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Article published In: The Role of Pragmatics in Cyclic Language Change
Edited by Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen
[Journal of Historical Pragmatics 21:2] 2020
► pp. 182–207

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Functional expansions of temporal adverbs and discursive connectives

From Latin tum, tunc, dumque to Old Italian dunque

 | University of Genova
 | University of Bergamo
Published online: 3 March 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.00041.fed
Abstract
This paper examines the synchronic competition and diachronic substitution of three Latin temporal expressions: tum, tunc (‘at that time’, ‘then’), and later dumque (originally, ‘while-and’), and its Old Italian outcome dunque (‘then’). Besides providing a new path of development and a new etymology for Italian dunque, we describe in detail the steps by which these forms gradually replaced one another and examine the factors at play in their renewal, showing that such forms all display a similar inference-driven functional expansion from propositional to discourse-organizational meanings. However, their subsequent development led to a functional similarity that is only partial, as is often the case in semantic–pragmatic cycles. While discussing the nature of this cycle, we focus on the speaker’s role in this type of change, which in our view can be summarized in the speaker’s cyclical application of recurrent functional principles: phonetic efficiency, analogy, and regularity in semantic change.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The first phase: Latin tum and tunc
    • 2.1A brief account of tum and tunc
    • 2.2From tum to tunc
  • 3.The second phase: From tunc to dumque
  • 4.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Sources
  • References
References (50)
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ATILF – CNRS and Université de Lorraine.
TLIO: Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini. Available online at: [URL]
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Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen & Richard Waltereit
2025. Cyclic Change in Grammar and Discourse, DOI logo
Ghezzi, Chiara & Piera Molinelli
2020. Connectives and cyclicity. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 21:2 ► pp. 208 ff. DOI logo

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