What do you do if you don't have modal particles?

Abstract

Languages differ in the words speakers have at their disposal. One major difference between German and Italian is the very rich system of modal particles found in the former language (about 20 particles) vs. the restricted modal lexicon of the latter (few particles, such as ben, mai, poi, pure, Coniglio 2008, Cardinaletti 2011). Does Italian have other ways of expressing the semantics conveyed by modal particles? It has often been observed that Italian makes use of marked word orders in contexts in which German displays modal particles (Helling 1983, Masi 1996, Tamborra 2001, a.o.). In this short paper, I will show, on the basis of Grosz’ (2010) analysis of German particles doch and ja, how the sentences containing these particles, which do not have an Italian counterpart, can be translated into Italian. It is shown that Italian may make use of syntactic devices such as Left and Right Dislocation when the particle has a smaller scope than the entire proposition. The discussion will also point out a difference between Italian Left and Right Dislocation not discussed before