Morpho-syntactic markedness in Italian from the perspective of CDA

Abstract

The construction and function of marked realizations  –in the sense of focused  constituents– in Italian as a means of discourse in general and of political discourse in particular is the topic of this paper. After a brief outline of what is to be understood by focus  in Generative Grammar, in Lexical Functional Grammar and in Functional Grammar, Valence Theory is defined as our theoretical linguistic basis from which to look at the construction and function of focus  in Italian. The focused  constituents dealt with in this study are eventually the morpho-syntactically marked realizations of arguments and modifiers, the former realized as actants, the latter as circumstantials. In four sections these are analyzed in more detail, which are: 1) focusing through cleft sentences, 2) focusing through passive constructions with the specification of the agent, 3) the marked realization of actants, and 4) the specification of circumstantials. The respective examples serving as illustrations stem from various speeches delivered by Mussolini.