Soggetti pronominali deboli = Weak pronominal subjects

Weak pronouns form an intermediate category between that of clitic pronouns and that of free pronouns. In contemporary Italian weak pronouns are realised by the nominative forms egli, essi, esse, esso, essa and by the dative form loro. Their use -especially that of nominative forms- is rather marginal, and it is attested above all in texts written with a high stylistic control. In this paper we describe the contexts that favour the use of weak subjects. After the first paragraph, in which the distinctive properties of the three classes forming the tripartite system of the personal pronouns in Italian are summarised, in the second one we illustrate the use of the weak pronominal subjects in contemporary Italian, introducing and commenting on examples taken from both oral and written corpora. In the third and last paragraph we discuss some criteria that seem to favour the choice of a weak pronoun as a subject, focusing on the role that this pronominal subject plays in a textual perspective.