The Substance and Value of Italian Si
| The City College of New York
This book offers an original treatment of the Italian clitic si. Sharply separating encoded grammar from inference in discourse, it proposes a unitary meaning for si, including impersonals, passives, and reflexives. Si signals third-person participancy but makes no distinctions of number, gender, or case role. The analysis advances the Columbia School framework by relying on just these straightforward oppositions, attributing variety of interpretation largely to language use rather than to grammar. The analysis places si within a network of oppositions involving all the other clitics. Data come primarily from twentieth-century and more recent published and on-line literature. The book will be of interest to functional linguists, students of reflexivity, and scholars of the Italian language.
[Studies in Functional and Structural Linguistics, 74] 2017. xiii, 257 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
Foreword
|
x–xii
|
Acknowledgements
|
xiii
|
Chapter 1. What is si?
|
1–21
|
Chapter 2. Opting out of sex and number:
Si vs. other impersonals
|
23–37
|
Chapter 3. The system of Focus on Participants
|
39–59
|
Chapter 4. The system of Degree of Control
|
61–87
|
Chapter 5. Scale of Degree of Control: The view from the bottom
|
89–109
|
Chapter 6. Scale of Degree of Control: The view from the top
|
111–137
|
Chapter 7. Grammatical constancy and lexical idiosyncrasy
|
139–163
|
Chapter 8. Grammar constrained by lexicon: The “inherently reflexive” verbs
|
165–177
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Chapter 9. Number and gender with si used impersonally
|
179–199
|
Chapter 10. Other related matters
|
201–219
|
Chapter 11. Background and theory
|
221–242
|
Sources of data and translation, with abbreviations
|
243
|
References
|
245–250
|
Index of names
|
251–252
|
Subject index
|
253–257
|
“This book provides an original and innovative analysis of the entire Italian pronoun system, as well as enlightening critiques of such traditional linguistic concepts as transitive/intransitive, reflexive, impersonal, passive, and subject. A special strength is the close attention to examples drawn from actual language use, together with quantitative data in support of the author’s analysis.”
Ellen Contini-Morava, University of Virginia
“A richly compelling and highly innovative study of one of the most intractable problems in the syntax of Italian, and of Romance more generally. Davis offers a rigorous semantic analysis demonstrating that the received categories of traditional and formal syntax and semantics represent a blind alley, and that an analysis based on contextualized evidence transcending the boundaries of the sentence produces a much deeper understanding of the underlying principles that actually guide the use of language.”
Ricardo Otheguy, Research Institute for the Study of Language in Urban Society
“Do not be fooled by the title! Davis’s exquisite, well-written book deserves to be read by anyone and everyone interested in the semantic and pragmatic analysis of grammatical systems (no matter their own theoretical background).”
Robert S. Kirsner, University of California, Los Angeles
References
Sources of data and translation, with abbreviations
References
Achard, Michele
Allen and Greenough’s New Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges: Founded on Comparative Grammar
Barlow, Michael, and Suzanne Kemmer
Battaglia, Salvatore
Benveniste, Émile
Boye, Kasper, and Peter Harder
Brunet, Jacqueline
Burzio, Luigi
Butler, Christopher S., and Francisco Gonzálvez-García
Bybee, Joan, and Paul Hopper
Contini-Morava, Ellen
Contini-Morava, Ellen, and Barbara Sussman Goldberg
Contini-Morava, Ellen, Robert S. Kirsner, and Betsy Rodríguez-Bachiller
Cordin, Patrizia
Crupi, Charlene
D'Alessandro, Roberta
D’Alessandro, Roberta
Davis, Joseph
2000 “On Abstinence and Abdication: Italian si
.” Paper presented at the 6th International Conference of Columbia School Linguistics, Feb. 2000, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.
Davis, Joseph, Radmila J. Gorup, and Nancy Stern
De Jonge, Bob
Diver, William
Diver, William, and Joseph Davis
Diver, William, Joseph Davis, and Wallis Reid
Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen
Garzanti. Dizionario Garzanti della lingua italiana: Edizione minore
Gildin, Bonny L.
Goldberg, Barbara Sussman
Gorup, Radmila
Huffman, Alan
Huffman, Alan, and Joseph Davis
Janssen, Theo A. J. M.
Kirnser, Robert S.
Kirsner, Robert S.
Kirnser, Robert S.
Kirsner, Robert S.
Langacker, Ronald W.
Lepschy, Anna Laura, and Giulio Lepschy
Manzini, Rita Maria
Mutz, Katrin
Napoli, Donna Jo
Otheguy, Ricardo
Otheguy, Ricardo, and Nancy Stern
Otheguy, Ricardo, and Ana Celia Zentella
Perlmutter, David M.
1978 “The Unaccusative Hypothesis and Multiattachment: Italian Evidence.” Paper presented to the Harvard Linguistics Circle.
Perlmutter, David M., and Carol G. Rosen
Reid, Wallis, Ricardo Otheguy, and Nancy Stern
Rosen, Carol
1982 “The Unaccusative Hypothesis and the ‘Inherent Clitic’ Phenomenon in Italian.” Papers from the Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 18, 530–541. Republished in Italian as Chapter 2 of Rosen 2012.
1987 “Star Means Bad: A Syntactic Divertimento for Italianists.” Italica 64(3): 443–476. Republished in Italian as Chapter 1 of Rosen 2012. 

Sabar, Nadav
Saccon, Graziella
1993 “Some Differences in Auxiliary Selection Between Italian and Italian Dialects.” Paper presented at the American Association of Italian Studies, April 15–18, 1993, University of Texas, Austin.
Sansoni
Stefanini, Ruggero
Stern, Nancy
Tobin, Yishai
Zubin, David
Zubin, David, and K. -M. Köpke
Cited by
Cited by other publications
Davis, Joseph
Hesseltine, Kelli & Joseph Davis
Reid, Wallis
Stern, Nancy
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 december 2020. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
Subjects
Linguistics
BIC Subject: CFG – Semantics, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis
BISAC Subject: LAN009000 – LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General