José Deulofeu Delic

Lucie Duffort
email: lucieduffort@hotmail.comkim@gerdes.fr

Kim Gerdes

Sylvain Kahane
email: sylvain@kahane.fr

Paola Pietrandrea
email: pietrand@uniroma3.it

Depends on What the French Say Spoken Corpus Annotation With and Beyond Syntactic Functions

We present a syntactic annotation scheme for spoken French that is currently used in the Rhapsodie project. This annotation is dependency-based and includes coordination and disfluency as analogously encoded types of paradigmatic phenomena. Furthermore, we attempt a thorough definition of the discourse units required by the systematic annotation of other phenomena beyond usual sentence boundaries, which are typical for spoken language. This includes so called "macrosyntactic" phenomena such as dislocation, parataxis, insertions, grafts, and epexegesis.

Introduction

This communication presents the syntactic annotation scheme currently being developed for Rhapsodie a project funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR) which aims to study the syntax-prosody interface in spoken French. Rhapsodie aims to elaborate a freely distributed corpus, classified into different discourse genres, and doted with prosodic and syntactic annotations elaborated for the study of the relationship of prosody, syntax, and information structure in discourse.

Contrary to what is available in the anglosaxon world, there is no freely distributed and syntactically annotated corpus of spoken French today. This is what our project aims to provide.

The only tree-bank for French, that we know of, is the Paris 7 Corpus [START_REF] Abeillé | Building a Treebank for French[END_REF]. This is a corpus of newspaper texts, annotated mainly in Penn Tree Bank style and partially with dependency annotations, which is distributed only under highly restrictive conditions. Some annotated corpora of spoken French nevertheless exist: The CID (Corpus of Interactional Data) [START_REF] Bertrand | Le CID -Corpus of Interactional Data -Annotation et exploitation multimodale de parole conversationnelle[END_REF]) uses an annotation with typed chunks, and the VALIBEL corpus [START_REF] Dister | Approches syntaxiques en français parlé: vers la structuration en unités minimales du discours[END_REF][START_REF] Degand | On identifying basic discourse units in speech: theoretical and empirical issues[END_REF] consists of delimiting maximal syntactic units. This notion, allowing segmentation of the text, is essential for any syntactic annotation, a concept we will come back to in section 2. Neither of these corpora is distributed freely and none comes close to the precision and variety of spoken language corpora existing for other languages like English or Dutch.

There is, however, an important tradition of description of the spoken French language, notably at the University of Provence in Aix, where a team led by Claire Blanche-Benveniste coined the two level distinction of "micro-syntax" and "macro-syntax" and proposed a parallel analysis of paradigmatic phenomena ranging from coordinations to disfluencies (Blanche [START_REF] Benveniste | Problèmes de linguistique générale, Gallimard, Paris Berrendonner, A[END_REF], Berrendonner 1990[START_REF] Bilger | Transcription de l'oral et interprétation: illustration de quelques difficultés[END_REF][START_REF] Guénot | La coordination considérée comme un entassement paradigmatique: description, formalisation et intégration[END_REF][START_REF] Gerdes | Speaking in Piles. Paradigmatic Annotation of a Spoken French Corpus[END_REF].

Rhapsodie's innovation stems from a formalization and generalization of this tradition. The parallel annotation of prosody and syntax naturally leads to a syntactic analysis of the text as a whole, including hesitations and disfluencies, whereas other approaches tend to erase these phenomena in order to obtain standard sentences similar to written language where syntactic annotation is well-established. Examples of this latter approach include main reference corpora, for example the English Switchboard corpus (http://groups.inf.ed.ac.uk/switchboard), or the CGN (Dutch Spoken Corpus, http://lands.let.ru.nl/cgn). These types of annotation also commonly exclude phenomena such as colon effects, grafts, and associated illocutionary units, because of their limited conception of sentence boundaries and a focus on written phenomena. The Rhapsodie syntactic analysis scheme tends to include all words of the corpus and finds it necessary to take account of all the above phenomena because they are, we believe, intrinsically syntactic.

The original English examples in this paper stem from the Micase corpus [START_REF] Simpson-Vlach | The MICASE handbook[END_REF], in particular from the segment Honors Advising (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/ micase) and from interviews that we collected ourselves (ELUI; English Language Use Interviews, Duffort in preparation). Some phenomena are specific to French and we use original examples from the Rhapsodie corpus; some other examples, designated as "constructed examples", are simplified constructions of phenomena we only encountered in more complex combinations.

Annotation

In the analysis of written text, the units of annotation are usually taken to be "graphical" sentences, i.e. the words between two periods, a neither explicit nor homogenous notion that has little or no linguistic relevance. Spoken corpus annotation, on the contrary, has to simultaneously define dependency units and the dependency annotation that we impose on these units. These two questions are not independent: The more phenomena we include in the syntactic analysis, the longer the units will become.

Our first choice concerns syntactic annotation: Functional dependency annotation has proven to be a more challenging task than phrase structure annotation but seems to be more versatile for various languages and more promising as an intermediate syntactic structure between the ordered words and semantics. All dependency based corpora have to choose a set of functions to be used in annotation. This choice is often guided by practical considerations (existing phrase structure annotation, parsers, semantic needs, etc.) but even though few have tried to give a formal and general definition of syntactic functions [START_REF] Mel'cuk | Surface Syntax of English. A Formal Model within the Meaning-Text Framework[END_REF], each choice of a set of functions presumes that two elements (subtrees) that share the same function have something in common: Usually this is thought to be -the exchangeability of the two elements (at a certain degree of abstraction, excluding, for example, agreement features) -the coordinability of the two elements For example, to decide whether gone and the bike have the same function in he has gone and he has a bike, it is not sufficient that the two elements can be interchanged; we also need coordinability which in this case is ungrammatical. We will therefore stipulate the existence of two different functions. 1(1) *He has gone and a bike.

In other words, a coordination is an orthogonal construction to a head-daughter relation. This also shows in the difficulty in dependency as well as phrase structure approaches to account for coordination. The near-symmetry of coordinations violates basic assumptions of X-bar theory and head-daughter relationships. Contrary to other dependency analyses like the Prague Dependency Treebank (ufal.mff.cuni.cz/pdt) or the Alpino Dependency Treebank (www.let.rug.nl/ vannoord/trees), our approach does not include coordinations in our syntactic functions, but these, as well as other paradigmatic phenomena, are encoded in what we call "piles"2 (see section 2.3).

Dependency Units and Illocutionary

Units We don't consider that syntax can be reduced to dependency, and we have to define the delimitation of functional relations as well as the delimitation of so called "macro-syntactic" phenomena such as dislocation and colon effect that go beyond dependency. Our complete annotation therefore includes units joined by dependency, paradigmatic sub-units, and higher-level relations that are still syntactic and not purely discursive. We propose a well defined distinction between syntax based segmentation, called "dependency units" (DU), and pragmatically based segmentation, called "illocutionary units" (IU).

Applying a bottom-up approach, we first look for rectional (head-daughter) relations, which gives us the DUs: Each DU is a unit, constructed around a syntactic head that itself has no governor. We define a rectional relation using the common criteria: i.e. constraints in terms of category, morphological features, and restructuration possibilities (commutation with a pronoun, diatheses, clefting).

In addition to these syntactic units, we define the IUs as unities that demonstrate a discursive autonomy, in other words, that have their own illocutionary force. These terms may seem surprising in formal syntax, but we believe that they are unavoidable for our task. This definition assents to traditional grammarians' intuition of sentences holding a "complete meaning" and Creissels' definition of "sentence" ( 2004) as a propositional content realizing an enunciation.

Both units, DUs and IUs are relatively independent and complementary and they have their own well-formedness conditions. In general, an IU is a combination of several DUs, but we will show examples ranging from simple interjections to complex embedded DUs. In some cases a rectional relation, and thus a DU can go beyond the limits of an IU.

This opposition of DU and IU reflects Blanche-Benveniste's opposition between microsyntax and macrosyntax (1990): A DU is the maximal microsyntactic unit; an IU constitutes the maximal unit of macrosyntax.

Microsyntax and Dependency Units

In this paper, we will not elaborate further on the dependency annotation itself. We have followed approaches taken by numerous other corpora such as the Prague Dependency Treebank or the Alpino Dependency Treebank (www.let.rug.nl/ vannoord/trees/).

Let us consider the following utterance, typical for spoken French:

(2) moi ma mère le salon c'est de la moquette me my mother the living room it's carpet 'My mother's living room is carpeted'

In (2), three elements-moi, literally 'me', ma mère 'my mother', le salon 'the living room'-are paratactically juxtaposed to a predicative unit, c'est de la moquette 'it is carpet'. These elements are not syntactically dependent on any element in the predicative unit. We treat them as separate DUs. We will illustrate in 2.4 the treatment we propose for the relation holding between these DUs.

Piles

Beside dependency, we acknowledge the existence of a separate mechanism of syntactic cohesion within DUs: Following [START_REF] Gerdes | Speaking in Piles. Paradigmatic Annotation of a Spoken French Corpus[END_REF], we call the syntactic relation between units occupying the same structural position within a DU, or, in other words, holding the same position in a dependency tree, a "pile". Coordination is a typical case of piling:

(3) our two languages are {English | ^and French} (ELUI)

We consider that we also have a pile of elements occupying the same structural position in reformulations (4), disfluencies (5) or corrections ( 6):

( In all cases of piles, we use the same notation: the segments that occupy the same syntactic position are put between curly brackets { } and they are separated by vertical pipes |. Pipes therefore separate what we call pile layers. These layers may be introduced by pile markers, usually a conjunction. If a pile marker does not play a syntactic role, it is preceded by a caret ^.

