Abstract
This paper investigates the role of verbs of appearance as argumentative indicators analyzing the uses of the Italian verb sembrare (‘to seem’) in a sample of 40 texts chosen from a corpus of reviews, editorials and comment posts. An analysis conducted within the framework of the Argumentum Model of Topics shows that the verb, in its evidential-inferential uses, indicates specific argument schemes of the symptomatic as well as of the causal type.
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Notes
- 1.
The study presented is part of a research on the relationship between inferential uses of perception verbs and argumentation conducted at the Università della Svizzera italiana (“From perception to inference. Evidential, argumentative and textual aspects of perception predicates in Italian”, SNF grant n.141350, direction: Johanna Miecznikowski and Andrea Rocci, cf. http://www.perc-inferenza.ch).
- 2.
Discourse markers are particles, connectives, sentence adverbs or more complex lexical expressions that do not contribute to the propositional content of their host utterance, are syntactically poorly integrated and whose primary function is to relate utterances to their co- and context at the textual, inferential or interactional level. See Bazzanella (2006) for a more detailed discussion of the category and Miecznikowski et al. (2009), for a corpus based analysis focussed on argumentative functions of the discourse connective allora in Italian.
- 3.
According to the Pragma-Dialectical framework (e.g. van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1992), argumentation takes place within the context of a critical discussion involving protagonists and antagonists that critically test standpoints in order to reduce a difference of opinion. According to that model, the subtasks, or stages, defining a critical discussion are the confrontation stage (a difference of opinion is made explicit), the opening stage (the interactants commit themselves to resolve the difference of opinion and agree upon some basic assumptions and rules), the argumentation stage (arguments are put forward to justify or refute standpoints), and the concluding stage.
- 4.
Appearance verbs and evidential uses of perception verbs have been studied in Romance and Germanic languages by Usoniene (2001), Pietrandrea (2005), Cornillie (2007, 2009), Aijmer (2009), Diewald and Smirnova (2010), Strik Lievers (2012), Musi (in press a, b). For a diachronic perspective cf. Gisborne and Holmes (2007) and Whitt (2011) on English and Musi (2014) on Italian sembrare.
- 5.
The corpus has been compiled within the project From perception to inference (cf. footnote 1). We would like to thank Martina Cameroni, Maria Chiara Pasinetti and Francesca Saltamacchia for their contribution to data collection.
- 6.
See Miecznikowski and Musi (in press), who adopt a genre perspective to investigate the relationship between reviews published online and the posts published in the corresponding comment spaces.
- 7.
The verb sembrare, which here has been translated by look like, can be used to express physical similarity. In this respect, sembrare differs from its English correspondent to seem, but also from French sembler, with which it shares the etymological origin (Late Latin similare). It has to be noticed, though, that construction I uses of Italian sembrare are quite rare; more frequently, physical similarity is referred to using the more specific verb assomigliare (a rough semantic equivalent of French ressembler).
- 8.
According to Lyons’ classification of ontological entities (1977, pp. 438–452), taken up also in Functional Discourse Grammar (Dik 1997), propositions are third order entities which can be judged in terms of truth value, whereas (differently from second order entities, i.e. states of affairs) they cannot be located in space and time.
- 9.
It could be objected that the process of comparison presupposed by construction type I is a kind of information source: the information that is required to state a relation of similarity stems from a process of comparison. However, true evidential operators differ from presupposition triggers such as construction I sembrare by the fact that they are not part of the asserted propositional content, but are external to it. Their meanings are quite general and can be combined with a large range of propositions independently of their content. By the way, in (1), the speaker, while committing herself to asserting the results of the comparison process, leaves the mode of knowing proper unspecified: (1) is both compatible with a situation in which the speaker has actually seen Marco and Marco’s father and has inferred the similarity relation on that basis and with a situation in which the speaker has come to know about the resemblance between father and son by hearsay.
- 10.
Predicates are propositional operators when they take a proposition as one of their arguments, remaining outside the proposition itself and not contributing to its content, but operating on it (for an analysis of modals and evidentials as propositional operators see Hengeveld 1990).
- 11.
Cicero proposes, in his Topica (see Riposati 1947, pp. 34–35), a distinction between intrinsic loci (alii in eo ipso de quo agitur haerent, ‘some [loci] are linked to the subject of the discussion’), and extrinsic loci (alii assumuntur extrinsecus, ‘other [loci] are derived from outside’). This topical taxonomy has been further elaborated by Boethius in his De Topiciis Differentiis (see Stump 2004), who also suggests a third category of loci medii situated between the intrinsic and the extrinsic loci.
- 12.
- 13.
As far as future reference is concerned, the role played by lexical and modal verbs implying posteriority relations has been examined by Miecznikowski (in press), on the basis of an Italian corpus of economic predictions.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the participants to the 8th Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (ISSA) for their very helpful comments and suggestions.
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Miecznikowski, J., Musi, E. (2015). Verbs of Appearance and Argument Schemes: Italian Sembrare as an Argumentative Indicator. In: van Eemeren, F., Garssen, B. (eds) Reflections on Theoretical Issues in Argumentation Theory. Argumentation Library, vol 28. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21103-9_19
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