I verbi procomplementari nella prosa letteraria tra diacronia e traduzione

The analysis of a corpus of fictional prose written by Italian authors and translated from other languages between 1800 and 2005 sheds light on the use of the verb-clitic constructions termed verbi procomplementari. Since this class of verbs is typically found in oral texts and lower registers, their frequency may be expected to increase during the 1900s, when literary language becomes increasingly influenced by the median (i.e. between formal and informal) register of Italian known as italiano dell’uso medio. Furthermore, according to the tenets of Translation Universals (in particular, normalization and the Unique Items Hypothesis), translators may be expected to avoid the use of what can be considered an unconventional linguistic trait. The survey illustrated in this article confirms the first hypothesis; however, the widespread presence of verbi procomplementari in translations shows that translators play an innovative role in the history of Italian fictional prose.