Dependencies and piles allow for a complete description of the syntactic cohesion of a DU. In (7), for example, the first layer realizes the position of attribute within the dependency structure. The syntagmatic relation between the two layers entails a paradigmatic relation between linguist and computational scientist. The second layer inherits the structural (attribute) position from the paradigmatic relation within the dependency structure. It should also be noticed that, with the exception of abandoned layers (noted &), layers can be seen as alternatives. It is possible to walk these structures by choosing one layer of each pile, extracting as many utterances as there are paths. Each of these utterances has a complete dependency structure merely containing government and modification relations, for example, (7a) can be reduced to the two DUs in (8), which will constitute the input for the parsing process:

(8) a. she is a linguist b. she is maybe a computational linguist Note that maybe, though it acts as a pile marker, also plays a syntactic role in the context of the pile, contrarily to a conjunction (*she is or a computational scientist), the latter being marked with the caret to make this distinction.

Macrosyntax and Illocutionary Units

An Illocutionary Unit (IU) is any portion of discourse encoding a unique illocutionary act: assertions, questions, and commands (see [START_REF] Benveniste | Problèmes de linguistique générale, Gallimard, Paris Berrendonner, A[END_REF][START_REF] Searle | A classification of illocutionary acts[END_REF]). An IU expresses a speech act that can be made explicit by introducing an implicit performative act such as "I say", "I ask", "I order". A test for detecting the Illocutionary Units that make up a discourse consists of the introduction of such performative segments (see below). A segmentation in IUs is particularly important for the study of the connection of prosody and syntax, which is the goal of Rhapsodie, because these units are prosodically marked (Blanche- [START_REF] Blanche-Benveniste | Approches de la langue parlée en français[END_REF][START_REF] Cresti | Corpus di italiano parlato. Accademia della Crusca[END_REF]. We use the symbol // to segment the text in IUs (but see also the symbols //+ in section 3).

It should be noted that there exist IUs that are not made up of Verbal Dependency Units. See examples (9a,b):

(9) a. SPK1: we've heard all of the "you know" big "uh" meteors coming from outer space // SPK2: right // (Micase) b. ^and then < boom // (constructed example)

We extend the notion of IU to a unit whose status in terms of illocutionary acts, let alone in terms of propositional structures, may be unclear, but which can form a "complete message": interjections, phatics, feed back particles like voilà 'that's it', quoi 'what', hélas!, 'alas', tant pis! 'oh well'. See for instance in the famous critical punt against French writer Corneille (10a) that could be annotated as in (10b).

(10) a. Après l'Agésilas, hélas ! Après l'Attila, holà ! (Nicolas Boileau 1828) 'After Agésilas, alas! After Attila, no more!' b. après l'Agésilas < hélas // après l'Attila < holà // In a context such as (11), a single IU is made up of two verbal DUs: I got up in the morning and I was with clients.

(11) I got up in the morning < I was with clients // I ate at noon < I was with clients // I went to bed at night < I was with clients // (translation, Rhapsodie)

The relation between the two verbal DUs in (11) cannot be described in terms of microsyntactic dependency. Indeed, I got up in the morning is not dependent on the verbal construction of the following DU. Nevertheless, the existence of a macrosyntactic relation can be acknowledged. The first DU in (11), I got up in the morning, is not as autonomous from an illocutionary point of view: it cannot constitute a self standing message. In (11) it is not asserted that "I got up in the morning". And (11) can be paraphrased by (12a) but not by (12b):

(12) a. it is said that I got up in the morning I was with the clients b. # it is said that I got up in the morning and that I was with the clients.

The illocutionary force of ( 11) is encoded by the DU I was with clients, which can be interpreted as an assertion even if uttered in isolation. Whereas the unit I got up in the morning does not have in this context any illocutionary interpretation. The subsegment of an IU supporting the illocutionary force of the IU is called the nucleus. It can be autonomized. The nucleus and the others segments forming the IU are called the Illocutionary Components (ICs). The ICs are always microsyntactic units and are generally DUs. The nucleus is the unit that is affected by a negation or an interrogation having scope on the IU. See for example the tests in ( 13) and ( 14):

(13) A: I got up in the morning I was with clients B: this is not true (≈ It is not true that you were with clients, # It is not true that you got up in the morning) (14) A: I got up in the morning I was with clients B: Is that true? (≈ Is that true that you were with clients) (# Is that true that you got up in the morning)

ICs preceding and following the nucleus are called pre-nuclear units (Pre-N) and post-nuclear units (Post-N). We use the symbol < to mark the Pre-N and the > to mark the post-N. These tags can be considered as explicit counterparts of commas in writing.

(15) il y a plein de trucs < tu les vois après > en fait > les défauts (Rhapsodie) there are plenty of things < you see them later > actually > the faults It is possible that, due to a particular communicative structure, the illocutionary force is carried only by a part of a DU and that the nucleus forms a DU with another IC:

(16) to my mother <+ I don't speak anymore (constructed example) (17) two euros >+ it costs (translation, Blanche-Benveniste 1990)

The addition of the symbol + indicates that the IC on one and the other side are parts of the same UR.

More cases of irregularity in the interface between microsyntactic and macrosyntactic units

We will now present a number of structures that were particularly problematic for the syntactic annotation of the Rhapsodie corpus and that illustrate the mismatch between DU and IU boundaries well.

DU beyond the IU

Up to now, we have seen a few examples of segmentation of an IU into DUs. We will now show that there are cases, traditionally named epexegesis, where we can consider that it is in fact the DU which is segmented into multiple IU. Let us consider these two examples:

(18) SPK1: he has arrived SPK2: last night (constructed example) (19) She speaks French. And very well! (constructed example)

In these two examples, there are two illocutionary acts: in (18) this is evident as there are two speakers uttering two different assertions. In (19), there are two assertions. In both cases, the second illocutionary act is not (micro) syntactically autonomous. The second IU directly follows the first IU and integrates and completes its syntactic structure, being in a dependency relation with the head of the first IU (the verb ar-rived in (18), the verb speaks in ( 19)). We can therefore paraphrase the preceding examples thusly:

(20) SPK1: he has arrived SPK2: he has arrived last night (21) She speaks French and (what is more) she speaks French very well.

Rather than postulating an ellipsis in the second segment (as suggested by [START_REF] Culicover | Simpler Syntax[END_REF], among others) we analyze the two IUs as belonging to the same DU. This choice naturally descends from the modular approach we adopted, which distinguishes between illocutionary and syntactic relations. As in the case of a dependency relation crossing the IC border, we add a + symbol to indicate that the illocutionary frontier is not a limit to the DU.

In addition to dependency, piling can also cross IU frontiers, as in ( 22 In ( 22) the argument position of the verb go is realized twice: through the segment there uttered by the first speaker and through the segment to the states uttered as a separate IU by the second speaker. We use the notation {X|}…{|Y} when the pile between X and Y is interrupted by a syntactic frontier, in this case an IU frontier, or a discontinuity.

It should be noted that the piling in ( 22) does not only cross an IU frontier but it crosses a speech turn frontier as well, as it is realized by two different speakers. We do not consider the speech turn as a limit for the extension of syntactic phenomena, rather we assume that there can be co-construction of semantic content and syntactic structures in dialogues

Inserted IUs

An IU can be inserted into another IU. This is what happens for example in the case of insertions. We propose two equivalent ways to note this, either by placing the inserted utterance between parentheses as in (23) or by using the symbol # to indicate that the utterance is continued later at the following occurrence of #:

(24) a. I woke up #// you're going to laugh //# in the morning at five o'clock // (constructed example) These two notations are strict equivalents __"(" = "#//" and ")" = "//#"__, but the symbol # also allows the encoding of more complex cases such as the following example, where SPK1 is interrupted three times by SPK2. This does not keep SPK1 from pursuing a relatively complex utterance, all the while interacting with SPK2 through yeahs which punctuate SPK2's interventions. The sequence of //#+ tags indicates that the IU is completed (//), but that the DU continues later on (#+):

(25) SPK1: but but otherwise uh well & // in any case the fundamental research it it remains free //#+ SPK2: yeah yeah // SPK1: #luckily //#+ SPK2 so yeah // in 2009 // SPK1: yeah // SPK2 : we'll have to see later // SPK1: yeah // # the applied research < less // ^but the fundamental research < yeah // (translation, Rhapsodie)

Embedded IUs

Direct discourse presents a particular difficulty due to the embedding of illocutionary acts. Consider the following example:

(26) he said [ go away > poor fool // ] // (translation, radio)

The reported speech in (26), annotated with the symbols [ ], has its own illocutionary force, it can be regarded therefore as an autonomous IU. Regardless, the preceding segment (he said) does not form an autonomous illocutionary act or a complete DU. We treat such a structure as an embedded IU. The reported speech is an IU embedded in the IU made up of the whole utterance he said go away poor fool.

