1887
Volume 58, Issue 1
  • ISSN 0035-3906
  • E-ISSN: 1600-0811
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

Abstract

According to normative descriptions of Italian future-framed adverbial clauses, the future tense is the only option ( [F], ‘When you come, I’ll lend you the book’). However, the present tense may also be used ( [P], ). I demonstrate that choice and acceptance of the present in future-framed adverbials are conditioned by the speaker’s presumption of settledness; that is, in every future world compatible with the speaker’s beliefs the eventuality necessarily occurs. The data come from an online questionnaire consisting of a forced-choice and an acceptability judgment task completed by 429 native speakers of Italian, and were analyzed using mixed-effects regression. Results show that the present is chosen most and rated highest when the future eventuality is presumed settled ([+certain, +immediate, +temporally specific]). These findings demonstrate that speakers use the present to express confidence in the realization of future eventualities.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/rro.19022.hof
2020-05-25
2025-04-27
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Aaron, J.
    (2014): A certain future: Epistemicity, prediction, and assertion in Iberian Spanish future expression. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 7,2, pp. 215–240. 10.1515/shll‑2014‑1166
    https://doi.org/10.1515/shll-2014-1166 [Google Scholar]
  2. Aski, J. & D. Musumeci
    (2014): Avanti: Beginning Italian, 3rd edn.New York: McGraw-Hill.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Bates, D., M. Maechler, B. Bolker, & S. Walker
    (2015): Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67,1, pp. 1–48. 10.18637/jss.v067.i01
    https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v067.i01 [Google Scholar]
  4. Battaglia, S. & V. Pernicone
    (1957): La grammatica italiana, 2nd edn.Torino: Loescher editore.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Bazzanella, C.
    (1994): Le facce del parlare. Un approccio pragmatico all’italiano parlato. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Berretta, M.
    (1990): Il futuro in italiano L2. Quaderni di Dipartimento di Linguistica e Letterature Comparate dell’Università di Bergamo, 61, pp. 147–188.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. (1994): Il futuro italiano nella varietà colloquiale e nella varietà di apprendimento. Zeitschrift für romanische philologie, 110,1/2, pp. 1–36. Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Berruto, G.
    (2000): Sociolingustica dell’italiano contemporaneo, 9th edn.Rome: Carocci editore.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Bertinetto, P. M.
    (1986): Tempo, aspetto e azione nel verbo italiano: Il sistema dell’indicativo. Florence: Presso L’accademia della Crusca.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Bonomi, A. & F. Del Prete
    (2008): Evaluating future-tensed sentences in changing contexts. Unpublished manuscript, University of Milan.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Calboli, G. & G. Moroni
    (1989): Grammatica italiana. Bologna: Edizioni Calderini.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Comrie, B.
    (1985): Tense. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9781139165815
    https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139165815 [Google Scholar]
  13. Copley, B.
    (2002): The semantics of the future. PhD dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. D’Achille, P.
    (2003): L’italiano contemporaneo. Bologna: Il Mulino.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. D’Agostino, M.
    (2007): Sociolinguistica dell’Italia contemporanea. Bologna: Il Mulino.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Danesi, M.
    (2006): Complete Italian Grammar Review. : Barron.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Dahl, Ö.
    (1985): Tense and aspect systems. Oxford: Blackwell.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. De Rôme, D. & P. Tite
    (2003): Soluzioni! A practical guide to Italian grammar. Malta: McGraw-Hill.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Fleischman, S.
    (1982): The future in thought and language: Diachronic evidence from Romance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Gravano, A., S. Benus, J. Hirschberg, E. Sneed German, & G. Ward
    (2008): The effect of contour type and epistemic modality on the assessment of speaker certainty, inBarbosa, P., S. Madureira, & C. Reis (eds.), Proceedings of speech prosody 2008. Campinas, pp. 401–404.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Giannakidou, A. & A. Mari
    (2018): A unified analysis of the future as epistemic modality: The view from Greek and Italian. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 36,1, pp. 85–129. 10.1007/s11049‑017‑9366‑z
    https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-017-9366-z [Google Scholar]
  22. Graziano, C.
    (2008): Italian verbs and essentials ofgrammar, 2nd edn.New York: McGraw-Hill.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Hoff, M.
