Asserzione e polarità: sì e no in prospettiva tipologica

The assertive function of the pro-sentences sì ‘yes’ and no ‘no’ is investigated with reference to the range of their properties as described in the relevant chapters of the Grande grammatica italiana di consultazione and of the Grammatica dell’italiano antico. This function is evidenced in particular in the split construction sì che/no che ‘yes that/no that’, focusing assertion and polarity of the embedded sentence, whose use was claimed to be restricted as compared to the corresponding Spanish sí que construction in a comparative functional investigation and to be absent in a corpus of spontaneous and elicited oral data. The occurrence of the split construction is observed in a corpus of contemporary literary texts. The behavior of the two pro-sentences is considered in a typological perspective along two dimensions: a) in the unstable framework of the means found for polarity contrast in Italian in order to identify their specifi city in relation to the information flow and the textual type they occur in; b) more generally, with respect to holophrastic expressions of other European languages in order to evaluate their roleas an expression of assertion andpolarity among the means employed as reactions to questions.