The different functions of agreement discourse markers okay and
sì in L1 and L2 Italian: a semasiological approach

k 2025

The different functions of agreement discourse markers okay and sì in L1 and L2 Italian: a semasiological approach

ALBANESI, Lorenzo a Kristýna LORENZOVÁ

Základní údaje

Originální název

The different functions of agreement discourse markers okay and sì in L1 and L2 Italian: a semasiological approach

Autoři

ALBANESI, Lorenzo a Kristýna LORENZOVÁ

Vydání

53rd Poznań Linguistic Meeting – PLM2025, 2025

Další údaje

Jazyk

angličtina

Typ výsledku

Prezentace na konferencích

Obor

60203 Linguistics

Stát vydavatele

Polsko

Utajení

není předmětem státního či obchodního tajemství

Odkazy

Programme and Abstracts

Označené pro přenos do RIV

Klíčová slova anglicky

Discourse markers; pragmatics; second language acquisition; L1 Italian; L2 Italian

Štítky

discourse markers, L1 Italian, L2 Italian, pragmatics, second language acquisition

Příznaky

Mezinárodní význam, Recenzováno

Změněno: 21. 9. 2025 21:40, Lorenzo Albanesi, Dottore Magistrale

Anotace

V originále

Agreement is one of the clearest manifestations of cooperation between interlocutors and has been examined from various linguistic perspectives (inter alia, Sacks, 1987; Brown & Levinson, 1987; Goodwin & Goodwin, 1992; Santamaría García, 2004; Wang et al., 2010; Bazzanella, 2015; Sansò, 2020). Borreguero & Ferroni (2020) consider agreement as an umbrella term including diverse discursive functions, i.e. acknowledgment, alignment and approval (agreement stricto sensu). This topic is crucial in the field of second language acquisition. Here several studies have explored the ways agreement is encoded by discourse markers (DMs) expressing this function in interactions involving learners and native speakers (among others, in the context of Romance language acquisition, De Marco & Leone, 2012; Andorno, 2016; Koch, 2016; León & Solís García, 2017; Ferroni, 2018). However, two main issues emerge from these studies. First, agreement DMs have generally been analysed in terms of their interactional and communicative functions (e.g., Pomerantz, 1984; Condon & Čech, 2007; Solís & León, 2016), while less attention has been paid to their three distinct functions (Borreguero & Ferroni, 2020). Second, research in Romance language acquisition of DMs has primarily focused on learners whose L1 is closely related to the target language and is spoken in cultures characterized by strong affiliative norms (Bravo, 2004). This study presents a corpus-based analysis, adopting a semasiological, top-down approach, to examine the functions of two agreement DMs, okay and sì (‘yes’), in both L1 and L2 Italian, starting from the classification proposed by Borreguero & Ferroni (2020). These DMs were selected due to their widespread use as agreement markers among L1 and L2 Italian speakers. The research is based on spoken corpora, namely the KiParla corpus (Mauri et al., 2019) and a longitudinal corpus of L2 Italian interactions collected from university students in Czech Republic, whose L1 is a Slavic language (Czech and Slovak, and, to a lesser extent, Russian and Ukrainian). To balance the two samples, the study focuses on one specific type of interaction found in both corpora: semi-structured interviews. L2 participants were recorded in interactions with familiar interlocutors (Lorenzová & Albanesi, 2025) and received no explicit prompt to use agreement DMs, allowing for naturalistic data collection. For both corpora, agreement DMs were identified through their pragmatic function and were annotated with respect to participant role—whether the marker was produced by the speaker of the main turn or by the hearer as a backchannel. The study has a dual objective: first, to shed light on the different pragmatic functions of agreement DMs, expanding the range of strategies identified by Borreguero & Ferroni (2020); second, to examine whether Slavic learners acquire these markers in a manner that follows or diverges from the patterns observed in Romance learners, for instance in terms of self-confirmation (1). Specifically, we argue that the agreement DM okay can represent a topical bridge between two utterances (2) rather than closing the previous one (Sansò, 2020), while sì can also play a role in turn-taking mechanisms (3), showing other metadiscursive functions not strictly connected to agreement.

Citovat

ALBANESI, Lorenzo a Kristýna LORENZOVÁ. The different functions of agreement discourse markers okay and sì in L1 and L2 Italian: a semasiological approach. In 53rd Poznań Linguistic Meeting – PLM2025. 2025.

