Silvia Cacchiani

Intensifying affixes across Italian and English

Abstract This paper concentrates on the (dis-)similarities in meaning and uses of intensifying affixes across Italian and English nouns and adjectives adopting an integrated approach that brings together research on intensifiers (Paradis 2008), on intensifying and evaluative morphology in Italian and other languages (Grandi 2002; Montermini 2008) and on the morphopragmatics of Italian and other languages (Dressler and Merlini Barbaresi 1994). Specifically, we carried out a qualitative investigation into (partly) comparable corpora so as to have a means to support or revisit statements from encyclopaedic monolingual dictionaries which are typically used for categorial comparison in morphology (e.g. GRADIT, for Italian), as well as statements and current descriptions from the literature. As will be seen, this shall enable us to concentrate on the multiple dimensions along which intensifying affixes may differ or overlap both intra- and cross-linguistically, with special attention to quantity, degree, ±boundedness, the semantic shift from quantity to degree, and the interaction between semantic (degree) and pragmatic intensification.

On Concluders and Other Discourse Markers in the Concluding Moves of English and Italian Historical Research Articles

Starting from the assumption that local and disciplinary cultures have an impact on the rhetorical organization of the text and on identity construction within a genre, this paper takes a corpus-assisted approach to genre variation across English and Italian research articles in history. Specifically, the main emphasis lies on ‘conclu*’ and its lemmatizations, or, more precisely, on second-level Summarizers and Concluders and with metadiscourse across moves. As will be seen, second-level discourse markers (SLDMs) represent a marked option, in that they add extra meaning to their more general, more transparent, more frequent, and less specific counterparts. Whereas variation within the unit or pattern results from combinations with discourse markers from the same or other categories, variation across English and Italian is better accounted for within an interpersonal model of metadiscourse, in terms of different strategies on the interactional level.