Italian guarda, prego, dai: pragmatic markers and the left and right periphery

Verb-based pragmatic markers (VPMs) have formal properties derived from their respective sources. One of these is that, as other pragmatic markers, VPMs appear peripherally in the leftmost or rightmost position of different discourse units. This property is significant since it seems to influence the development of peculiar pragmatic functions. Distributional properties, together with morphosyntactic and semantic characteristics of the verb-source, play an important role in their process of (inter)-subjectification. This chapter investigates the pragmatic functions of three VPMs in spoken Italian, namely guarda “look”, prego “please, you are welcome”, and dai “come on, really?”, and their interaction with the position the VPMs occupy. Moving from a classification of discourse units on the basis of the Val.es.co. model, this study describes the correlation between pragmatic functions of markers and position, also considering the type of discourse unit in which they appear and they have scope over, the dialogual vs dialogic context of occurrence, and corresponding variations in types of functions performed. Results show that verbs are a category prone to pragmaticalize and that their semantic extensions are sufficiently general and abstract to allow them to acquire intersubjective meanings. The three VPMs analysed can appear both in the LP and RP, but their position determines pragmatic functions and interacts with types of discourse units in which they appear, their focus on the context of interaction, on the act of speaking or on the content of the utterance, but also with their degree of pragmaticalization, and their dialogic or dialogual orientation.