Another phenomenon that we treat as the embedding of IUs is the graft. We define a graft as the filling of a syntactic position with a segment belonging to an unexpected category [START_REF] Deulofeu | Recherches sur les formes de la prédication dans les énoncés assertifs en français contemporain (le cas des énoncés introduits par le morphème que)[END_REF] This phenomenon can be regarded as a rupture of sub-categorization. The grafted segment usually has its own illocutionary force, being in most cases a unit commenting on the lexical choice that should have been done to respect the subcategorization. In a graft, as well as in reported speech, an IU occupies a governed position inside a DU.

Associated IUs

A number of discourse particles (such as "right", "of course" in English, "quoi", "bon" in French) and parentheticals units (such as "I think", "I guess", "you know" in English, "je crois", "tu vois" in French) are endowed with an illocutionary force. However, these elements do not serve the purpose of modifying the common ground between speakers. They merely have a function of modal modification or interactional regulation.

We call these units "associated units", we treat them as non autonomous illocutionary components and we annotate them between quotation marks " ".

(28) it's a really "you know" open field "you know" like all that stuff // (Micase) (29) he is coming "I guess" // (constructed) (30) "I mean" English wasn't that helpful itself // (ELUI)

Levels of annotation

Our annotation strategy rests on the fact that relatively good tools for automatic analysis of French written texts are currently in existence [START_REF] Bourigault | Syntex, analyseur syntaxique de corpus[END_REF][START_REF] De La Clergerie | DyALog: a tabular logic programming based environment for NLP[END_REF], Boulier & Sagot 2005). Adapting these tools to spoken French would constitute a project in and of itself, one much more ambitious than our annotation project (even though we believe that Rhapsodie is an essential step towards the development of parsers for spoken language, and that one of the final uses of Rhapsodie will be as a contribution to the training and development of these parsers). In other words, we want to use these tools developed for written text without modifying them substantially. In order to do this, we realize a pre-treatment of transcribed text "by hand": We manually annotate every phenomenon typical of the syntax of speech. The result is a pre-treated text that parsers can analyze as written text with minimal error. The segmentation into IUs and DUs described in the previous sections aims at providing such a pre-treatment. As we hope we have shown, our pre-treatment has a theoretical and practical value, and could constitute a satisfying analysis of speech on its own. Regardless, we would like to present all levels of our treatment, as this will allow a greater understanding of the choices that have been made (for example the analysis of piles during pretreatment).

Our annotation procedure is organized into several steps which alternate regularly between automatic and manual treatment. Level 1: Raw transcription (i.e. without syntactic enrichment) -This consists of orthographic transcription which includes speech overlap, truncated morphemes, etc. Level 2: Simple automatic pre-treatment -Annotation of trivial "disfluencies" (such as word repetition) and identification of potential associated IUs (um, uh... but also like, you know...). This automatic step is very rough and is to be corrected at level 3. Level 3: Manual syntactic segmentation -This is the annotation presented in the previous sections of this paper, indicating DUs, IUs, ICs, piles, etc. This level is obtained manually starting at level 2. The general idea is that it simultaneously constitutes:

-A coding of everything that we know we are not able to automatically calculate, and which would cause problems for parsers (originally programmed for written text), -A coding which is satisfactory in itself and permits a preliminary study of the syntax-prosody interface. A tool has been developed for checking the wellformedness of this level of annotation. Level 4: Parser entry -Existing parsers for French have not been programmed to process simple transcriptions of speech, nor have they been tuned to treat the markup that we have introduced at level 3. However, these tags allow us to automatically segment the text and furnish the parser with sections it is capable of analyzing. Level 5: Parser output -Parsers provide us with a syntactic analysis in the form of a dependency tree. We now have two things left to do: 1) automatically translate these analyses so that they correspond exactly to the desired labels (this is mainly a renaming process of functional labels); 2) apply syntactic annotations computed for the unfolded segments to the original texts (those from level 3), while fusing duplicated syntactic annotations.

Level 6: Dependency analysis -This consists of level 5 after automatic reinsertion of analyzed sections and manual correction. The last level is a manual correction of level 5, this is absolutely necessary as the parsers still make many mistakes (we estimate that about 30% of dependencies will have to be corrected) and do not use our same labels. The encoding of level 6 is therefore a complete syntactic analysis of text, which includes microsyntax (functional dependencies) as well as macrosyntax.

Conclusion

The ongoing process of annotating transcriptions of spoken French with syntactic functions has revealed the necessity of a well-defined text segmentation separated into illocutionary and dependency units. This process is an interesting challenge in its own right as it allows, for the time being, only very limited automated steps, and can be seen as a necessary pre-treatment before the parsing process, relying mainly on tools tuned to work on written data. Linguistically, contrary to the conventional ad-hoc punctuation of written text, our segmentation can be seen as a systematic punctuation process relying on reproducible criteria allowing for a distribution of this process to trained annotators. Moreover, the notion of paradigmatic piles naturally completes the short-comings of head-descriptions in coordinations and other paradigmatic phenomena.

If we want to share tools and resources across languages and theoretical models, it is necessary that annotation norms develop in the field of syntactic annotation of spoken texts, in other words, we need some kind of language-independent punctuation scheme reflecting syntactic and pragmatic segmentation of the text. This is a process that is well on its way for written text. Our work on French and English shows that our annotation scheme proposes criteria that can be applied to different languages while yielding interesting results. We hope this to be a contribution to the development of unified annotation methods in dependency annotation of spoken text and thus to a deeper understanding of functional syntax as a whole.

  ): (22) SPK1: How often do you go {there |} //+ SPK2: {| to the States} // (ELUI)

(

  23) a. I woke up (you're going to laugh //) in the morning at five o'clock // (constructed example) b. { I studied | (sorry//) I studied in college | I studied } international relations // (ELUI)

  4) did a humanoid species { spring up | or exist } in various places {in the world | {not just in Africa | ^but also in Asia | ^and maybe also in southern Europe }} // (Micase) (5) { I~ | in~ | including } kind of a general idea of these "uh" (ELUI) (6) {I | I} have lots of other interests {like "um" |

that are a little bit more like} {paleontology | ^or astronomy | ^or international religion | ^or "uh" not religion | international relations | ^so those things {I wanna & | I think I'm gonna concentrate more on} // (Micase)

Our desire to treat coordinations, reformulations and disfluencies as phenomena showing syntactic similarity resides in the fact that, as shown by Blanche-

[START_REF] Benveniste | Problèmes de linguistique générale, Gallimard, Paris Berrendonner, A[END_REF]

among others, it is not always easy to distinguish between disfluency, reformulation and coordination: As an example, consider (7a), more or less interpreted in the same way as examples (7b,c) which are, respectively, a reformulation and a coordination: (7) a. she is { a linguist | maybe a technician } b. she is { a linguist | "um" a technician } c. she is { a linguist | ^or a technician } (constructed example)

  The following example will illustrate this point.

	(31) are you thinking {of other communicat~ |
	"uh" of other functions}
	(constructed example)
	would give us to two segments:
	(32) a. are you thinking of other communicat~
	b. are you thinking of other functions.
	Certain fragments of text are therefore duplicated
	and analyzed multiple times. These analyses, if
	identical, are automatically fused in the ulterior
	levels. If they differ, a manual treatment is nec-
	essary. Another strategy consists of not unpiling
	but rather perceiving an utterance including a
	pile as a Directed Acrylic Graph (DAG), that is
	to say a graph in which the arcs are labeled by
	words of the text, and which integrate all possi-
	ble paths in a pile structure. A parser like SxLFG
	(Boulier and Sagot 2005) can manage a DAG
	entry, but for the moment it is parameterized to
	choose the best path in the DAG and not to ana-
	lyze the entire DAG.

Note that this choice is less clear in many cases, such as for example for the distinction between passives and predicative functions, or between full and light verbs.

2 Of course this can be represented formally equivalently as a specific type of dependency, but we believe that the distinction is linguistically important and limiting the notion of dependency to true head-daughter relations makes the notion of dependency more consistent.


Paola Pietrandrea

ENCODING DYNAMIC AND DISCURSIVE ASPECTS OF COMMITMENT IN ITALIAN

published or not. The documents may come

Commitment and epistemic modality

In the extensive literature on epistemic modality [START_REF] Lyons | Semantics[END_REF][START_REF] Palmer | Mood and Modality[END_REF][START_REF] Coates | The Semantics of Modal Auxiliaries[END_REF][START_REF] Nuyts | Epistemic Modality, Language, and Conceptualization[END_REF][START_REF] Papafragou | Modality: Issues in the Semantics-Pragmatics Interface[END_REF]Dendale & van der Auwera 2001;van der Auwera & Dendale 2001;[START_REF] Pietrandrea | Epistemic Modality. Functional Properties and the Italian System[END_REF]Frawley 2006) commitment plays an important role. It is commonly considered as the attitudinal counterpart of epistemic modality. To cite just two authors, Lyons writes:

Any utterance in which the speaker explicitly qualifies his commitment to the truth of the proposition expressed by the sentence he utters […] is an epistemically modal, or modalized utterance. (Lyons 1977: 797) and Palmer: The term epistemic should apply […] to any modal system that indicates the degree of commitment by the speaker to what he says. (Palmer 1986: 51) Epistemic modality is thus viewed as the grammatical category that expresses the speaker's commitment to the truth of what he says.

