Romanian de fapt - from adjectival adjunct to attention marker
Bălășoiu, Cezar (University of Bucharest)

Date:	2021
Abstract:	This research traces back the development of the Romanian phrase de fapt ('in fact, actually, indeed'), based on written and oral corpora. De fapt has been attested in Romanian since late 19th century; chronologically, it is the last of the three Romanian adverbial expressions (alongside în faptă and în fapt) that went through all the stages of the grammaticalization cline proposed by Elizabeth Traugott for this type of adverbs. However, we consider that this phrase actually goes even further by becoming, in press headlines, an attention marker (Fraser 2009: 297), thus joining the category of să vezi ce s-a întâmplat ('you won't believe what has happened'). Thus, in press titles such as Cu ce femeie a petrecut aseară Pepe, de fapt ('Who is the woman Pepe actually spent the evening with'), de fapt loses its contrastive discourse marker rhetorical function of contrasting with a previous element and acquires a new function, i. e. of inviting the reader to read a story that (s)he would have otherwise overlooked. In this type of occurrences, de fapt acquires, for the first time, an intersubjective value.
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Pragmatic markers ; Discourse markers ; Attention markers ; Weasel words
Published in:	Isogloss, Vol. 7 (2021) , p. 1-31 (Articles) , ISSN 2385-4138

Adreça original: https://revistes.uab.cat/isogloss/article/view/v7-balasoiu
DOI: 10.5565/rev/isogloss.156

31 p, 539.1 KB

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