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Article published In: Revue Romane
Vol. 55:1 (2020) ► pp.95–116

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Articles Linguistiques

From linguistic innovation to language change

A corpus-based investigation of the response marker non c’è problema

ORCiD logo with link | Utrecht University
Published online: 28 March 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/rro.17021.vio
Abstract
This study investigates the diachrony of the Italian expression non c’è problema ‘no problem’ when used as a response marker (e.g., Tottie, G. (1991). “Conversational style in British and American English: the case of back-channels”. In Aijmer, K. and Altenberg, B. (eds.), English Corpus Linguistics, 254–271. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Ward, N. (2006). “Non-Lexical Conversational Sounds in American English”. Pragmatics and Cognition 141:113–184. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) to establish if it represents a case of language change (Milroy, J. (1992). Linguistic variation and change. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar: 171). If on the one hand, the expression was indeed reported to be a neologism by Radtke in Radtke, E. (1990). “Non c’è problema”. Italienisch, 231, 68–69.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, a careful exploration of the relevant literature on the other has revealed that a diachronic, quantitative and pragmatic investigation of its distribution has not been conducted yet. Methodologically, the study conducts lexicographic, quantitative and qualitative analyses over a range of historical and contemporary dictionaries and corpora and it performs statistical significance tests, such as the Log Likelihood and the Fisher’s exact test. The results will reveal not only that this marker started to be used in 1977, but also that today, it is the response marker preferred by language users, thus qualifying as a case of language change. Furthermore, by analysing the diachronic distribution of no problem in English, the article will also explore the possibility that English may have been the source language for such change.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Non c’è problema as a response marker
  • 3.Methodology and resources
  • 4.The analysis
    • 4.1The lexicographic analysis
    • 4.2The corpus analysis: Distribution from 1200 to 1947
    • 4.3The corpus analysis: Distribution from 1861 to 2001
    • 4.4The corpus analysis: Distribution from 1980 to 2017
    • 4.5The corpus analysis: Distribution is spoken Italian (1965–2003)
    • 4.6Fisher’s exact test and Log likelihood test
    • 4.7Use and distribution of no problem in English
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
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Viola, Lorella
2022. On the use ofsì?(‘yes?’) as invariant follow-up in Italian. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 23:2 ► pp. 175 ff. DOI logo

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