@proceedings{2520079,
   author = {Albanesi, Lorenzo and Lorenzová, Kristýna},
   booktitle = {53rd Poznań Linguistic Meeting – PLM2025},
   keywords = {Discourse markers; pragmatics; second language acquisition; L1 Italian; L2 Italian},
   language = {eng},
   title = {The different functions of agreement discourse markers okay and sì in L1 and L2 Italian: a semasiological approach},
   url = {https://wa.amu.edu.pl/plm/2025/PLM2025_Programme},
   year = {2025}
}

TY  - CONF
ID  - 2520079
AU  - Albanesi, Lorenzo - Lorenzová, Kristýna
PY  - 2025
TI  - The different functions of agreement discourse markers okay and sì in L1 and L2 Italian: a semasiological approach
KW  - Discourse markers
KW  - pragmatics
KW  - second language acquisition
KW  - L1 Italian
KW  - L2 Italian
UR  - https://wa.amu.edu.pl/plm/2025/PLM2025_Programme
N2  - Agreement is one of the clearest manifestations of cooperation between interlocutors and has been examined from various linguistic perspectives (inter alia, Sacks, 1987; Brown & Levinson, 1987; Goodwin & Goodwin, 1992; Santamaría García, 2004; Wang et al., 2010; Bazzanella, 2015; Sansò, 2020). Borreguero & Ferroni (2020) consider agreement as an umbrella term including diverse discursive functions, i.e. acknowledgment, alignment and approval (agreement stricto sensu). This topic is crucial in the field of second language acquisition. Here several studies have explored the ways agreement is encoded by discourse markers (DMs) expressing this function in interactions involving learners and native speakers (among others, in the context of Romance language acquisition, De Marco & Leone, 2012; Andorno, 2016; Koch, 2016; León & Solís García, 2017; Ferroni, 2018). However, two main issues emerge from these studies. First, agreement DMs have generally been analysed in terms of their interactional and communicative functions (e.g., Pomerantz, 1984; Condon & Čech, 2007; Solís & León, 2016), while less attention has been paid to their three distinct functions (Borreguero & Ferroni, 2020). Second, research in Romance language acquisition of DMs has primarily focused on learners whose L1 is closely related to the target language and is spoken in cultures characterized by strong affiliative norms (Bravo, 2004). This study presents a corpus-based analysis, adopting a semasiological, top-down approach, to examine the functions of two agreement DMs, okay and sì (‘yes’), in both L1 and L2 Italian, starting from the classification proposed by Borreguero & Ferroni (2020). These DMs were selected due to their widespread use as agreement markers among L1 and L2 Italian speakers. The research is based on spoken corpora, namely the KiParla corpus (Mauri et al., 2019) and a longitudinal corpus of L2 Italian interactions collected from university students in Czech Republic, whose L1 is a Slavic language (Czech and Slovak, and, to a lesser extent, Russian and Ukrainian). To balance the two samples, the study focuses on one specific type of interaction found in both corpora: semi-structured interviews. L2 participants were recorded in interactions with familiar interlocutors (Lorenzová & Albanesi, 2025) and received no explicit prompt to use agreement DMs, allowing for naturalistic data collection. For both corpora, agreement DMs were identified through their pragmatic function and were annotated with respect to participant role—whether the marker was produced by the speaker of the main turn or by the hearer as a backchannel. The study has a dual objective: first, to shed light on the different pragmatic functions of agreement DMs, expanding the range of strategies identified by Borreguero & Ferroni (2020); second, to examine whether Slavic learners acquire these markers in a manner that follows or diverges from the patterns observed in Romance learners, for instance in terms of self-confirmation (1). Specifically, we argue that the agreement DM okay can represent a topical bridge between two utterances (2) rather than closing the previous one (Sansò, 2020), while sì can also play a role in turn-taking mechanisms (3), showing other metadiscursive functions not strictly connected to agreement.
ER  -

ALBANESI, Lorenzo a Kristýna LORENZOVÁ. The different functions of agreement discourse markers okay and sì in L1 and L2 Italian: a semasiological approach. In \textit{53rd Pozna\'n Linguistic Meeting – PLM2025}. 2025.

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