Discourse markers in Italian

This paper considers discourse markers (DMs) in Italian. Moving from the non truth-conditional role of DMs in assisting speakers in the management of discourse organization (cioè ‘that is’, allora ‘so’, ‘well’), in conveying their attitude on information (penso ‘I think’), and in accomplishing interpersonal tasks (guarda ‘look, pay attention’), we provide a general overview of functions and forms of Italian. We present the state of the art on Italian DMs: we explore their functional and formal properties, examine their historical development, and other dimensions of variation in their use. The second part of the paper analyzes the functions of DMs derived from the verb dire ‘to say’ as it originates a set of DMs which are prototypically used to instruct hearers on how to construct references within discourse and to convey speakers’ stances on meaning clarification, particularly through exemplification, reformulation, and approximation.