Italian Clitics: An Empirical Study

Afterreviewing，fromagrammaticalizationperspective，themainstagesintheevolutionofItalianobjectcliticpronouns，thebookdiscussesthedistinctivemorphosyntactic，semantic，andpragmaticfeaturesofItalianclitics.Inparticular，thebookoffersanoriginalstudyofthemostcommonexamplesofso-calledverbiprocomplementari，verbswhicharecharacterizedbytheincorporationofcliticsthatnolongerfunctionaspronouns，andwhicharewidelyusedinpresent-dayItalian.Theiremergenceinvolvesbothgrammaticalizationofthecliticpronounintoanobligatoryelement，andlexicalizationoftheverb+cliticsequence.Thisstudyisessentiallydescriptiveandmaximallydata-driven.Thediscussionofgrammaticalizationandlexicalizationisreducedtotheessentialsandaimsprimarilyatdefininghowtheseterms，whichhavereceiveddifferentandattimesdivergentinterpretations，areemployedinthebook.Thebookisaccessibletoawideandvariedreadership，whichincludesItalianandRomancelinguistsoffunctionalandformalorientation，Italianlanguagescholars，grammaticalizationscholarsinterestedinnewcasestudies，aswellasstudentsoflanguagechangeandvariation.