A diachronic study of the (negative) additive anche in Italian

Abstract

Abstract: In Modern Italian (MI), negative additives are focalizing elements that typically obey negative concord with a clausal negation or another licensing negative element. In this paper we investigate the diachronic evolution of one negative additive element, neanche ‘neither/not even’. In Old Italian (OI, Florentine variety of 1200-1370), there is no evidence of morphologically complex negative additive focalizers such as neanche. Instead, the non-negative additive counterpart of neanche, anche, could combine with a negative marker or some other negative element: e.g. né/non… anche ‘neither/not even’.

We show that, in OI, (i) the morphologically non-negative additive anche can be used both as a negative and as a positive polarity item; (ii) anche can function either as an aspectual marker with the meaning ‘(not) yet’, or as an additive focalizer with the meaning ‘neither/not even’; (iii) its different interpretations are mirrored by different syntactic positions, i.e. anche has an aspectual interpretation in the postverbal position taking scope over a verbal phrase (vP), and it has an additive interpretation in the preverbal position taking scope over a determiner phrase (DP); and (iv) anche triggers a focus semantic interpretation under both conditions: as an additive and an aspectual marker (see Rooth 1985, Chierchia 2013 on focus semantics).

We account for the diachronic evolution from neg(ation) + anche in OI to neanche in MI by suggesting that the grammaticalization of neanche originates from a particular construction in which the additive anche is immediately to the right adjacent to the negative disjunction né (i.e. né+anche>neanche).

Key words: additive, negative additives, focus, aspectual marker, grammaticalization.