Cinzia Russi, The University of Texas at Austin
Investigating a possible subjectification trajectory: the case of Italian volerci
The present paper has two objectives. First, it aims at characterizing the core meanings carried by constructions involving the verb volerci ‘be needed/necessary/required; take (intr.)’ (< volere ‘want’ + ci locative clitic) in contemporary standard Italian. Typically, volerci conveys the objective necessity of some entity (the grammatical subject, semantic theme/object), which is intrinsically required (i.e., instrumental) for the realization of some event (purpose/goal), as illustrated in (1).
(1) a. Ci vogliono almeno 25 litri di quel liquido per produrre una di quelle fiale.
“At least 25 liters of that liquid are needed to produce one of tose vials.”
(CORIS, STAMPAQuot)
b. Per acquistare il farmaco ci vuole la ricetta medica.
“A prescription is needed to buy the medicine.” (CORIS, STAMPAPeri)
In addition, volerci is commonly used to express the speaker’s evaluative attitude towards the state of necessity and/or the perceived complexity related to the realization of the event, as shown in (2).
(2) a. “E che ci vuole?” era solito dirgli con strafottenza a proposito di cose che aveva
giudicato irrealizzabili fino al giorno prima.
“«So, what’s the big deal? (lit. what is needed/what does it take)», he used to say to him with impudence about things he had considered unachievable until the day before.” (CORIS, NARRATRoma)
b. Ripeto, a buttare giù l’ecstasy non ci vuole niente, è ancora più facile che bere una coca e whisky, non si pensa che ti stai drogando.
“Again, it’s easy to down ecstasy, it’s easier than drinking a whisky and coke; you don’t think that you’re doing drugs.” (CORIS/CODIS, STAMPAQuot)
c. L’ammiraglio Nelson gli tirò un gran cazzotto mandandolo a sbattere contro il periscopio. “Quando ci vuole ci vuole”, disse papà.
“Admiral Nelson punched him hard, slamming him against the periscope. «When you need it, you need it», dad said.” (CORIS/CODIS, NARRATTrRo)
In (1) the necessity of the entity is maximally objective and external to the speaker. In other words, the necessity of the entity in question is not (in fact, it cannot be) established based on the speaker’s or another participant’s speculative, evaluative, and/or inferential reasoning; rather, it is determined by empirical factual elements and/or circumstances over which the speaker can exercise no control. Constructions like the ones in (2), on the other hand, show a fairly high degree of subjectivity since they do not actually denote necessity but fulfill strictly pragmatic functions, e.g. pointing to/highlighting the easiness of a situation (2a). These two basic meanings of volerci, then, may be taken to correspond to opposite ends of a semantic continuum characterized by increasing subjectivity (as defined in Traugott 1989, 1995, passim; Traugott and Dasher 2002). Besides, they correspond to constructions characterized by different (increasing) degrees of fixation/fossilization. That is, increase in subjectivity appears to go hand in hand with increase of structural rigidification and idiomaticization. Examples like (3) may be considered intermediate cases because the ‘required’ entity (i.e., the soccer player Dunga) is not as incontrovertibly and intrinsically instrumental as, for instance, the doctor’s prescription in (1b); that is, some other player may serve as well (perhaps even better) for the purpose of making Fiorentina a winning team, whereas medicine will not be obtained without the doctor’s prescription.
(3) a. Per fare grande la Fiorentina ci vuole anche Dunga oltre ai nuovi acquisti che debbono
arrivare.
“In order to make Fiornetina great, Dunga is needed too, besides the new acquisitions that haven’t arrived yet.” (LIP, F E 18 81 C)
b. “Ti faccio una cioccolata. Ci vuole qualcosa di caldo al mattino. Altro che yogurt!”
“I’ll fix you a hot chocolate. You need something hot in the morning, not yogurt!” (CORIS/CODIS, NARRATRoma)
c. Ci voglio io per ridargli una motivazione, dice. Sono il suo salvatore, dice. E ride.
“It takes me to give him a new motivation, he says. I am his savior, he says. And he laughs.” (CORIS, MON2001_04)
The second goal of the paper is to present the results of an initial screening of Old Italian (mainly 13th to 15th century) texts conducted in order to establish whether (or to what extent) the semantic range observed synchronically for volerci pertains to older stages of the language. These preliminary findings reveal that the more subjective meanings of volerci seem to have emerged relatively late in the history of the language, thus suggesting that a diachronic process of subjectification may be reasonably hypothesized for volerci.
Corpora and Texts
Biblioteca della letteratura italiana. http://www.letteraturaitaliana.net/
CORIS/CODIS Corpus. http://www.cilta.unibo.it/Portale/RicercaLinguistica/coris_eng.htmL.
De Mauro, Tullio et al. 1993. Lessico di frequenza dell’italiano parlato (LIP).
http://languageserver.uni-graz.at/badip/badip/20_corpusLip.php
Giamboni, Bono. 13th cent. Il libro de’ vizî e delle virtudi.
http://www.classicitaliani.it/index079.htm
Liber Liber. http://www.liberliber.it/home/index.php
Novellino. 13th cent. http://scrineum.unipv.it/wight/novellino.htm
References
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1989. On the rise of epistemic meanings in English: an example of subjectification in semantic change. Language 57. 33-65.
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1995. Subjectification in grammaticalisation. Subjectivity and Subjectivisation, ed. by Dieter Stein and Susan Wright, 31-54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs, and Richard B. Dasher. 2002. Regularity in Semantic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