In spite of the relevance of this notion, the question of what commitment is is hardly ever explicitly addressed and theorized in the studies on epistemic modality. Only a vague representation of the notion can be inferred. Commitment, indeed, is generally understood as a truth-value judgment already established in the mind of the speaker before the utterance is produced. Commitment can vary in strength: markers of strong commitment are often opposed to markers of weak commitment [START_REF] Coates | The Semantics of Modal Auxiliaries[END_REF][START_REF] Palmer | Mood and Modality[END_REF][START_REF] Pietrandrea | Epistemic Modality. Functional Properties and the Italian System[END_REF], among others). A distinction is also frequently made between a commitment justified by the speaker's personal beliefs and a commitment justified on the basis of some evidential source [START_REF] Coates | The Semantics of Modal Auxiliaries[END_REF][START_REF] Pietrandrea | Epistemic Modality. Functional Properties and the Italian System[END_REF]; among others).

However, more careful reflection suggests that commitment is more than this. In this respect, it is useful to turn to the elaboration of the notion of prise en charge [START_REF] Laurendeau | Repérage énonciatif et valeur de vérité: la prise en compte, la prise en charge[END_REF][START_REF] Nølke | La dilution linguistique des responsabilités. Essai de description polyphonique des marqueurs évidentiels il semble que et il paraît que[END_REF][START_REF] Desclés | Enonciateur, locuteur, médiateur[END_REF][START_REF] Nølke | ScaPoLine. La théorie scandinave de la polyphonie linguistique[END_REF][START_REF] Dendale | Eléments de comparaison de trois théories linguistiques de la polyphonie et du dialogisme[END_REF]; among others), a term that literally means 'taking in charge', and which is the closest there is to a counterpart for 'commitment' in the French literature. In that tradition, commitment is not regarded as a mental state preceding the utterance act and somehow independent of it. Rather, commitment is considered to be profoundly rooted in the utterance act itself, as it is acknowledged that it can arise, grow and change during the utterance act.

As shown by [START_REF] Dendale | Eléments de comparaison de trois théories linguistiques de la polyphonie et du dialogisme[END_REF], the notion of commitment also plays an important role in some theories of 'polyphony' [START_REF] Ducrot | Le dire et le dit[END_REF][START_REF] Ducrot | Quelques raisons de distinguer « locuteurs » et « énonciateurs[END_REF][START_REF] Nølke | La dilution linguistique des responsabilités. Essai de description polyphonique des marqueurs évidentiels il semble que et il paraît que[END_REF][START_REF] Nølke | ScaPoLine. La théorie scandinave de la polyphonie linguistique[END_REF]; also [START_REF] Desclés | Enonciateur, locuteur, médiateur[END_REF][START_REF] Simone | Constructions and categories[END_REF], i.e. those theories that regard every utterance as the layering of several voices expressing different, even contradictory, points of view 1 (see [START_REF] Dendale | Three linguistic theories of Polyphony/Dialogism: an external point of view and comparison[END_REF] for an overview). It is clear within these theories that commitment to the truth of what is said may be attributed not only to the speaker but also to other discursive voices. Besides, commitment is considered to be negotiable (see e.g. [START_REF] Desclés | Prise en charge énonciative, engagement, désengagement. Vers une carte sémantique[END_REF]). The speaker, for example, can concede or not concede the truth of a propositional content put forward by the listener or other discursive voices. The speaker can also decide to limit his commitment to only a part of what is taken in charge by others.

Finally, as pointed out by Beyssade & Marandin (forthcoming), commitment also plays a crucial role in several formal theories of dialogue and argumentation - [START_REF] Hamblin | Fallacies[END_REF][START_REF] Hamblin | Mathematical models of dialogue[END_REF]; [START_REF] Gazdar | Speech Act Assignment[END_REF]; [START_REF] Gunlogson | True to Form: Rising and Falling Declaratives as Questions in English[END_REF] where it is considered a public, dialogical, retractable attitude that may serve not only to make the speaker responsible for what he says, but also to attribute to the hearer an attitude towards what is said.

To sum up, the theories just mentioned view commitment as a dynamic, discursive, often dialogical attitude. It is with the notion so understood that I will be concerned in this paper, rather than with the traditional understanding that emerges from the literature on epistemic modality.

Some questions for the theory of grammar

This new characterization of commitment raises some important questions for the theory of grammar in general and for a redefinition of epistemic modality in particular:

(i) To what extent do languages encode the dynamic and discursive aspects of commitment? For example, are there markers dedicated to indicating that the speaker's commitment is changing? Are there markers dedicated to encoding the fact that the speaker is committed to the truth of what is said by other discursive voices? Are there markers that indicate that the speaker is committed to the truth of what is said by others only to a certain extent?

(ii)
At what level of analysis does this encoding take place? At the morphological, syntactical or discourse level?

(iii) Which markers encode these aspects? Are they lexical or grammatical markers?

In brief, the question arises: how and to what extent are the dynamic and discursive aspects of commitment grammaticalized in languages?

The opposition between certamente and sicuramente in Italian

In order to answer some of the questions raised above, two Italian adverbs expressing strong commitment and usually considered to be quasi-synonyms will be analyzed: certamente (roughly corresponding to 'certainly') and sicuramente (roughly corresponding to 'surely'). In particular, the distributional constraints on these two adverbs in discourse will be identified and contrasted.

The hypothesis behind this study is that a difference in the distributional constraints of the two adverbs may reveal some of their semantic differences (see Harris's 1968 distributional hypothesis, regarding this issue).

As is clear from the examples in (1), certamente and sicuramente do not differ in topological distribution when analyzed within the limits of the clause. Both adverbs can in fact occur at every major phrasal boundary in a sentence like Luigi è venuto 'Luigi has come': The only difference worthy of mention is the prosodic difference between (e) and (g). Example (e) shows that sicuramente can occur in the final position of a sentence entirely realized within one intonation unit. Example (f) shows that certamente cannot. 2 Certamente can, indeed, occur in final position, but only if, as in (g), it is preceded by a pause. The prosodic difference between (e) and (g) reveals a difference in the macro-syntactic structure of the two utterances. 3 While sentence (f) is uttered to realize only one illocutionary act (the assertion 'Luigi has certainly come'), sentence (g) is uttered to realize two different assertions: an answer echoing another discursive voice, Luigi è venuto 'Luigi has come' and a confirmation, certamente 'this is certain'. This asymmetry shows that there exists at least one difference in the distributional constraints of the two adverbs. This difference seems to be motivated by the fact that, while certamente appears specialized in marking a particular dynamic and discursive aspect of commitment, i.e. the commitment to the truth of what has been said by other discursive voices, sicuramente does not show a similar semantic specialization.

Interestingly, the only distributional difference found so far has been detected not at the clausal, but at the supra-clausal level, namely in the macrosyntactic structure of discourse. This fact both opens a promising new route for our research and raises a methodological problem. It is highly plausible in fact that the dynamic and discursive aspects of commitment do not reveal themselves within the limits of the clause, but can be identified at a higher level, such as discourse. At the same time, however, this route ventures into a risky terrain. The question arises of how to obtain a methodologically rigorous definition of the supra-clausal contexts in which sicuramente and certamente occur.

Methodology

In order to solve our methodological problem, it is, first of all, essential to look for occurrences of the two adverbs in natural contexts. This is easily done by performing corpus searches. The present study is based on the analysis of 149 tokens of sicuramente and 101 tokens of certamente occurring in the LIP, a corpus of spoken Italian containing about 500,000 words (De Mauro et al. 1993). In order to avoid an 'oral' bias, these occurrences have been compared with a sample of 50 tokens of sicuramente and 50 tokens of certamente occurring in the la Repubblica corpus, a large database of written Italian containing about 380 million tokens [START_REF] Baroni | Introducing the "La Repubblica" corpus: A large, annotated, TEI(XML)-compliant corpus of newspaper italian[END_REF]).

Secondly, it is necessary to identify theoretically relevant supra-clausal units and to study how the distribution of sicuramente and certamente varies within them. Several models of semantic and pragmatic parsing of discourse have been proposed in the literature: Discourse Representation Theory [START_REF] Kamp | A theory of truth and semantic representation[END_REF][START_REF] Heim | The Semantics of Definite and Indefinite Noun Phrases[END_REF], Unified Linguistic Discourse Model [START_REF] Polanyi | A Formal Model of the Structure of Discourse[END_REF][START_REF] Polanyi | Proceedings of the ACL2004 Workshop on Discourse Annotation[END_REF]), Rhetorical Structure Theory [START_REF] Mann | Rhetorical Structure Theory: toward a functional theory of text organization[END_REF]Taboada & Mann 2006a, 2006b), just to mention a few. Our analysis does not aim at understanding whether the two adverbs under examination occur in a given pragmatic, semantic or thematic unit of discourse, but in precisely identifying their syntactic environment. For this reason we have not resorted to the above models. Rather, mainly building on Claire Blanche-Benveniste's seminal work [START_REF] Blanche-Benveniste | Des grilles pour le français parlé[END_REF][START_REF] Blanche-Benveniste | Le français parlé[END_REF], we have adopted and extended a syntax-based approach to discourse parsing. Such an approach identifies a new level of analysis, the configuration de discours or 'discourse configuration' roughly characterizable as the maintenance of a given predicate-argument-adjunct structure in discourse.

