« Sarà primavera dai ». L’uso della particella dai in italiano e in dialetto trevigiano

Abstract

This conversation analytic study aims to describe the actions performed by speakers of Italian and Trevigiano – a northern Italian dialect – by using the particle dai in everyday conversations. Our analyses draw on a corpus of formal and informal phone calls, where dai appears as preface and at the end of turns that initiate new courses of action, at the end of some responsive turns (or Turn-Constructional Units) and in post-expansions (that is, turns in third position). The actions embodied by these turns – requests, proposals and assessments – have in common the momentary deontic imbalance in favor of the speaker, who tells, asks or proposes to the coparticipant to do something. The particle also accompanies assessments of events to which the speaker has no direct experience (thus from an epistemically subordinate position). This study highlights the fuzziness of the boundaries between deontic and epistemic rights in everyday talk.