“Ir a + infinitivo” and its communicative potential

Abstract

Starting from the results of the Spanish-Italian corpus written by Sánchez Montero (1993), the present study deals with the temporal-aspectual verbal periphrasis and has the objective of clarifying, in a comparative-contrastive way, which forms the Italian language uses to reproduce the different meanings that the spanish periphrasis "ir a + infinitivo" can acquire according to the circumstances and the communicative needs. This research investigates the conceptual categories that underlie the aforementioned construction, reflecting on the opportunity to reinforce a comparative-contrastive inclination between languages for a conscious and contextually adequate control of the expressive code. Periphrases in general and “ir a + infinitivo” in particular are a cornerstone of the syntactic system, they have also crucial pragmatic implications: these structures reveal themselves as informatively powerful tools available to the speaker, as they can also significantly contribute to increase the efficiency and fluidity of interactions, giving the expressions specific characteristics, values and shades of meaning