EXPLORING POLYPRAGMATICALIZATION PATTERN: THE CASE OF ROMANIAN SPEECH VERBS A ZICE AND A SPUNE

Abstract

The article aims to illustrate the theoretical framework of polypragmaticalization, which refers to the process by which a lexical or grammatical form can give rise to multiple units with pragmatic and discourse–level meaning (Dostie 2001, 2004; Buchi 2004). As a case study, it examines the Romanian speech verbs a spune and a zice ‘to say’.
After outlining their syntactic and semantic properties – which reveal broadly similar behaviour – the article identifies several fundamental differences between the two lexemes. These distinctions are: (i) frequency of use (a zice was more common in Old Romanian, whereas a spune is more frequently used in contemporary Romanian), (ii) a broader and more varied semantic range (in favour of a zice), and (iii) a stronger tendency to occur in idiomatic or phraseological expressions (again, more strongly oriented toward the contextual discourse level, in the case of a zice).
These contrasts are likely due, in part, to the phonetic structure of a zice, which is shorter, easier to pronounce, and more etymologically transparent. More significantly, however, the two verbs differ in terms of subjectivity: a spune is perceived as more objective, while a zice tends to carry a subjective nuance. This subjectivity has played a key role in the development of a zice into a wide range of discourse and/or pragmatic markers, both in its original form and in derived expressions such as cică (< [se zi]ce + că) ‘it is said + that’, carevasăzică ‘that is to say’, știi ce zic ‘you know what I mean’, and others. Typologically, similar polypragmaticalization  processes – particularly the shift from speech or movement verbs to discourse and/or pragmatic markers – have been documented in various languages, such as Spanish or Min, a variety of the Chinese language (Chappell 2017; Ruiz-González 2021). For Romanian, relevant studies include Popa (2007), Barbu (2008a, b), Prelipcean (2015), and Botez Stănescu (2021).