Italian poi as a trigger of expressive presupposition

Abstract

This paper proposes an analysis of the discourseparticle (DiP) poi in the Italian as spoken in Vallecamonica, in the north of the country. The data discussed here show that the informal characterizations provided in the literature (e.g., Cognola & Cruschina 2021) are superfluous to capture the meanings of poi described in the paper. The import of the particle is, in fact, one of uncontroversiality and factuality, two concepts related to the notion of common ground management (Krifka 2008). Following Grosz (2020), I propose an analysis in terms of expressive presupposition to capture (i) the presuppositional content activated by poi and (ii) the doxastic dimension of the particle, which only relates to the speaker’s beliefs, rather than to the actual common ground.