Acceso usuarios
Alberto Nocentini
It. fa ‘ago’ represents a rare case of grammaticalization of a finite verbal form and a typical example of what we call ‘preadaptive change’. Its present categorical status, however, is an object of dispute between the different approaches of historical and theoretical linguistics: on the one hand fa is considered an adverbial, on the other hand a postposition, becoming a sort of test of the explanatory power of both the approaches. After a reconsideration of the data throughout the history of Italian and a scrutiny of the literature, we come to the conclusion that in the case of a grammaticalization process both the structural features and the inherited properties are necessary to assign the categorial status and in the case in question converge towards the adverbial function.
