Lessico e contesto: sulla diacronia di mica

This paper focuses on the origins of the Italian negative particle 'mica'. The data are from the Tesoro della Lingua italiana and the Letteratura Italiana Zanichelli. The results bear on three main issues: (i) the synchronic and diachronic properties of negation in a wider context; (ii) concepts such as 'given', 'new', 'inferrable', 'accessible' information and the whole dimension of 'givenness'; (iii) the pragmatic/textual conditions that allow marked forms of negation to gradually become unmarked and grammaticalized as standard negation. In this paper I frame the analysis against its general background and discuss some initial results.