Third Party Funds Group - Sub project
Acronym: GRK 2839 Project 11
Start date : 01.10.2022
End date : 30.09.2027
This project aims to apply the constructionist approach to units larger than the sentence, as suggested by Hoffmann & Bergs (2018) (see also Hoffmann 2015 and Hoffmann & Bergs 2015), in particular in the analysis of sixteenth-century Italian historiographical texts such as Machiavelli’s Istorie fiorentine (1525) and F. Guicciardini’s Storia d’Italia (1561). The textstructuring devices employed in these texts have not received much attention in previous research, since analyses tend to rely on modern editions, in which these texts appear typographically subdivided into smaller units, i.e. into chapters and paragraphs. These subdivisions, however, had only been introduced in 19th century editions, while the original versions, i.e. the 16th century prints, were nearly completely devoid of such typographic textstructuring devices. Nevertheless, the analyses proposed so far (cf. e.g. Blumenthal 1980, Nencioni 1984, Dardano 2017: 282–371) give reason to assume very close relationships between linguistic forms and text structuring functions, i.e. originally, text structuring (foreground vs. background; narration vs. comment; discourse-topic shift etc.; cf. Fesenmeier & Kersten 2018) seems to be expressed by certain recurrent lexicogrammatical patterns, which vary however considerably in size and complexity, for example sentence-initial ma ‘but’ without any adversative value, anaphoric coniunctio relativa-constructions, verb subject ordering, complex hypotactic structures with different types and degrees of subordination.
Traditionally, such lexicogrammatical patterns have been described as stylistic devices and often treated independently from one another. However, at least some of them seem to be related (e.g. coniunctio relativa + subordination + passive + present tense: [Le quali cose] [mentre che] … [si trattano]); moreover, the relation between the “grammatical” elements (determiners, subordinating conjunctions) and the “lexical” elements (e.g. encapsulating noun phrases such as cosa/cose ‘thing(s)’ which function “as a resumptive paraphrase for a preceding portion of a text” (Conte 1996: 1)) of such patterns does not always seem to be grasped in a satisfying manner.
Since one of the advantages of Construction Grammar as a theoretical framework is that the mechanisms developed to describe standard syntactic phenomena can be extended to higher levels of linguistic organization (cf. e.g. Östman 2005, Masini 2016: 75–78, Groom 2019, Hoffmann & Bergs 2018) and since previous work has clearly shown that linguistic conventions also exist at higher levels of linguistic organization, e.g. complexes of clauses revolving around the same discourse topic (cf. Nir & Berman 2010), it seems reasonable to assume the existence of constructions that function as schematic frames for the organization of discourse and whose details (grammatical structure, lexical elements etc.) can be described in a systematic way (CON1: How do we identify constructions – in particular: what are their defining criteria?).
Since Machiavelli’s Istorie fiorentine and Guicciardini’s Storia d’Italia present highly complex syntactic “architectures”, it seems promising to analyse both texts in the analytical framework of CxG, in particular with recourse to the concept of “clause packages”, i.e. “text-embedded units of one or more clauses connected by abstract linkage relations” (Nir & Berman 2010: 748, our italics). Following Berman & Nir-Sagiv (2009: 160), parameters of a more fine-grained analysis could be the number of clauses attached to a main clause, the different types of subordinate clauses, their ordering (in particular with respect to the main clause), and the overall structure (parataxis, hypotaxis etc.). As Machiavelli and Guicciardini strongly differ in their views on both history and historiography, it can be expected that such analyses reveal important differences in terms of clause packaging strategies, differences which in turn should reflect certain “epistemological” differences, just as “the epistemologies and phraseologies of academic disciplines” turned out to be “mutually constitutive” (Groom 2019: 315). The project will thus address GRQs USE1 (What factors influence speakers’ choices from a range of competing constructions?) and USE2 (To what extent do the factors determining the choice of construction differ between speakers with respect to their individual backgrounds and personalities?).
In the first stage of the project, the focus will be “synchronic”, i.e. it will involve an in-depth analysis of the two Italian 16th century texts (thereby applying the CxG framework to a “text-language” in the sense of Fleischman 1991: 252 n. 1, i.e. to a “dead language (langue de corpus), one for which all evidence derives from texts”). Nevertheless, it seems appropriate to also include a “diachronic” perspective by taking into account earlier/later historiographical texts in order to shed light on changes in clause packaging and organization of discourse (cf. the evidence given in Colussi 2014); this relates to GRQ USE4 (How do the factors mentioned in USE1 and USE2 result in language change at the community level at different timescales?). Furthermore, since both the Istorie fiorentine and the Storia d’Italia were translated into French in the 16th century, a contrastive analysis could equally allow for relevant insights in the (construction?) status of previously identified lexicogrammatical patterns in the original texts, since 16th century French does not display the same syntactic devices that can be found in 16th century Italian; therefore one might expect different recurring lexicogrammatical patterns in the two languages.