Chapter 6
Anchoring primary and secondary interjections to the context
On the basis of empirical evidence from various Italian dialects, I argue that primary and secondary
interjections lexicalize different functional heads which are computed syntactically at the edge of the clause.
Secondary interjections should be clearly distinguished from primary ones; only secondary interjections lexicalizing a
SpeechAct° head represent autonomous speech acts and are prosodically and syntactically independent from the
co-occurring clause, which they can attract to their specifier position, raising eventually to the adjacent head
Speaker° in order to achieve the necessary spatio-temporal contextual anchoring. Primary interjections, which can
co-occur with secondary ones and surface clause-initially, lexicalize arguably the highest functional head Speaker°,
interacting in interesting ways with lower projections and with the overt realization of the complementizer in
Force.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Discourse-linked secondary interjections
- 2.1Emilian dialects
- 2.2Venetan dialects
- 3.A hybrid class of secondary interjections
- 3.1Emilian dialects
- 3.2Venetan dialects
- 4.Non-integrated secondary interjections and contextual anchoring
- 4.1Venetan dialects
- 4.2On contextual anchoring
- 5.On the contextual anchoring of primary interjections
- 6.Conclusions
-
Notes
-
References