Italian allora, French alors: Functions, convergences and divergences

Abstract

The functions, convergences, and divergences of Italian allora and French alors are analyzed in two Italian texts (the Novellino, in Old Italian, and Paso Doble, in Modern Italian) and their French translations. The discourse marker is used differently in the two languages, and the contrastive analysis allows us to better assess those differences, by explicitly quantifying the degree of correspondence, omissions, and non-literal translations. Furthermore, our work confirms the existence of functions which may be identified as more central or more peripheral within a certain configuration, and emphasizes the existence of cross-language preferences for a more/less rich * Our thanks to Jonathan Hunt and to two anonymous referees for discussing a previous version.Though this paper is the product of collaborative research, § 1 is attributable to Carla Bazzanella, § 2.1 to Johanna Miecznikowski, § 2.2.1 to Cristina Bosco, § 2.2.2 to Alessandro Garcea, § 2.3 to Francesca Tini Brunozzi, and § 3 to Barbara Gili Fivela. set of forms for expressing a particular function. The polyfunctionality and context-boundness which characterize discourse markers in general are held responsible for differences in translation, thus motivating the several shades of meaning which distinguish Italian allora (with regard both to Old and Modern Italian) from French alors.Key words: discourse markers, translation, polyfunctionality, context, allora, alors, Italian, French. Translating discourse markersWithin the theoretical framework outlined in Bazzanella (1995Bazzanella ( , 2006a, and on the basis of existing empirical studies of Italian allora and French alors (cf. section 2), we will approach allora/alors analyzing the functions, convergences, and divergences of the two cognates in two Italian texts (the Novellino, in Old Italian, and Paso Doble, in Modern Italian) and their French translations. We will not be dealing here with the general topic of translation, but only with some specific points related to the translation of discourse markers (DMs), a functional category (cf., inter alia, van Dijk 1979, Schiffrin 1987, Hansen 1998, Jucker and Ziv 1998, Pons Bordería 1998, Martín Zorraquino and Portolés 1999, Fischer 2000, Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen 2006. DMs, no more considered as a peripheral phenomenon, have increasingly been studied in recent years, and have contributed to the change of grammar paradigms towards pragmatics and interactional linguistics.Four features of DMs are generally agreed upon by scholars, though an unified treatment is still lacking. Let us start with the first two features: -their polyfunctionality, i.e. the fact that they operate on several levels simultaneously, 1 and -their relatedeness to the speech situation and not to the situation talked about, which corresponds to an extreme sensitiveness to the variation of both context and cotext.The close context-boundness and the polyfunctionality of DMs constitute, of course, a crucial problem for translation. Though the indeterminacy of translation 10...

The clustering of discourse markers and filled pauses

“…These corpus-based studies reveal formal, functional and distributional differences within and between languages. For instance, Bazzanella et al (2007) have shown that the Italian-French cognates allora / alors share the same meanings but that these meanings present a different degree of prototypicality, i.e. more or less central vs. peripheral in their category, with the temporal value being more prominent for the Italian DM.…”

The Acquisition of Italian Discourse Markers as a Function of Studying Abroad

“…In particular, notice that allora 'then, so' is frequently used also by L1 speakers (13%). This result is not unexpected, given the number of functions allora has in Italian (Bazzanella et al 2007;Bazzanella & Borreguero 2011). On the contrary, be' 'well' is never found in the native speakers' linguistic production, nor in the L2 speakers' production before their Erasmus (cf.…”

Discourse markers in online writing by early balanced English/Italian bilinguals

“…These DMs are diciamo (used by BLP 1), ecco (employed by BLP 2), and ma (identified in the writing by BLP 3). In terms of the style conventions of the Italian language, the DMs diciamo, ecco, and ma are deemed to pertain to stylistically neutral DMs (Bazzanella et al 2007). It should be noted that unlike the English DMs used by the participants, for instance, the temporal DM just, there are no DMs that are common to all three participants.…”

“…By explaining this definition, Heine (2013Heine ( : 1208 argues that in the English language DMs are illustrated by such words and phrases as anyway, however, indeed, I mean, you know, you see, etc. The literature in linguistics (Bazzanella et al 2007;Orsolini 1993;Waltereit 2002) indicates that typical examples of DMs in Italian are allora (translated into English as "then", "therefore"), diciamo ("let's say"), and insomma ("in conclusion", "finally"). In the present case study, DMs are considered to be utterance-initial elements whose use is syntactically independent and sequentially dependent (Maschler and Schiffrin 2015;Schiffrin 1987).…”