    (2019): Settledness & mood alternation: A semantic-pragmatic analysis of Spanish future-framed adverbials. The Ohio State University: PhD thesis.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Hoff, M. & S. Schwenter
    (2019): Settledness and morphosyntactic variation across Romance. Presented at theLinguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), University of Georgia, May 1–4.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Hothorn, T., K. Hornik, & A. Zeilis
    (2006): Unbiased recursive partitioning: A conditional inference framework. Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, 15,3, pp. 651–674. 10.1198/106186006X133933
    https://doi.org/10.1198/106186006X133933 [Google Scholar]
  26. Kaufmann, S.
    (2002): The presumption of settledness. CLS, 381, pp. 313–328.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. (2005): Conditional truth and future reference. Journal of Semantics, 221, pp. 231–280. 10.1093/jos/ffh025
    https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffh025 [Google Scholar]
  28. King, R. & T. Nadasdi
    (2003): Back to the future in Acadian French. Journal of French Language Studies, 131, pp. 323–337. 10.1017/S0959269503001157
    https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959269503001157 [Google Scholar]
  29. Kuznetsova, A., P. B. Brockhoff, & R. H. B. Christensen
    (2017): lmerTest package: Tests in linear mixed effects models. Journal of Statistical Software, 82,13, pp. 1–26. 10.18637/jss.v082.i13
    https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v082.i13 [Google Scholar]
  30. Lepschy, A. & G. Lepschy
    (1977): The Italian language today. London: Hutchinson.
    [Google Scholar]
  31. Maiden, M. & C. Robustelli
    (2007): A reference grammar of modern Italian, 2nd edn.New York: McGraw-Hill.
    [Google Scholar]
  32. Nanni-Tate, P.
    (2012): Italian Grammar Drills, 2nd edn.New York: McGraw-Hill.
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Peyronnel, S. & I. Higgins
    (2005): Basic Italian: A grammar and workbook. New York: Routledge. 10.4324/9780203640074
    https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203640074 [Google Scholar]
  34. Poplack, S. & N. Dion
    (2009): Prescription vs. praxis: The evolution of future temporal reference in French. Language, 85,3, pp. 557–587. 10.1353/lan.0.0149
    https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.0.0149 [Google Scholar]
  35. Poplack, S. & E. Malvar
    (2006): Elucidating the transition period in linguistic change: The expression of the future in Brazilian Portuguese. Probus, 191, pp. 121–169.
    [Google Scholar]
  36. Proudfoot, A. & F. Cardo
    (2005): Modern Italian grammar: A practical guide, 2nd edn.New York: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  37. R Core Team
    R Core Team (2017): R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.
    [Google Scholar]
  38. Renzi, L. & G. Salvi
    (eds.) (1991): Grande grammatica italiana di consultazione, vol.21. Bologna: Il Mulino.
    [Google Scholar]
  39. Rohlfs, G.
    (1969): Grammatica storica della lingua italiana e dei suoi dialetti: Sintassi e formazione delle parole. Torino: Giulio Einaudi Editore.
    [Google Scholar]
  40. Sabatini, F.
    (1985): “L’italiano dell’uso medio”: una realtà tra le varietà linguistiche italiane, inHoltus, G. & E. Radtke (eds.), Gesprochenes Italienisch in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Tübingen: G. Narr, pp. 154–184.
    [Google Scholar]
  41. Schütze, C. & J. Sprouse
    (2014): Judgment data, in Podesva, R. & D. Sharma (eds.), Research methods in linguistics. New York: Cambridge Univeristy Press, pp. 27-50. 10.1017/CBO9781139013734.004
    https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139013734.004 [Google Scholar]
  42. Schwenter, S.
    (1999): Pragmatics of conditional marking: Implicature, Scalarity, & Exclusivity. New York/London: Garland Publishing.
    [Google Scholar]
  43. Serianni, L.
    (1988): Grammatica italiana: Italiano comune e lingua letteraria. Torino: Utet Libreria.
    [Google Scholar]
  44. Tagliamonte, S. & H. Baayen
    (2012): Models, forests, and trees of York English: Was-were variation as a case study for statistical practice. Language Variation and Change24,2, pp. 135–178. 10.1017/S0954394512000129
    https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394512000129 [Google Scholar]
  45. Wiberg, E.
    (2002): Information structure in dialogic future plans: A study of Italian native speakers and Swedish preadvanced and advanced learners of Italian, inSalaberry, M. R. & Y. Shirai (eds.): The L2 Acquisition of Tense-Aspect Morphology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 285–321. 10.1075/lald.27.13wib
    https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.27.13wib [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1075/rro.19022.hof
Loading
/content/journals/10.1075/rro.19022.hof
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): future; Italian; pragmatics; present; settledness; subordinate clauses
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error