Discourse and pragmatic markers in Italian linguistics: Trends and methods

This paper discusses previous research on Italian discourse markers in Italian linguistics since 1980s until recent time. We present various synchronic and diachronic aspects of the issue, taking into account both theoretical problems and research concerning specific items, such as allora, sai, guarda etc. After a brief discussion of the terminology, we describe and analyze research that investigates discourse markers from a communicative and textual perspective, as well as various classifications of Italian discourse markers (1); diachronic research dedicated to the formation of Italian from Latin through the pragmatization of various lexemes (2); papers about single, more frequent discourse markers (3); research on the acquisition of Italian as a foreign language (4). Finally, in 5 we review the recent volume of collected papers: Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles. New perspectives, edited by C. Fedriani and A. Sanso (2017), which represents an important update on the study of discourse markers in Italian linguistics.