The pragmaticalization of verbs of movement and exchange in Latin and Italian: paths of development from lexicon to pragmatics

The aim of this paper is to provide some insight into the theoretical framework of pragmaticalization by considering functional markers derived from imperative forms of verbs of movement and exchange in Latin and Italian. Although these forms have frequently been described in reference grammars as interjections, through a corpus based study we show that, unlike interjections such as wow and um, the lexical semantics of the source verbs played a key role in triggering metaphorical processes of functional extensions. We also aim to refine and constrain the broad label of pragmaticalization by distinguishing between functionally neighboring, but different, pathways of development that can be oriented toward social cohesion and the expression of the speaker’s stance (pragmatic markers) or discourse cohesion (discourse markers).