Discourse configurations

In order to define discourse configurations, we assume as a primitive what [START_REF] Blanche-Benveniste | Des grilles pour le français parlé[END_REF] call construction maximale, i.e. the abstract predicate-argument-adjunct structure, defined on a purely syntactic base, with no reference to the semantics of phrases. The abstract predicate-argumentadjunct structure is hardly ever fully realized in a single discourse sequence. More frequently, it is gradually built by means of repetitions, additions, rewordings, and other kinds of insistence on one or more of its positions. So, for example the predicate-argument-adjunct structure in (2) may be realized as in (3) as well as in (4):

(2) ADJ 1 -ARG 1 -PRE-ARG 2 (3) Forse chissà io ho scelto il momento sbagliato. A given predicate-argument-adjunct structure can also be instantiated more than once in discourse. For example, the spoken sequence in (5) features a repetition of the ADJ 1 -ARG 1 -PRE-ARG 2 structure, besides the multiple instantiations of the ARG 1 and ARG 2 positions:

(5) Praticamente per ogni tipo di gioco c'era un edificio specifico. Per esempio il circo serviva alle corse dei carri, l'anfiteatro alle lotte dei gladiatori, lo stadio per i giochi atletici.

'In practice, for every kind of game there was a specific building. For example the circus was for the chariot races, the amphitheatre for the gladiator fights, the stadium for athletic games.' (from Bonvino 2005: 61) We can provisionally define a discourse configuration as the chunk made up of the sequence that instantiates or repeats a predicate-argument-adjunct structure.

Given this definition, it is clear that discourse configurations can be more or less extended: whereas the discourse configurations in (3) and ( 4) are limited to a clause, the discourse configuration in (5) spans an entire text. What is more, discourse configurations can sometimes be the result of dialogical cooperation between two or more speakers. We have an example in (6):

(6) A: Luigi mi guarda sempre con amore.

B: o con compassione!

A: 'Luigi always looks at me with love.' B: 'or with compassion!' We can thus define a 'discourse configuration' (henceforth DC) as the monological or dialogical chunk made up of the sequence that instantiates or repeats a predicate-argument-adjunct structure.

According to this definition, two different DCs can be recognized in ( 7). The first one twice instantiates the structure ARG 1 -PRE-ARG 2 , the second one twice instantiates the structure ARG 1 -ADJ 1 -PRE.

(7) Gli ho detto che è l'ultimo della lista, che è insopportabile, gli ho detto basta. Lui comunque va all'attacco, lui comunque si appassiona. The DCs from (3) through ( 7) are represented in 'grids', i.e. through a rewriting procedure elaborated mainly by [START_REF] Blanche-Benveniste | Des grilles pour le français parlé[END_REF], [START_REF] Bilger | Contribution à l'analyse en grille[END_REF], [START_REF] Blanche-Benveniste | Le français parlé[END_REF], [START_REF] Bilger | Transcription de l'oral et interprétation: illustration de quelques difficultés[END_REF], [START_REF] Duvallon | Le pronom anaphorique et l'architecture de l'oral en finnois et en français[END_REF], and [START_REF] Bonvino | Le sujet postverbal en italien parlé: syntaxe, zones et intonation[END_REF] and Masini & Pietrandrea (submitted) for Italian. This rewriting procedure consists in a representation of the speech flow on a bi-dimensional plane and is constrained by three simple rules: (i) the horizontal axis of the plane should feature the sequence of the positions that define the predicate-argumentadjunct structure; (ii) the vertical axis should list all the actual realizations within each position; (iii) a left-to-right and top-down reading of the string contained in the grid should render the linear order of the represented chunk. 4 This representation highlights the fact that DCs can be described on the basis of their shape, i.e. on the basis of what we call their 'topological structure'. Such a topological structure can be described by referring to a number of 'topological patterns': lists of elements in the same position, repetitions of syntactic structures, chiastic elements shifting from a pre-verbal to a post-verbal position (or vice versa), dialogical completions and so on. 5 The body of research carried out on DCs has shown that certain topological structures regularly recur both in spoken [START_REF] Blanche-Benveniste | Le français parlé[END_REF][START_REF] Blanche-Benveniste | Approches de la langue parlée en français[END_REF] and in written language (Branca-Rosoff 1990). Interestingly for our purposes, it has been argued that certain topological patterns may have very abstract meanings [START_REF] Blanche-Benveniste | Répétitions de lexique et glissement vers la gauche[END_REF][START_REF] Bonvino | Le sujet postverbal en italien parlé: syntaxe, zones et intonation[END_REF][START_REF] Bonvino | Verso una tipologia delle costruzioni di discorso[END_REF]). It has also been shown that there are adverbs which are regularly associated with certain DCs characterized by specific topological patterns and that they occupy specific positions within those patterns (Bonvino et al. 2007;[START_REF] Pietrandrea | The grammatical nature of some epistemic evidential adverbs and adverbial constructions in spoken Italian[END_REF]Masini & Pietrandrea in preparation). The analysis of the composition of the meaning of these adverbs with the meaning of the topological patterns with which they are associated has provided some valuable insights for a semantic definition of the adverbs in question.

Using DCs in the analysis of adverbs therefore constitutes a promising methodological approach towards:

• a syntactic parsing of discourse and the consequent identification of the relevant units of analysis, even if dialogically built; • the univocal identification of the position occupied by the adverb within the unit of analysis; • the analysis of the semantic contribution of the adverb to the overall constructional meaning of the DC.

Such a methodology therefore appears particularly suitable for our purposes. A caveat should be mentioned, however. Very frequently certamente and sicuramente are not integrated within the predicate-argument-adjunct structure.

They often modify nominal utterances, as in ( 8) and ( 9); they often constitute holophrastic utterances, as in ( 10) and ( 11):

(8) Certamente no. An extension of the notion of discourse configuration is therefore required.

Macro-syntax and macro-syntactic discourse configurations

The dependency relations internal to the predicate-argument-adjunct structure are not the only kind of relations that obtain within utterances. Many scholars [START_REF] Blanche-Benveniste | Le français parlé[END_REF][START_REF] Berrendonner | Pour une macro-syntaxe[END_REF][START_REF] Cresti | Corpus di italiano parlato[END_REF]Andersen & Nølke 2002) have worked out a description of a new level of syntactic structure, the so-called macro-syntax. At this level, every utterance can be analyzed into one or more prosodically marked information units fulfilling different informational functions.

The central indispensable information unit is the so-called NUCLEUS, the 'core' of the utterance, which is a potentially autonomous unit that confers to the utterance the illocutionary force of for example an assertion, a question, an exclamation, or an order [START_REF] Cresti | Corpus di italiano parlato[END_REF]). To give an example, in (12B), the unit 'John has come back' is the only prosodic unit endowed with an autonomous illocutionary force; it could be recognized as an assertion even if uttered in isolation. It can therefore be easily identified as the NUCLEUS of the utterance. Other macro-syntactic units, lacking illocutionary force, are recognized and classified by macro-syntacticians according to their position with respect to the NUCLEUS. We will focus our attention on macro-syntactic PREFIXES and macrosyntactic SUFFIXES.

A macro-syntactic PREFIX is the prosodic unit preceding the NUCLEUS. This unit can fulfil various functions, such as introducing the NUCLEUS [START_REF] Muller | Schèmes syntaxiques dans les énoncés longs : où commence la macro-syntaxe?[END_REF], providing a stance on it or establishing the field of application of what is predicated in the NUCLEUS [START_REF] Blanche-Benveniste | Le français parlé[END_REF]. In (12B), for example, the PREFIX can be identified with the unit as expected. This unit could not be attributed an illocutionary force if uttered in isolation. It merely serves to provide a stance on the NUCLEUS John has come back.

A macro-syntactic SUFFIX is the prosodic unit following the NUCLEUS. This unit can be occupied by adverbial propositions, appositions and afterthoughts, usually uttered with a flat intonational profile [START_REF] Blanche-Benveniste | Le français parlé[END_REF][START_REF] Cresti | Corpus di italiano parlato[END_REF]. In (8) the SUFFIX can be identified with the unit yesterday, which is uttered after a pause, lacks illocutionary autonomy and expresses an afterthought.

To sum up, building on [START_REF] Cresti | Corpus di italiano parlato[END_REF], [START_REF] Blanche-Benveniste | Le français parlé[END_REF] and Blanche-Benveniste (2002), we suggest that, independently of its syntactic structure, every utterance realizes a 'macro-syntactic structure', i.e. a sequence of macro-syntactic units, centered around one and the same NUCLEUS and therefore endowed with a unitary illocutionary force.

On this basis, we propose that the discourse configurations we have already partially characterized in §4.1 should be centered not only around a predicateargument-adjunct structure, but also around a macro-syntactic structure. Thus, two different macro-syntactic discourse configurations can be recognized in ( 13), the first one instantiating the macro-syntactic structure PREFIX-NUCLEUS, the second one the structure NUCLEUS-SUFFIX:

(13) Luigi verrà, Mario non ci sarà e gli altri non so. Non chiedermi altro per favore. Just like DCs, macro-syntactic discourse configurations can either be monologically constructed by the speaker or result from the dialogical cooperation between two or more speakers. We can thus define a 'macro-syntactic discourse configuration' (henceforth MDC) as the monological or dialogical chunk made up of the sequence that instantiates or repeats a macro-syntactic structure.

