Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

‘Alla finfine sono daccordo’: A Corpus-Based Case Study on Italian Adverbial Phrases Grammaticalization

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology (EUROPHRAS 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 11755))

Included in the following conference series:

  • 757 Accesses

Abstract

We present results of a corpus-based synchronic study on the grammaticalization of Italian adverbial phrases. In particular, we claim that spelling irregularities of adverbial constructions provide evidence of ongoing grammaticalization processes. Adverbial phrases are hence already decategorized analytic constructions that are undergoing paradigmaticization and subsequently lexicalization. We selected 40 adverbial phrases of different length (2–5 constituents) at different stages of the process: from completely non-alternating structures to phrases with two (or more) accepted standard spellings. By means of a corpus-based analysis we considered several properties of those constructions (i.e. frequency) and tested their significance with mixed effect modelling analysis. Specifically, we model the presence of spelling irregularities, its measure (i.e. partial or total univerbation), and frequency of irregular forms. Results of such a corpus-based statistical analysis, albeit preliminary, yield several interesting considerations on synchronic factors that facilitate or hinder processes of grammaticalization, especially the role of frequency and number of construction constituents. Findings support current usage-based literature on grammaticalization as constructionalization.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 79.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    See [6] for a systematic account of usage-based theory and grammaticalization.

  2. 2.

    Even though the two notions are not entirely overlapping, for the purposes of this work we will use the terms interchangeably.

  3. 3.

    “If in the end the parts of speech lost their own proper function, they would lie drowned in the vast whirlpool of adverbs. The adverb draws to itself parts of speech, like the all-absorbing sea, and violently forces them to obey its laws” (Smaragdus, IX cent. AD. Translated by [36] as cited in [37]).

  4. 4.

    All following examples are taken from the ItWac corpus.

  5. 5.

    All frequencies were normalized per million words.

  6. 6.

    A few OCCs in Italian AdvCs are linguistic fossils (as is the N “canto” in the sense of “location” in the AdvC “d’altro canto). However, we had too few data points to statistically account for these elements. We reserve a more in-depth account of such cases for future work.

  7. 7.

    Frequencies were logarithmically transformed for visualization purposes for all charts.

  8. 8.

    We performed all following analyses in the statistical computing environment R [45].

  9. 9.

    The dependent variable (token frequency of irregularly spelled AdvCs) was log-transformed.

References

  1. Kuryłowicz, J.: The evolution of grammatical categories. Diogenes 13(51), 55–71 (1965)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Meillet, A.: L’évolution des formes grammaticales. Scientia XII(XXXVI), 6 (1912)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Hopper, P.J., Traugott, E.C.: Grammaticalization. CUP, Cambridge (2003)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  4. Norde, M.: Degrammaticalization. OUP, Oxford (2009)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  5. Protopopescu, D.: The Morphologization Of Adverbs – An Instance of Grammaticalization. Studii și cercetări lingvistice (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Bybee, J.L.: Usage‐based theory and grammaticalization. In: Heiko, N., Heine, B. (eds). The Oxford Handbook of Grammaticalization. OUP, Oxford (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Heine, B.: Auxiliaries: Cognitive Forces and Grammaticalization. OUP USA, New York (1993)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Bybee, J.L., Torres, R.: Phonological and grammatical variation in exemplar models. Stud. Hisp. Lusophone Linguist. 1(2), 399–414 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Torres Cacoullos, R., Walker, J.A.: Collocations in Grammaticalization and Variation. OUP, Oxford (2011)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  10. Bybee, J.L.: From usage to Grammar: the mind’ s response to repetition. Language 82(4), 711–733 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Ellis, N.C.: Second language acquisition. In: Gass, S., Mackey, A. (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Browman, C.P., Goldstein, L.: Articulatory phonology: an overview. Phonetica 49(3–4), 155–180 (1992)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Mowrey, R., Pagliuca, W.: The reductive character of articulatory evolution. Ital. J. Linguist. 7, 37–124 (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Lehmann, C.: Thoughts on Grammaticalization, 3rd edn. Language Science Press (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Norde, M.: Lehmann’s parameters revisited. In: Grammaticalization and Language Change: New Reflections, pp. 73–109 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Givon, T.: On Understanding Grammar. John Benjamins, Amsterdam (1979)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Lindquist, H., Mair, C. (eds.): Corpus Approaches to Grammaticalization in English. Benjamins, Amsterdam (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Hildebrand-Edgar, N.: Disentangling frequency effects and grammaticalization, p. 23 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Renzi, L.: Come cambia la lingua. L’italiano in movimento. Mulino, Bologna (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Barlow, M., Kemmer, S.: Usage Based Models of Language. CSLI, Chicago (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Beckner, C., Bybee, J.: A usage-based account of constituency and reanalysis. Lang. Learn. 59, 27–46 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Bybee, J.: Language. Usage and Cognition. CUP, Cambridge (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Hopper, P.J.: Emergent grammar. In: PrOCEedings of the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, Berkley, CA, pp. 139–157 (1987)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Bybee, J.L.: Frequency of Use and the Organization of Language. OUP, Oxford (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Bybee, J.L.: Usage-based theory and exemplar representation. In: Hoffman, T., Trousdale, G. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar, pp. 49–69. OUP, Oxford (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  26. Bybee, J.L., Hopper, P.J. (eds.): Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure. Benjamins, Amsterdam (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Shank, C.: Grammaticalization, complementization and the development of an epistemic parenthetical: a diachronic analysis of the verb feel. Int. J. Lang. Linguist. 3(3), 19–33 (2016)

