Italian Sí / No in Replies Between Polarity and Agreement: A First Inquiry on Corpus Data

When referring to the well-known distinction between polarity and agreement particles (cfr. Moravsik, 1971; Pope, 1973), Italian sì / no can be described both as polarity markers (cfr. Bernini, 1995) and as agreement markers (cfr. Bazzanella, 1995). While these two values are often combined in actual speech (sì = positive polarity, agreement; no = negative polarity, disagreement), they are clearly conflicting when speakers have to reply to negative utterances. In replying to a negative question (e.g. “Didn't you read this book?”), the particle no would either be used in asserting a negative polarity for the content under discussion (“I didn’t, you’re right”) or in reversing the negative polarity proposed by the question (“That’s not true, I read it”). Replies to negative utterances are therefore a crucial context for a deeper understanding of the use of sì/no in Italian (cfr. Bernini, 1990 and 1995 for similar suggestions), albeit not much attention has so far been paid to this issue. The current study investigates the use of sì/no in such contexts, in two sets of elicited data: sociolinguistic interviews and Map Tasks. The analysis has compared the use of particles in confirming and reversing replies, as well as in replies to assertions and to questions. The results confirm that sì/no are mainly used as polarity markers, but use of no as a ¬marker of disagreement also show up, especially when stronger, conversationally marked moves are at play: in reversing (vs. confirming) replies and in replies to assertions (vs. replies to questions). This is in line with observed interlinguistic tendencies towards a more explicit highlighting of pragmatically marked speech-acts (cfr. Bernini, 1990; Farkas & Bruce, 2010).