Since certamente and sicuramente are often not integrated within clausal syntax, we will adopt MDCs as the units of analysis relevant for our research. It must be said that, as expected, given the quasi-synonymy of certamente and sicuramente, we have found that the two adverbs are frequently associated with the same MDCs. Nevertheless, we have also found some MDCs that licence one of the two adverbs and clash with the other. To put it in another way, we have found some differences in the distributional constraints that certamente and sicuramente are subject to at the level of MDCs. According to our initial distributional hypothesis, these differences may tell us something about the semantic differences between the two adverbs. These differences are therefore the focus of our analysis. In this sequence, speaker A utters a NUCLEUS-line1: non le scriveva 'he couldn't write them down'. This nucleus is literally repeated in NUCLEUS-line2 by speaker B, who adds to his repetition the adverb certamente. This adverb is uttered after a pause: it therefore constitutes an autonomous information unit. This information unit is endowed with an autonomous illocutionary force. In other words it could be interpreted as a confirmative assertion even if uttered in isolation. As such it is to be considered as a third nucleus having the illocutionary force of a confirmative assertion. The sequence ( 14) therefore constitutes a MDC that can be represented as follows:

Certamente

5

(14') As shown in ( 15) and ( 16) the repetition of the NUCLEUS uttered by the first speaker may also be non literal. In (15) for example, speaker B says: anche per gli studenti 'also for the students' (NUCLEUS-line3), speaker A repeats and alters this to: anche da parte degli studenti 'also of the students' (NUCLEUS-line3). In (16) speaker B says: è di commerciabilità 'it is a matter of sellability' (NUCLEUS-line3), and A repeats and expands: è di commerciabilità del bene 'it is a matter of the sellability of the goods' (NUCLEUS-line5). Examples ( 15) and ( 16) also show that certamente can not only follow, but also precede, the repetition of what has been said by the previous speaker.

(15) A: Ci sarà un problema di riadattamento. B: non soltanto per i professori. Anche per gli studenti. A: Certamente. Anche da parte degli studenti.

A: 'There will be a problem of readaptation.' B: 'Not only for the professors, also for the students In these MDCs, certamente marks the speaker's strong commitment to what has been said by his interlocutor. This meaning is the result of the composition of the meaning of certamente with the meaning inherent in the topological structure that characterizes (14'), ( 15) and ( 16). MDCs such as (14'), ( 15) and ( 16) are all characterized by a dialogical list of NUCLEI, that is by a list of NUCLEI cooperatively built by two or more speakers. One of the elements of such a list is realized by a nucleus in which the speaker (almost) literally repeats the content of another NUCLEUS previously uttered by his interlocutor. Such a repetition has per se the function of marking a commitment to the truth of what has been said by another. Certamente fulfils the function of indicating that this commitment is strong. 6 The fact that certamente marks a strong commitment, however, is not sufficient to explain the possibility of its use in these MDCs. Another marker of strong commitment, such as sicuramente, cannot, in fact, fulfil the same function: if used within the MDC in question it would clash. A sequence like (17), for example, is unacceptable:

(17) A: Le maiuscole non le scriveva.

B: *Non le scriveva, sicuramente.

To sum up, certamente, unlike sicuramente, can realize a NUCLEUS either preceding or following another NUCLEUS in which the speaker literally (or almost literally) repeats the content of a NUCLEUS uttered by his interlocutor. In this MDC, certamente marks the strong commitment of the speaker to the truth of what has been said by his interlocutor.

NUCLEUS position in monological polyphonic lists of NUCLEI

Certamente can also occur in monological MDCs characterized by lists of NUCLEI. In these MDCs certamente realizes a confirmative NUCLEUS, which follows another NUCLEUS that expresses the point of view of a discursive voice other than the speaker. I will call such contexts 'monological polyphonic lists of NUCLEI': they are monological because they are uttered by only one speaker, they are polyphonic because they express the point of view of a discursive voice other than the speaker. Let us examine example (18):

(18) Abbiamo commesso degli errori. Certamente. E però abbiamo vinto. The speaker utters a NUCLEUS-line1 abbiamo commesso degli errori 'we made some mistakes', immediately followed by a NUCLEUS-line2 realized by certamente, which has the illocutionary force of a confirmation. A NUCLEUS-line3 follows, which is introduced by an adversative PREFIX-line3. As for the first two lines, this MDC recalls the MDC described in §5.1. The only difference is that the NUCLEUS preceding certamente (NUCLEUS-line1) is not the actual dialogical repetition of what has been said by someone else. However it does polyphonically represent the point of view of a discursive voice other than the speaker. The presence of certamente in NUCLEUS-line2 in fact imposes a reinterpretation of the content of NUCLEUS-line1 in which this content cannot be considered as the speaker's own point of view, but should be interpreted as a report of what has been said (or may have been said) by another unmentioned discursive voice. Uttering certamente the speaker does two things: he strongly commits to the truth of what is said in NUCLEUS-line1 and he attributes NUCLEUS-line1 to another discursive voice. This polyphonic reinterpretation, together with the adversative PREFIX introducing the speaker's own point of view in NUCLEUS-line3, allows interpreting the overall MDC as a concessive construction [START_REF] Nølke | Polyphonie: théorie et terminologie[END_REF].

Interestingly, as we will see, sicuramente would clash with such a MDC. A sequence like (19), for example, is unacceptable:

(19) *Abbiamo commesso degli errori, sicuramente. E però abbiamo vinto.

PREFIX position in monological polyphonic lists of NUCLEI

The examples above suggest that certamente should be treated as a marker of agreement. However, the picture is more complex. Certamente in fact can also occur in MDCs in which it realizes a PREFIX introducing a NUCLEUS belonging to a list of at least two monological NUCLEI presenting the same syntactic structure. Let us examine example (20) below.

(20) Forse fu colpa degli insegnanti, che non seppero appassionarmi.

Certamente fu colpa mia, che non studiavo abbastanza.

'Maybe it was the fault of the teachers who could not stir passion in me.

Certainly it was my fault, as I did not [lit. 'who did not'] study enough.'

The MDC is made up of two repetitions of the macro-syntactic structure The fact that certamente occurs not only in contexts of agreement, but also in contexts where conflicting views are expressed, demonstrates that rather than a marker of strong agreement, certamente marks the presence of other discursive voices. In other terms, it is a polyphonic trigger. Interestingly, sicuramente can occur in a MDC such as that represented in (20') and ( 21), but without transforming the contrast between propositions into a contrast between discursive voices. For example in ( 22) the NUCLEUS 'it was the fault of the teachers' cannot be considered to express the point of view of another discursive voice, but has to be interpreted as reflecting the speaker's own point of view (see below). ( 22) Forse fu colpa degli insegnanti che non seppero appassionarmi.

Sicuramente fu colpa mia che non studiavo abbastanza.

Sicuramente indeed clashes with variants of the MDC in which the existence of another discursive voice is overtly mentioned -compare ( 23) with ( 24):

(23) ? Forse -come dicono -fu colpa degli insegnanti che non seppero appassionarmi. Sicuramente fu colpa mia che non studiavo abbastanza.

'Maybe -as they said -it was the fault of the teachers who could not stir passion in me. Surely it was my fault, as I did not study enough.'

(24) Forse -come dicono -fu colpa degli insegnanti che non seppero appassionarmi. Certamente fu colpa mia che non studiavo abbastanza.

'Maybe -as they said -it was the fault of the teachers who could not stir passion in me. Certainly it was my fault, as I did not study enough.'

To sum up, certamente can realize a PREFIX introducing a NUCLEUS belonging to a list of two contrasting monological NUCLEI exhibiting the same syntactic structure. In this MDC certamente fulfils two functions. It marks the speaker's strong commitment to the content of the NUCLEUS it introduces and it attributes the point of view expressed in the other NUCLEUS to another discursive voice. The overall effect is a contrast between the speaker's point of view and that of the other discursive voice. When sicuramente occurs in such a MDC, the contrast marked by the repetition of the syntactic structure is naturally still there.

However, sicuramente marks it as a contrast of alternative possible epistemic values given by the same discursive voice, rather than a contrast between different discursive voices. This point will be made clearer in § 6.

The reportive value

The analysis conducted so far indicates that certamente should be understood as a trigger of polyphony. The examples from ( 25) to (28) confirm this intuition. In (25) certamente marks the fact that the certainty of the propositional content is based on a reported source rather than on the speaker's personal beliefs. By contrast, sicuramente in (26) marks the fact that the certainty of the propositional content is based on the speaker's beliefs.

(25) A New York vedranno i loro colleghi tra i quali certamente il procuratore Giuliani e il suo assistente David Denton.

'In New York they will see their colleagues, among whom certainly Attorney General Giuliani and his assistant David Denton.'

(26) A New York vedranno i loro colleghi tra i quali sicuramente il procuratore Giuliani e il suo assistente David Denton.

'In New York they will see their colleagues, among whom certainly [lit. surely] Attorney General Giuliani and his assistant David Denton.'

The explicit mention of a reported source (the press release) is compatible with certamente, but not with sicuramente. This is proved by the tests in ( 27) and ( 28).

( 27) Secondo il dispaccio, a New York vedranno i loro colleghi tra i quali certamente il procuratore Giuliani e il suo assistente David Denton.