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  28. Thompson, S.A., Mulac, A.: A quantitative perspective on the grammaticization of epistemic parentheticals in English. In: Traugott, E.C., Heine, B. (eds.) Typological Studies in Language, pp. 313–339. John Benjamins, Amsterdam (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Lorenz, D.: From reduction to emancipation: Is gonna a word? In: Hasselgård, H., et al. (eds.) Studies in Corpus Linguistics, pp. 133–152. John Benjamins, Amsterdam (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  30. Hoffmann, S.: Grammaticalization and English Complex Prepositions: A Corpus-based Study. Routledge, London/New York (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  31. Goldberg, A.E.: Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language. OUP (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  32. Hilpert, M.: Construction Grammar and its Application to English. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  33. Coussé, E., et al.: Grammaticalization meets Construction Grammar. John Benjamins Publishing Company (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  34. Hilpert, M.: From hand-carved to computer-based: noun-participle compounding and the upward strengthening hypothesis. Cogn. Linguist. 26(1), 113–147 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Traugott, E.C., Trousdale, G.: Constructionalization and Constructional Changes. OUP, Oxford, New York (2013)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  36. Michael, I.: English Grammatical Categories. CUP, Cambridge (1970)

    Google Scholar 

  37. Hopper, P.: The paradigm at the end of the universe. In: Ramat, A., Hopper, P. (eds.) Limits of Grammaticalization, pp. 147–158. John Benjamins, Amsterdam (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  38. Payne, T.: Describing Morphosyntax: A Guide for Field Linguists. CUP, Cambridge (1997)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  39. van der Auwera, J.: Adverbial Constructions in the Languages of Europe, 2nd edn. de Gruyter, Berlin (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  40. Hummel, M., Valera, S. (eds.): Adjective Adverb Interfaces in Romance. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  41. Ramat, P., Ricca, D.: Prototypical adverbs: On the scalarity/radiality of the notion of adverb. Rivista di Linguistica 6, 289–326 (1994)

    Google Scholar 

  42. Rauh, G.: Adverbs as a linguistic category (?). In: Pittner, K., Elsner, D., Barteld, F. (eds.) Adverbs. Functional and Diachronic Aspects, pp. 19–45. John Benjamins, Amsterdam (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  43. Ramat, P., Ricca, D.: Sentence adverbs in the languages of Europe. In: Auwera, J. (ed) Adverbial Constructions in the Languages of Europe, pp. 187–275. de Gruyter, Berlin (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  44. Baroni, M., et al.: The WaCky wide web: a collection of very large linguistically processed web-crawled corpora. Lang. Resour. Eval. 43(3), 209–226 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  45. R Development Core Team: R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. http://www.R-project.org

