L’avverbio GIÀ da operatore temporale aspettuale a operatore modale di asserzione. Usi preverbali di Sardegna (sardo e italiano regionale) vs. usi olofrastici in italiano standard

The paper discusses modal (assertive) functions of GIÀ (Engl. ‘already’) in Sardinian usages (Logudorese, Campidanese and regional Italian), and confronts them to pro-sentential (confirmative) uses of GIÀ in standard Italian. The Sardinian data help to clarify how this temporal-aspectual adverb can develop into a pro-sentential confirmative marker, while both Italian and Sardinian uses show how the prototypically phasal (and anaphoric) nature of GIÀ may be retained even in more (apparently) idiosyncratic “pragmatic” functions. The data seem to question the often too drastically opposed differences between the “semantic” (conventional) and the “pragmatic” (contextual) levels, suggesting a more unitary perspective on grammar and discourse. From a more general point of view, the discussion aims at showing how peripheral and low prestige diatopic varieties may synchronically exhibit a range of not attested, or only fragmentarily attested uses, in the textual history of more standard varieties, thus helping to reconstruct plausible paths of grammaticalization possibly valid as well for other adverbs and textual varieties.