Some comparative remarks on the adverbial particle po and its Central Rhaeto-Romance cognates

Abstract

In this article I undertake a comparative survey of the distributional and interpretive properties of the adverbial particle po/pa across the Dolomitic region, trying to shed light on the diachronic process of grammaticalization it has undergone in some Central Rhaeto-Romance varieties; in doing so, I crucially refer to the role this particle plays in determining the epistemic state of the discourse participants. Its grammaticalization as an interrogative marker can be more precisely characterized as the loss of the capacity to quantify the degree of overlap between the speaker’s and the addressee’s background knowledge (or the clash between the speaker’s expectation/presupposition and the real state of affairs). In this sense, as a neutral interrogative marker, the particle pa simply marks a default (or conventionalized) degree of matching between the common ground shared by the two interlocutors.