The periphrastic construction 'motion verb + a + infinitive' in contemporary Italian

The origins of grammatical forms have been a focus of linguistic inquiry since the earliest days of the discipline. Observing a consistent and replicable process through which full lexical forms transform into grammatical forms led scholars, as early as the nineteenth century, to hypothesize that such processes underpinned the formation of grammatical words during the initial development of languages (cf. Humboldt 1822). Over the past two centuries, extensive research has been devoted to understanding this phenomenon—termed grammaticalization since Meillet’s (1912) seminal work—seeking to define its features and boundaries. Grammaticalization often involves high-frequency lexical elements undergoing phonetic and semantic weakening, alongside shifts in morphological category. Simultaneously, these elements acquire abstract grammatical meanings, in a process that intertwines loss with gain. Motion verbs are particularly prone to such processes, losing their original lexical meanings tied to spatial movement and adopting grammatical functions. For instance, verbs meaning ‘to go’ frequently appear in periphrastic constructions across languages, evolving to mark future tense (Bybee et al. 1994). Given the extensive body of research on motion verbs such as GO and COME in various languages—including Romance languages—one might question the need for further investigation into similar verbs and their periphrastic constructions in Italian. However, as Hilpert (2008) reminds us, one should not assume that similar structures in closely related languages developed identically, as grammaticalization paths often exhibit idiosyncratic features, resulting in divergence. This study focuses on the Italian periphrastic construction ‘motion verb + a + infinitive,’ which can convey aspectual values such as culminative, inchoative-imminential, or iterative, as well as modal values, including mirative. While the construction andare a has received some attention, similar constructions with verbs like venire ‘to come’, arrivare ‘to arrive’, giungere ‘to reach’, entrare ‘to enter’, uscire ‘to exit’, and tornare ‘to return’ remain underexplored. This thesis is structured as follows: Chapter II traces the historical development of the concept of grammaticalization from the 18th century to the present, examining various approaches to the phenomenon and unresolved research questions. Subsequent sections analyse cases of grammaticalization involving motion verbs, with particular attention to their evolution in Romance languages. Chapter III focuses on periphrastic constructions with motion verbs in Italian, reviewing the state of the art concerning the ‘motion verb + a + infinitive’ construction. Seven verbs—andare, venire, tornare, arrivare, giungere, entrare, and uscire—are analysed in terms of existing literature, aspectual and modal values, diachronic attestations, and known distribution patterns in contemporary Italian. Chapter IV examines the distribution of these periphrases across varieties of contemporary Italian, testing the hypothesis proposed in the literature that andare a represents a change from above (cf. Labov 1994). This analysis utilizes three corpora: CORIS, a written corpus; KIParla, a spoken corpus; and the Gamer Corpus, a collection of video tutorial transcripts. The chapter highlights differing usage rates of periphrastic constructions, as well as diaphasic variation in their distribution and values. Chapter V addresses the structural aspects of periphrastic constructions with motion verbs. Tests for periphrasticity and grammaticalization are also conducted on the selected periphrases. To identify the aspectual head where grammaticalized motion verbs are generated, the diagnostics proposed by Cinque (2006) are applied and tested on speakers via a questionnaire.