Tra grammatica e pragmatica: ciclicità di sviluppi funzionali (lat. Quaeso e it. Prego)

In this study we describe and discuss the pragmatic cycle of Latin politeness markers quaeso and rogo “I ask, I pray” into Italian prego “I pray” and chiedo “I ask”. In Latin and Italian both markers, originally full verbs, have evolved into courtesy markers, though only one of them has become a frozen form. This process exemplifies the change from propositional to expressive meaning described by Traugott & Dasher (2002). A number of studies (Akimoto 2000, Traugott & Dasher 2002) have underlined the role of verb semantics in pragmaticalization, especially as regards the co-occurrence of performatives with pragmatic functions. Latin and Italian verbs, developing into courtesy markers, gradually acquire a parenthetical function as markers of politeness, thus conveying a social deictic meaning and expressing the speaker negotiation of the addressee’s needs (Traugott / Dasher 2002). Through the analysis of diachronically balanced corpora of Latin and Italian, we analyze contexts and conditions which foster the gradual process of pragmaticalization (Traugott & Trousdale 2010); specifically we discuss morpho-sytactic contexts, textual and pragmatic properties of the verbs involved in the pragmatic development of such markers, as well as the relationship between pragmaticalization and the evolution of forms into politeness devices. The process, which displays similar pragmaticalization patterns, is evident in Latin and Italian: only one of the verbs is in fact fully pragmaticalized (i.e. lat. quaeso, it. prego); this evolution was probably favoured by the original performative use of the verb, which progressively developed the interactional function of expressing attitudes and commitments in discourse (Molinelli 2010). Yet the original Latin marker quaeso was not maintained in Romance languages and the form has been diversely substituted through a variety of strategies (performative verbs with similar meaning as in Rum. vă rog and It. prego, different clausal strategies as in Fr. s'il vous plaît, nominal strategies as Span. por favor). The analysis thus highlights the conditions which foster a complete pragmaticalization in some verbs (but not in others) and the similarities in the two languages which show how the process of pragmaticalization can be considered highly productive and iterative.