On the other hand the explicit mention of the speaker's personal belief is compatible with sicuramente (29), but not with certamente (30):

(29) ? Secondo me, a New York vedranno i loro colleghi tra i quali certamente il procuratore Giuliani e il suo assistente David Denton.

'In my opinion, in New York they will see their colleagues, among whom certainly Attorney General Giuliani and his assistant David Denton.'

(30) Secondo me, a New York vedranno i loro colleghi tra i quali sicuramente il procuratore Giuliani e il suo assistente David Denton.

'In my opinion, in New York they will see their colleagues, among whom certainly [lit. surely] Attorney General Giuliani and his assistant David Denton.'

Certamente thus has a reportive meaning, which is not encoded in sicuramente.

A polyphonic trigger

To sum up this section, certamente can occur in three different polyphonic MDCs: it can realize a NUCLEUS position in dialogical lists of NUCLEI, it can realize a NUCLEUS position in monological polyphonic lists of NUCLEI and it can realize a PREFIX introducing a NUCLEUS that belongs to a monological polyphonic lists of NUCLEI. Sicuramente clashes with all these MDCs.

Furthermore, in some contexts certamente can acquire a reportive value, while sicuramente cannot. This provides enough evidence to maintain that certamente, unlike sicuramente, is not only a marker of strong commitment, but also a polyphonic trigger: it both marks the strong commitment of the speaker to the propositional content in its scope and it attributes that content to a discursive voice other than the speaker. In (31) the speaker utters a NUCLEUS-line1 containing the assertion dall'anno prossimo sarà aiutato 'starting next year he will be helped'. This assertion is judged as certain in the next NUCLEUS-line2, represented by sicuramente. In (32), answering the question asked by A, speaker B utters three different NUCLEI: Non lo so 'I don't know' (NUCLEUS-line2), forse 'maybe' (NUCLEUS-line3) and ma sì 'but yes' (NUCLEUS-line4). He then concludes with a fourth NUCLEUS-line5 represented by sicuramente that serves to mark finally as certain an answer that had been put forward as not certain in the previous NUCLEI.

Sicuramente

Final position in monological monophonic lists of NUCLEI

It should be noted that in these MDCs the commitment to the judgment progresses at each NUCLEUS. It always culminates with sicuramente occupying the final NUCLEUS position, which marks a commitment to the certainty of the judgment.

The fact that sicuramente marks a strong commitment is not sufficient to explain its occurrence in such a MDC. Indeed a marker of strong commitment such as certamente would be unsuitable in the same context. A sequence like (33), for example, is unacceptable:

(33) A: Ci servirà il lettino?

B: *Non lo so. Forse. Ma sì. Certamente.

To sum up, sicuramente, unlike certamente, can occupy the final NUCLEUS position in monophonic monological MDCs characterized by lists of NUCLEI. In these MDCs, the commitment to the certainty of the judgment progresses at each NUCLEUS. Sicuramente, in final NUCLEUS position, expresses the fact that having explored a list of alternative weaker judgments, the speaker finally reaches a commitment to the certainty of his own judgment.

Syntactic focus position

The distributional behaviour of sicuramente distinguishes this adverb from many other phrasal adverbs. Sicuramente, in fact, can occur in the syntactic focus position, which in Italian is the sentence final position [START_REF] Cinque | A Null Theory of Phrase and Compound Stress[END_REF] It is widely acknowledged that every focalization evokes a paradigm of alternative options (Nølke 2001: 92;[START_REF] Rooth | A theory of focus interpretation[END_REF]). It may be argued therefore that the presence of sicuramente in focus position triggers a contrast with other weaker, not explicitly expressed judgments with scope on the same propositional content. For example, the presence of sicuramente in focus position in (36), not only marks the fact that the speaker is strongly committed to what he says, but it also evokes a contrast with a paradigm of other possible judgments, like 'perhaps I will do that' or 'it is unlikely that I will do that'.

It is clear that the mechanism of excluding alternative judgments that operates in this clausal construction is the same we have seen in the discourse configuration examined in §6.1. The only difference is that the mechanism of exclusion, which is vertically built in discourse, is horizontally arranged at the clausal level.

As already pointed out in (1), certamente cannot occur in syntactic focus position. The sequence in (37), for example, is ungrammatical:

(37) * Luigi è venuto certamente.

'Luigi has come back certainly.'

To sum up, sicuramente, unlike certamente, can occur in syntactic focus position. In this construction it marks a strong commitment to the truth of the propositional content and at the same time it triggers a contrast with other weaker, not explicitly expressed judgments with scope on the same propositional content.

6.3

The type PREFIX -[sicuramente] NUCLEUS An instantiation of the construction described in the previous section is the type PREFIX -[sicuramente] NUCLEUS exemplified in utterances ( 38) and ( 39).

( The construction PREFIX-[sicuramente] NUCLEUS is thus made up of two elements, each evoking a paradigm of alternative options: on the one hand the presence of a focalized sicuramente in the NUCLEUS position evokes a paradigm of other possible judgments (see §6.2); on the other hand a contrastive topic in the PREFIX serves the purpose of calling to mind a paradigm of alternative objects of the judgment. The result is the expression of a restricted commitment of the speaker. The speaker says that something is sure, but saying that evokes the fact there are many other things which are much less sure. He thereby restricts his commitment to the object described in the prefix. Example (40) shows that such a function cannot be fulfilled by certamente, which is not compatible with paradigms of alternative judgments and which therefore cannot occur in such a construction: (40) A: Chi viene? B: ? Beh, l'Anna ci sarà. La Patrizia, adesso sentirò. Dema e Gigi, certamente.

To sum up, sicuramente, unlike certamente, can occur in the construction PREFIX-[sicuramente] NUCLEUS , in which sicuramente realizes a focalized NUCLEUS position, introduced by a contrastively focalized PREFIX. In this construction sicuramente expresses a strong commitment limited to the truth of the object in the PREFIX and evoking other objects to whose truth the speaker is not committed.

Triggering a paradigm of alternative judgments

To sum up this section, sicuramente can occur in three monophonic MDCs that realize or evoke paradigms of alternative judgments: it can realize the final position in monological monophonic lists of NUCLEI, it can occur in the syntactic focus position and in particular it can realize on its own a focalized NUCLEUS introduced by a contrastive PREFIX. Certamente is unsuitable in all these MDCs. This suggests that sicuramente should be understood as an adverb triggering a paradigm of alternative monophonic judgments, whereas certamente does not have such a function.

Conclusions

The data analyzed in this article show that, in spite of their near-synonymy, certamente and sicuramente select different distributional contexts at the level of discourse. The asymmetry of the syntactic distribution mirrors a semantic asymmetry. Certamente occurs in contexts that highlight its semantic nature as a polyphonic trigger. By contrast, sicuramente occurs in contexts that reveal its nature as a trigger of a paradigm of strictly internal alternative judgments. These results allow some of the questions asked in §2 to be answered. Firstly, in Italian there are at least two adverbs specialized in marking some of the discursive and dynamic aspects of commitment. Sicuramente, as a trigger of alternative judgments, serves the function of marking either the progression of commitment or its restriction to a limited domain of application. Certamente, as a polyphonic trigger, marks a commitment to the truth of a content that is expressed in agreement or in opposition to other discursive voices.

Secondly, the encoding of the more discursive and dynamic aspects of commitment takes place, at least in this case, not at the morphological or at the syntactic level, but at the discourse level. Indeed, it is conveyed by the constructional composition of the lexical meaning of the two adverbs with the meaning of the discourse structures with which they are associated.

Open questions: toward a redefinition of epistemic modality.

A third question was raised in §2. Are the markers expressing the more discursive and dynamic aspects of commitment grammatical or lexical? At first glance one would be tempted to answer without hesitation that they are adverbs and therefore lexical markers. Nevertheless another interpretation is possible.

The fact that the two adverbs are regularly associated with MDCs characterized by well-defined topological structures could be interpreted as a reduction of their syntagmatic autonomy. If we accept that 'grammaticalization detracts from autonomy' [START_REF] Lehmann | Grammaticalization: synchronic variation and diachronic change[END_REF], a weak form of incipient grammaticalization could be postulated for these forms. The exploration of such a hypothesis goes beyond the scope of the present paper, so the question of the grammatical nature of the dynamic and discursive aspects of commitment will be addressed in future research. Nevertheless, it is clear that the hypothesis that some discursive and dynamic aspects of commitment may be grammaticalized at least to a certain extent paves the way for a redefinition of epistemic modality as the grammatical category that not only expresses, but also constructs the commitment of the speaker in discourse.

pietrand@uniroma3.it Notes 1 The most classical example provided in the literature to show that utterances do signal the layering of discursive voices expressing different points of view is the following:

(a) This wall is not white Two different voices and two different points of view coexist within this utterance. The first voice coincides with a speaker who expresses his point of view: 'the wall is not white'. The use of the negation evokes another, not explicitly quoted, discursive voice that has expressed the point of view 'the wall is white'. 2 There are some marginal exceptions to this generalization. Some speakers, for example, would accept that certamente could occur in this position in some futural contexts. For this reason, example (1f) has been marked with a question mark rather than an asterisk. 3 See below ( §4.2) for a definition of macro-syntax. 4 The translations provided in the grids are deliberately as literal as possible in order to facilitate the grid representation. 5 For example, the DC in ( 5) is characterized by two lists of arguments in the ARG1 and ARG2 positions, a repetition of a syntactic structure (line 1 and line 2) and a chiasmus between the first two realizations of the ARG1 and ARG2 positions. The pre-verbal hyperonym in ARG1-line1 position per ogni tipo di gioco 'for every kind of game' is exemplified by a post-verbal hyponym in ARG2-line2 alle corse dei carri 'for the chariot races', whereas the post-verbal hyperonym in ARG2-line1 position un edificio specifico 'a specific building' is exemplified by a pre-verbal hyponym in ARG1-line2 il circo 'the circus'. (Bonvino 2005: 61). 6 Interestingly, the relative position of certamente with respect to the nucleus in which the speaker repeats what has been said by someone else is not indifferent. MDCs such as (14'), in which certamente follows the repetition, may acquire concessive overtones. MDCs such as ( 15) and ( 16), where certamente precedes the repetition cannot acquire such an overtone. 7 The grid representation of (20') displays not only the macro-syntactic structure of the MDC, but also its predicate-argument-adjunct structure. The reason for this representational choice lies in the fact that, as will be made clearer later, the repetition of the predicate-argument-adjunct structure conveys per se part of the overall meaning of the MDC.

