On the adverbial origin of German modal particles

Abstract

All German modal particles share important common properties. However, in a diachronic perspective, their origin has often been explained by assuming that they have grammaticalized from different types of lexemes belonging to several word classes: adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, etc. The present paper intends to dissipate some erroneous assumptions about the grammaticalization paths of modal particles and to offer a novel syntactic approach that explains their origin and development. By following and elaborating on some recent ideas, I will explore the hypothesis that modal particles have an adverbial origin and will provide corresponding evidence. In the syntactic analysis, I will claim that all modal particles originate from specific types of (strong) lower adverb(ial)s that become weak sentential adverbs under reanalysis.

Mica preposing as focus fronting

“…If we assume a quantificational nature of mica (Tubau 2020; Mayer 2021), then the movement is motivated along the lines of Garzonio and Poletto's proposal. The movement of mica to a higher position was also proposed in a footnote in Coniglio (2009), but, as landing site the the proposed slot is the one usually occupied by the preverbal negation non. Given the data we have just showed, and the points raised by Poletto (2020), we argue that the landing site of preposed mica is in the FocusP projection, activated by FAIP.…”

The acquisition of rhetorical questions in bilingual children with Italian as a heritage language

“…As to its interpretation, mai is ambiguous between a rhetorical reading and an "extreme ignorance" reading (Coniglio, 2008;Hinterhölzl & Munaro, 2021;Obenauer & Poletto, 2000), whereby the speaker expresses their inability to find an acceptable answer to the question. Different interpretations are sometimes mapped onto the different syntactic positions mentioned above (Coniglio, 2008;Hinterhölzl & Munaro, 2021;Obenauer & Poletto, 2000) and there is some variability in the interplay between syntactic position, pragmatic interpretation, and frequency of use in different varieties of Italian (Ferin, 2024). In general terms, mai contributes to the meaning of the question by conveying that it is impossible to find a true answer to it.…”

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

“…The unambiguous instances of anche used as a modal particle are not frequent in the corpus. For these cases, we should start from the observation that there are no clear syntactic differences between HomIt and German, as far as the modal uses of anche/auch are concerned: in both languages, it occurs in the TP (Coniglio 2008;Cardinaletti 2011). Since the structures overlap, it is not surprising that in HerIt as well all instances of the modal anche immediately follow the finite verb.…”