisation et marqueurs discursifs: analyse sémantique et traitement lexicographique [Pragmaticalization and Discourse Markers: Semantic Analysis and Lexicographic Treatment]. Brussels: De Boeck/Duculot. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2009. “Discourse Markers and Regional Variation in French: a Lexico-Semantic Approach”. In Kate Beeching, Nigel Armstrong and Françoise Gadet (eds), Sociolinguistic Variation in Contemporary French, 201–14. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Drescher, Martina and Barbara Frank-Job (eds). 2006. Les marqueurs discursifs dans les langues romanes: approches théoriques et méthodologiques [Discourse Markers in the Romance Languages: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches]. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Erman, Britt and Ulla-Britt Kotsinas. 1993. “Pragmaticalization: The Case of ba’ and you know ”. Studier I modern språkvetenskap 101: 76–93.Google Scholar
Estellés Arguedas, María and Salvador Pons Bordería. 2014. “Absolute Initial Position”. In Salvador Pons Bordería (ed.), Discourse Segmentation in Romance Languages, 121–155. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fraser, Bruce. 1996. “Pragmatic Markers”. Pragmatics 6 (2): 167–90. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ghezzi, Chiara. 2014. “The Development of Discourse and Pragmatic Markers”. In Chiara Ghezzi and Piera Molinelli (eds), Discourse and Pragmatic Markers from Latin to the Romance Languages, 10–26. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ghezzi, Chiara and Piera Molinelli. 2014a. “Pragmatic Markers from Latin to Italian (Lat. quaeso and It. prego): The Cyclic Nature of Functional Developments”. In Chiara Ghezzi and Piera Molinelli (eds), Discourse and Pragmatic Markers from Latin to the Romance Languages, 61–85. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014b. “Italian guarda, prego and dai: Pragmatic Markers and the Left and Right Periphery”. In Kate Beeching and Ulrich Detges (eds), Discourse Functions at the Left and Right Periphery: Crosslinguistic Investigations of Language Use and Language Change, 115–150. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hansen, Maj-Britt Mosegaard. 2008. Particles at the Semantics/Pragmatics Interface: Synchronic and Diachronic Issues. A Study with Special Reference to the French Phasal Adverbs. Oxford/Bingley: Elsevier/Emerald.Google Scholar
. 2014. “Cyclicity in Semantic/Pragmatic Change: Old French ‘ja’ between Latin iam and Modern French ‘déjà’”. In Chiara Ghezzi and Piera Molinelli (eds), Pragmatic Markers from Latin to Romance, 139–165. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lepschy Anna L. and Giulio Lepschy. 2007. “ Grazie / Prego e Prego / Grazie ”. In Sui dialetti italoromanzi. Saggi in onore di Nigel B. Vincent. Special issue of The Italianist (edited by Delia Bentley and Adam Ledgeway) 271: 126–132.Google Scholar
Lutsky, Ursula and Jane Demmen. 2013. “Pray in Early Modern English Drama”. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 14 (2): 263–284. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Onodera, Noriko O. 2004. Japanese Discourse Markers: Synchronic and Diachronic Discourse Analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pons Bordería, Salvador (ed.). 2014a. Discourse Segmentation in Romance Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014b. “Paths of Grammaticalization in Spanish o sea”. In Chiara Ghezzi and Piera Molinelli (eds), Discourse and Pragmatic Markers from Latin to the Romance Languages, 109–135. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. and Harvey Sacks. 1973. “Opening up Closings”. Semiotica 8 (4): 289–327. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah. 1987. Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Searle, John R. 1969. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson. 1995. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. (Second edition). Malden/Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth C. 2003. “From Subjectification to Intersubjectification”. In Raymond Hickey (ed.), Motives for Language Change, 124–139. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth C. and Richard B. Dasher. 2002. Regularity in Semantic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Unceta Gómez, Luis. 2009. La petición verbal en latín [The verbal request in Latin]. Madrid: UAM.Google Scholar
Waltereit, Richard. 2002. “Imperatives, Interruption in Conversation, and the Rise of Discourse Markers: A Study of Italian guarda ”. Linguistics 40 (5): 987–1010. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Staszkiewicz, Bruno, Lori Czerwionka & Valentina Concu
2024. The effect of extralinguistic variables on verb selection in Italian requests. Journal of Politeness Research DOI logo
Fedriani, Chiara & Piera Molinelli
2020. Functional expansions of temporal adverbs and discursive connectives. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 21:2 ► pp. 182 ff. DOI logo
Fedriani, Chiara
2017. Chapter 5. Quapropter, quaeso? ‘Why, for pity’s sake?’. In Pragmatic Approaches to Latin and Ancient Greek [Studies in Language Companion Series, 190], ► pp. 83 ff. DOI logo
Fedriani, Chiara
2021. Conditional clauses as polite modifiers in Latin:si placetbetween pragmaticalization and language contact. Transactions of the Philological Society 119:3 ► pp. 346 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.