Modalidad epistémica y adverbios de duda: el caso de ‘magari’ en italiano

Abstract

The aim of the present study is to provide a first classification of the many meanings and functions of the multifunctional Italian adverb magari to serve as a guide to its correct usage for learners of Italian as a foreign language, specifically Spanish speakers. Indeed, the current monolingual and bilingual lexical tools that have been researched do not seem to provide thorough coverage of all the expressive possibilities offered by the adverb magari at the discourse level. An analysis conducted of expressly collected examples has revealed some interesting facts. Firstly, of all the functions that the adverb can perform, the aletich modality, which is not mentioned in the dictionaries consulted, is actually the most frequently used, at least in oral communication, as demonstrated by corpus analyses as well. Secondly, the use of magari to introduce optatives in combination with a subjunctive verb – that is to say, its original function – does not appear in the analyzed corpora at all.