Elementi di sintassi del parlato ne "La ciociara" di Alberto Moravia

Abstract

In this work we examine some of the syntactic phenomena of the Italian spoken language found in Alberto Moravia’s novel, La ciociara. This novel offers us such an analysis, because its protagonist, a woman with a simple background, coming from the region called Ciociaria, is the internal narrator of the events, and Moravia reflects certain peculiarities of the spoken language in both her and the other characters’ utterances and speeches. Our syntactic analysis consists of three main topics. First, we present two types of marked word orders, one of which, called left dislocation, occurs so frequently in the novel as to be considered some type of a grammaticalisation within the spoken language. Then we deal with problems concerning moods (indicative vs. subjunctive) and tenses. Finally, we describe how in the relative clause of the lower, spontaneous register of the language, instead of the relative pronouns cui/quale, there always appears the complementiser che.