Repetition and reduplication in Italian

The paper surveys all kinds of repetitions and reduplications observable in Italian, from the segmental to the discourse level. Italian has reduplicative structures in ideophones, onomatopoeic formations, child language and baby talk; segment repetition is used as an expressive device in commercials and product names; reduplication is used as a lexeme formation device in Verb-Verb compounds such as fuggifuggi ‘stampede, lit. run_away run_away’, and as a means of intensification of adjectives and adverbs; some sequences of two nouns have lexicalized with adjectival or adverbial meaning (e.g. terra terra ‘low quality, easy; lit. earth earth’, passo passo ‘step by step, lit. step step’); contrastive focus reduplication is also attested in Italian. Discourse markers are often reduplicated; several cases of repetition of imperatives in discourse have constructionalized, giving rise to converbs with concessive or hypothetical meanings or used as antecedents of consecutive clauses; noun reiteration in discourse can be used to indicate frequency of occurrence of entities and events. The paper argues that no clear dividing line can be drawn between pragmatic or syntactic repetition and grammatical or morphological reduplication, since grammaticalization of discourse repetition in diachrony often takes place.