Short replies in Italian: Sì / no and other markers between polarity and agreement

Andorno, Cecilia; Rosi, Fabiana

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2015.07.009

Cited by 3 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Our dataset comes from two subcorpora. Corpus 1 was collected for the study of particles sì / no in Italian (Andorno & Rosi 2015); it consists of elicited dialogues based on the Map Task (Anderson et al 1991), an interactive game between two participants who are given two similar maps. As mentioned above (section 2.1) one of the speakers, the Instruction follower FOL, has to draw a path on his map, following the instructions given by the other speaker (the Instruction Giver GIV).…”

Section: Corpora Methods and Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…12 Source: http://it.hobby.viaggi.narkive.com/RzxwWPVX/tragedia-in-myamair 13 Further details concerning the participants and the data are offered in Andorno & Rosi (2015). 14 According to the Map Task annotation scheme, these conversational moves can be considered (15) FOL1: ma # sono ravvicinate -, queste curve?…”

Section: Corpora Methods and Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These conversational moves are called tentative checks, in Grice & Savino (2004). For an in-depth description of different dialogic contexts in the data, see Andorno & Rosi (2015). The complex semantic and pragmatic value of negative polar questions has recently been described through several different approaches: Romero (2006), Reese (2007), Repp (2013), Krifka (2015).…”

Section: Corpora Methods and Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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In search for polarity contrast marking in Italian

Andorno¹,

Claudia²

2018

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today

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In the current paper, we examine polarity contrast marking in Italian in contexts where a contrast in polarity (polarity maintenance or switch) is the main information to be conveyed. We analyze and compare two kinds of data: elicited speech from Map Task dialogues and read speech focusing on clausal replies echoing (part of) the prompt. We tackle the questions how frequently do speakers of Italian use echo replies when confirming or correcting the polarity of a negatively biased question; what are the syntactic and prosodic properties of Italian echo replies in these contexts, and how often speakers produce verum focus when no other option is available for marking a contrast in polarity. The results confirm that the marking of polarity contrast, and in particular, prosodic encoding through verum focus, is possible although not a preferred option in Italian. Polarity contrast can also be left unspecified. This result supports earlier findings about the instability of polarity marking in Italian. In addition to this, the results indicate that verum focus readings can also emerge as a result of morpho-syntactic manipulations, such as the use of clitic right dislocation. In this case, the prosodic highlighting of the verb can be seen as an effect of a syntactic operation.

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Section: Corpora Methods and Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Corpora Methods and Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Corpora Methods and Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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In search for polarity contrast marking in Italian

Andorno¹,

Claudia²

2018

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today

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“…Bernini points out that, while answers to positive questions are unproblematic, some variation is observed in answers to negative questions: according to his descriptions, NA is expressed by no, while sì is (at the very best) marginal. PD responses can be expressed by either particle, but must always be followed by a "clarifying sentence"; moreover, the intonation on particles is also different: in NA responses, the vowel of the particle is realized short and flat, in PD responses particles are pronounced "with a lengthened vowel and a higher, occasionally reiterated pitch tone" (Bernini 2001: 213, tr Andorno & Rosi (2015). The authors investigate the basic pattern of responses (replies and answers) in Italian.…”

Section: Nuclear Polar Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, because of the very nature of our experimental methodology, relying on a forced choice task, it cannot in principle be excluded that the dispreferred particle choices might in fact be acceptable (at least to some extent: cf. Bernini 2001 andAndorno &Rosi 2015). Therefore, in the next section we will explore an alternative account which, all other things being equal, is more capable to accommodate a degree of optionality in particle choices.…”

Section: Comparison With Previous Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

(Dis)agreement, polarity, and focus: Answering negative polar questions in Italian

Servidio

Bocci

Bianchi

2018

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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Among languages that employ specialized particles for answering polar questions, two major groups are known: Positive-Negative (P-N) and Agreement-Disagreement (A-D). English and Italian are examples of the former group, Japanese an example of the latter. It has occasionally been remarked in the literature that at least in some P-N languages a narrow focus in a negative polar question affects the choice of responding particles: namely, the answering pattern shifts to A-D. In the present contribution, this claim is thoroughly tested experimentally with two forced choice experiments that investigate the choice of responding particles in answers to Italian negative polar questions both with and without narrow foci. Our results bring clear support to the claim of the exceptional answering pattern to negative polar questions with narrow foci. Two candidate accounts are presented, in accord with the two main current lines of research on responding particles: an ellipsis account and an anaphoric account. In both cases, we will argue that a crucial role is played by the interaction of the narrow focus with sentential negation in the questions.

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Confirming or asserting?

Andorno

Rosi

2016

LIA

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Yesandnoallow an easy management of talk-in-interaction and, unlike other classes of discourse markers, occur from early stages of L2 acquisition onwards (Perdue 1993; Bernini 1996, 2000; Andorno 2008a for L2 Italian). However, problems in their use can arise in replies to negative utterances such as “Didn’t you hear the news?”, “You didn’t read the news, did you?”, as in this case speakers have to choose one of the two conflicting values possibly encoded by the particles — either asserting a positive/negative polarity for the proposition at issue or confirming/reversing the negative polarity conveyed by the previous speaker. Since Pope (1973), a distinction has been drawn between languages with polarity-oriented particles, such as Englishyes/no, and languages with agreement-oriented particles, such as Japanesehai/iie. The study compares the use of Italiansì/noand other routines such as echo-constructions in native speakers and L2 learners with either a polarity-oriented or an agreement-oriented L1. Results show that cross-linguistic influence can affect the use ofsì/noin L2, as pointed for other domains of pragmatic competence (Gass & Selinker 1992; Kasper 1992; Jarvis & Pavlenko 2008). Results further show that, even when learners lack pragmalinguistic competence in the use of particles, they treat replies of confirmation or rejection differently, thus revealing sociopragmatic sensitivity similar to that of native speakers in recognising the markedness of disagreement replies.

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Short replies in Italian: Sì / no and other markers between polarity and agreement

Cited by 3 publications

References 40 publications

In search for polarity contrast marking in Italian

In search for polarity contrast marking in Italian

(Dis)agreement, polarity, and focus: Answering negative polar questions in Italian

Confirming or asserting?

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