ABSTRACT

An iconic pattern across spoken languages is that words for ‘this’ and ‘here’ tend to have high front vowels, whereas words for ‘that’ and ‘there’ tend to have low and/or back vowels. In Italian, there are two synonymous Italian words for ‘here’, namely qui and qua, and two synonymous words for ‘there’, lì and là. Qui ‘here’ and là ‘there’ are iconic because qui has the high front vowel /i/ and là has the low vowel /a/, whereas qua ‘here’ and lì ‘there’ are counter-iconic, since their vowels are the opposite. Based on corpus, survey and computational data, we demonstrate that (i) qui ‘here’ and là ‘there’ have been consistently used more frequently throughout history compared to qua ‘here’ and lì ‘there’, respectively; and (ii) in present-day Italian, qui ‘here’ tends to refer to a location that is closer to the speaker than qua ‘here’ does, whereas là ‘there’ tends to refer to a location that is further away from the speaker than lì ‘there’ does. In summary, the iconic demonstrative pronouns (qui and là) are used more frequently and are closer to the prototypical meanings of ‘here’ and ‘there’. We argue that their frequency and prototypicality are motivated by their iconic power. This case study shows how iconicity may work as pressure on language use and language change.

摘要

口语中的一个标志性模式是，表示“this”和“here”的词往往有高前元音，而表示“that”和“there”的词往往有低元音和/或后元音。在意大利语中，“这里”有两个同义词，即qui和qua，“那里”有两个同义词，lì和là。Qui 'here' 和là 'there' 是标志性的，因为qui有高前元音 /i/ 而là有低元音 /a/，而qua 'here' 和lì 'there' 是反标志性的，因为它们的元音是相反。基于语料库、调查和计算数据，我们证明（i）与qua 'here' 和lì 'there' 相比， qui 'here' 和là 'there' 在整个历史上的使用频率一直更高；(ii) 在现代意大利语中，qui 'here' 倾向于指比qua 'here' 更靠近说话者的位置，而là 'there' 倾向于指离说话者更远的位置比lì 'there' 的扬声器。总之，标志性指示代词（qui和là) 使用更频繁，更接近“这里”和“那里”的原型含义。我们认为，它们的频率和原型性是由它们的标志性力量所驱动的。本案例研究显示了象似性如何作为语言使用和语言变化的压力发挥作用。