( 1 )

 1 (a) Sicuramente Luigi è venuto. (b) Certamente Luigi è venuto. (c) Luigi sicuramente è venuto. (d) Luigi certamente è venuto. (e) Luigi è venuto sicuramente. (f) ? Luigi è venuto certamente. (g) Luigi è venuto, certamente.

  (12) A: What happened? B: [As expected] PREFIX [John has come back] NUCLEUS [yesterday] SUFFFIX .

  .1 NUCLEUS position in dialogical lists of NUCLEI Certamente can occur in dialogical MDCs characterized by lists of nuclei. In these MDCs certamente realizes a confirmative NUCLEUS that immediately precedes or follows a NUCLEUS in which the speaker literally (or almost literally) repeats the content of a NUCLEUS uttered by his interlocutor.

	Let us consider
	(14):
	(14) A: Le maiuscole non le scriveva.

B: Non le scriveva. Certamente. A: 'Capital letters he couldn't write down.' B: 'He couldn't. Sure [lit. certainly].'

  .' A: 'Of course [lit. certainly]. Also of the students.'

		1	A:	ci sarà un problema di riadattamento
				'there will be a problem of readaptation'
		2	B:	non soltanto per i professori
				'not only for the professors'
		3		anche per gli studenti
				'also for the students'
		4	A:	certamente
				'certainly'
		5		anche da parte degli studenti
				'also of the students'
				NUCLEUS
	1 A:	ma questo	non è un problema di locazione
			'but this one'	'is not a problem of location'
	2	B:		certo
				'of course'
	3		caso mai	è di commerciabilità
			'rather'	'it is a matter of sellability'
	4	A:		certamente
				certainly
	5		caso mai	è di commerciabilità del bene
			'rather'	'it is a matter of the sellability of the goods'
			PREFIX	NUCLEUS

(16) A: Ma questo non è un problema di locazione.

B: Certo. Caso mai è di commerciabilità. A: Certamente. Caso mai è di commerciabilità del bene.

A: 'but this is not matter of location.' B: 'of course! Rather it is matter of sellability.' A: 'sure [lit. certainly]! Rather it is matter of the sellability of the goods.'

  PREFIX-NUCLEUS-SUFFIX. The PREFIX position is realized in one case by the adverb forse and in the other case by certamente. The NUCLEUS position is realized in one case by the predicate fu colpa degli insegnanti 'it was the fault of the teachers' and in the other case, by the predicate fu colpa mia 'it was my fault'.In this MDC certamente does not indicate strong agreement, but a contrast between the point of view of the speaker 'it was my fault' (NUCLEUS-line2) and the point of view of another discursive voice 'it was the fault of the teachers' (NUCLEUS-line1). The overall meaning of this MDC results from the composition of the meaning of certamente with the meaning inherent in the

	ARG-ADJ is fully instantiated twice in this MDC. The MDC in (20), therefore,
	can be represented as in (20'): 7
	(20')
	1 forse	fu colpa	degli insegnanti	che non seppero appassionarmi
	'maybe'	'it was the fault'	'of the teachers'	'who could not stir passion in me'
	2 certamente	fu colpa	mia		che non studiavo abbastanza
	'certainly'	'it was the fault'	'of mine'		'who did not study enough'
	ADJ 1	PRE	ARG 1		ADJ 2
	PREFIX	NUCLEUS			SUFFIX
		1	io	mi sbaglierò
			'I'	'might be wrong'
		2 ma certamente	tu	non sei nel giusto
		'but certainly'	'you'	'are not right'
			ARG 1 PRE
		PREFIX	NUCLEUS
					The SUFFIX
	position is realized by the two appositive relative clauses che non seppero
	appassionarmi 'who could not stir passion in me' and che non studiavo
	abbastanza 'who did not study enough'. Interestingly, not only the macro-
	syntactic structure, but also the predicate-adjunct-argument structure ADJ-PRE-

topological structure of (20'). The MDC in (20') is characterized by a repetition of the same predicate-argument-adjunct structure instantiated by (at least partially) different lexical material. As shown by

[START_REF] Blanche-Benveniste | Approches de la langue parlée en français[END_REF]

, this kind of repetition encodes a contrast per se. The presence of certamente in this discourse configuration turns the contrast between two different propositions into a contrast between two different discursive voices. Just as in the MDC described in §5.2, certamente fulfils two functions. It both marks the speaker's strong commitment to the truth of the content of NUCLEUS-line2 and it attributes the point of view of NUCLEUS-line1 to a discursive voice other than the speaker. An analogous example is (21):

(21) Io mi sbaglierò, ma certamente tu non sei nel giusto.

'I might be wrong. But you are certainly not right.'

  Sicuramente can occupy the final position in monological lists of NUCLEI. Let us consider examples (31) and (32).

	1		dall'anno prossimo sarà aiutato
			'starting next year he will be helped'
	2		sicuramente
			'surely'
			NUCLEUS
	(32) A: Ci servirà il lettino?
	A: 'Do we need the child's bed?'
	B: 'I do not know. Maybe. But yes. Sure [lit. surely].'
	1	A: ci servirà il lettino?
			'do we need the child's bed?'
	2	B:	non lo so
			'I don't know'
	3		forse
			'maybe'
	4		ma sì
			'but yes'
	5		sicuramente
			'surely'
			NUCLEUS

(31) Dall'anno prossimo sarà aiutato. Sicuramente.

'Starting next year he will be helped. It is sure [lit. surely].' B: Non lo so. Forse. Ma sì. Sicuramente.

  38) A: Il fatto che ci sono delle imagini, che ci sono delle cose, non ti aiuta a capire la parola meggioremente che in un testo?

		(39) A: Chi viene?
			B: Beh, l'Anna ci sarà. La Patrizia adesso sentirò. Dema e Gigi,
			sicuramente!
			A: 'Who is coming?'
			B: 'Well, Anna will be there. Patrizia, I will call her now. Dema and Gigi for
			sure [lit. Dema and Gigi surely].'
			1 A:		chi viene?
						'who is coming?'
			2	B:	beh	l'Anna	ci sarà
					'well'	'Anna'	'will be there'
			3			la Patrizia	adesso sentirò
						'Patrizia'	'I will call her now'
			4			Dema e Gigi	sicuramente
						'Dema and Gigi'	'surely'
						PREFIX	NUCLEUS
	In this construction sicuramente realizes a focalized NUCLEUS preceded by a
	1	A:	il fatto che ci sono delle immagini
			'the fact that there are images'
	2		che ci sono delle cose	non ti aiuta a capire la parola maggiormente
			'that there are things'	che in un testo?
						'doesn't it help you to understand a word
						better than in a text?'
	3	B:				sì
						'yes'
	4		quello			sicuramente
			'this'			'surely'
			PREFIX		NUCLEUS

B: Sì. Quello sicuramente.

A: 'Doesn't the fact that there are images, that there are things, help you to understand the word better than in a text?' B: 'Yes it does, definitely [lit. this surely].' PREFIX that indicates the domain of application of the judgment expressed by sicuramente. Such a PREFIX has the semantic, syntactic and prosodic features of what has been called in the literature a 'contrastive topic'

[START_REF] Kuno | Subject, theme, and the speaker's empathy. A re-examination of relativization phenomena[END_REF][START_REF] Büring | Topic[END_REF][START_REF] Frascarelli | Types of topics in German and Italian[END_REF][START_REF] Puglielli | Interfaces: the relation between structure and output[END_REF][START_REF] Mereu | Focus sul topic[END_REF]

, i.e. a topic that creates oppositional pairs with other topics. As such, this PREFIX evokes a paradigm of other objects to which the judgment sicuramente does not apply.

'According to the press release, in New York they will see their colleagues, among whom certainly Attorney General Giuliani and his assistant David Denton.' (28) ? Secondo il dispaccio, a New York vedranno i loro colleghi tra i quali sicuramente il procuratore Giuliani e il suo assistente David Denton.'According to the press release, in New York they will see their colleagues, among whom certainly [lit. surely] Attorney General Giuliani and his assistant David Denton.'