A comparative study of German auch and Italian anche

Abstract

In this paper we carry out a systematic comparison between the German and Italian particles auch and anche (meaning “also”) and provide a formal account of the data couched within the cartographic approach to syntax (Cinque 1999; Rizzi 1997; Cinque & Rizzi 2010). Based on the available literature and on novel data, we show that in both languages this particle exhibits three main functions: (i) additive particle; (ii) connective adverb (residual in Italian) and (iii) modal particle – which correlate with a different syntactic status of the particle (head or maximal projection) and with a different position within the clause. When used as an additive particle, auch/anche lexicalize a head in the lower portion of the clause and function as focalizers (in the sense of Kayne 1998, 2005). When they are connective adverbs, they are maximal projections hosted in a functional projection dedicated to adverbs. Finally, when used as a modal particle auch/anche are heads found in the higher portion of the IP layer. German auch and Italian anche are however not identical, since when used as an additive particle, German auch, but not Italian anche, is compatible with discontinuous constructions in which a given XP in the scope of auch can be moved to Spec,CP leaving auch within the clause. Moreover, German auch is compatible with a variety of illocutionary types in its use as a modal particle, whereas anche can only be used in declarative clauses. We show that the former fact follows from asymmetries in movement options between the two languages (topics move in German but not in Italian) and the latter results from the nature of anche as a polarity item.

The Syntax–Pragmatics Interface in Heritage Languages: The Use of anche (“Also”) in German Heritage Speakers of Italian

“…Recent studies (Bidese et al 2019;Moroni and Bidese 2021a;Cognola et al 2022) show that Italian anche and German auch display the same functions but behave to some extent differently with respect to their syntactic, prosodic, and pragmatic properties. In this section, we describe the three functions of anche and auch in the two languages and highlight the asymmetries in their realizations.…”

“…This modal use of anche is absent in HomIt because anche-unlike German auch-cannot occur with modal value unless there is another modal element like a modal verb (see above ex. 51 posso anche andarmene da sola tranquillamente) or a marked verb mode such as imperfetto or condizionale (Cognola et al 2022).…”

“…Unlike German "DA+accented auch", discontinuous structures of the type "DA+accented anche" are taken to be either ungrammatical (Bidese et al 2019, p. 350;Cognola et al 2022) or marginal/rare. Andorno (2000, p. 96), for instance, maintains that the pattern "DA+accented anche" can in some cases be realized, but that it seems to be restricted to spoken Italian, as in (8): According to Andorno, anche is accented and its DA is the constituent in the front position of the sentence il negozio sulla piazza, i.e., in (8) anche behaves like German auch in the example (7) above.…”

“…Andorno (2000, p. 96), for instance, maintains that the pattern "DA+accented anche" can in some cases be realized, but that it seems to be restricted to spoken Italian, as in (8): According to Andorno, anche is accented and its DA is the constituent in the front position of the sentence il negozio sulla piazza, i.e., in (8) anche behaves like German auch in the example (7) above. Since our control data for HomIt (see Section 4 below) do not present any occurrences of this structure, following Bidese et al (2019) and Cognola et al (2022), we consider structures such as (8) as marginal in HomIt; however, we cannot exclude that they could be accepted by some speakers or in some regional varieties/registers because our reference corpus for HomIt does not cover all registers and geographical areas of Italy.…”

“…( 6) and ( 7)). Within the cartographic framework, Cognola et al (2022) argued that this difference between German auch and Italian anche results from asymmetries in the movement properties of the two particles, i.e., from the fact that the DA of the additive particle can be moved alone to Spec,CP only in German, whereas this movement is not possible in Italian (see Section 6 below).…”