  46. Barth, D., Kapatsinski, V.: Evaluating logistic mixed-effects models of corpus-linguistic data in light of lexical diffusion. In: Speelman, D., Heylen, K., Geeraerts, D. (eds.) Mixed-Effects Regression Models in Linguistics. QMHSS, pp. 99–116. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69830-4_6

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  47. Gries, S.: The most under-used statistical method in corpus linguistics: multi-level (and mixed-effects) models. Corpora 10(1), 95–125 (2015)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  48. Baayen, R.H., Davidson, D.J., Bates, D.M.: Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. J. Mem. Lang. 59(4), 390–412 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  49. Singmann, H., et al.: afex: Analysis of Factorial Experiments. R Package Version (2017)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Università di Pisa, Pisa, Italy

    Lucia Busso

  2. Università degli Studi di Perugia, Perugia, Italy

    Margherita Castelli

Authors
  1. Lucia Busso
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Margherita Castelli
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lucia Busso .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Malaga, Malaga, Spain

    Gloria Corpas Pastor

  2. University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK

    Ruslan Mitkov

Appendix

Appendix

AdvC

Freq. pm

Irregular spelling

OCC

POS

a caso

21.12

/

caso

N

a fianco

12.88

affianco

fianco

N

a parte

44.20

Apparte, aparte

parte

N

a posto

11.5

Aposto, apposto

posto

N

a malapena

2.16

/

pena

N

a proposito

36.33

Aproposito, approposito

proposito

N

da capo

2.61

Daccapo, dacapo

capo

N

d’accordo

47.26

daccordo

accordo

N

di nuovo

0.50

dinuovo

nuovo

agg

di sopra

54.29

disopra

sopra

avv

fin qui

9.69

finquì

Fin, qui

avv

in effetti

34.28

ineffetti

effetti

N

nient’affatto

1.9

nientaffatto

Niente, affatto

avv

per caso

19.21

percaso

caso

N

per favore

9.68

perfavore

favore

N

per niente

9.71

perniente

niente

avv

tutt’altro

12.04

tuttaltro

altro

agg

un po’

252.60

Unpò, un pò

poco

agg

a meno che

15.26

/

meno

avv

al di là

37.94

Aldilà, al dilà

là

avv

al di sopra

9.87

al disopra, aldisopra

sopra

avv

alla fin fine

1.27

alla finfine

fine

N

d’altra parte

8.22

daltra parte, d’altraparte

parte

N

d’altro canto

6.98

Daltrocanto, d’altrocanto

canto

N

di buon’ora

0.5

di buonora

ora

avv

per di più

8.14

per dipiù, perdipiù

più

avv

per lo meno

5.36

per lomeno, perlomeno

meno

avv

per lo più

14.25

Perlopiù, perlo più

più

avv

più o meno

14.25

piu o meno

Più, meno

avv

su due piedi

0.47

/

Due, piedi

N

a colpo d’occhio

0.31

/

ocehio

N

a mano a mano

2.51

/

mano

N

dall’oggi al domani

0.32

/

Oggi, domani

avv

di punto in bianco

0.44

/

Punto, bianco

N

di tanto in tanto

4.48

di tanto intanto

tanto

agg

di volta in volta

11.63

di volta involta

volta

N

d’ora in poi

4.12

dora in poi

ora

avv

in quattro e quattr’otto

0.2

in quattro e quattrotto

Quattro, otto

agg

per filo e per segno

0.4

/

Filo, segno

N

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Busso, L., Castelli, M. (2019). ‘Alla finfine sono daccordo’: A Corpus-Based Case Study on Italian Adverbial Phrases Grammaticalization. In: Corpas Pastor, G., Mitkov, R. (eds) Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology. EUROPHRAS 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11755. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30135-4_3

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30135-4_3

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-30134-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-30135-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation