Italian Discourse Markers: The Case of Guarda te*

This paper offers a detailed analysis of the expression guarda te lit. ‘look you’ in regional Italian of Veneto. Firstly, we show that guarda te is a discourse marker that can have two distinct interpretations associated with different syntactic behaviors and prosodic contours. Secondly, we explain the evolution of guarda te as a discourse marker in terms of a process of syntacticization. In particular, we argue that guarda te has different interpretive and syntactic properties depending on the structural position it occupies in the clausal spine within the Speech Act layer above ForceP.