Adverbials of Time and Place in Narrative Italian: Functional Analysis and Didactic implications

Abstract

This article examines the position of temporal and locative adverbials in Italian sentences from the perspective of functional sentence perspective (FSP), with particular attention to the principles of communicative dynamism. Based on a corpus of two Italian narrative texts (La solitudine dei numeri primi by Paolo Giordano and Lessico famigliare by Natalia Ginzburg), the analysis highlights how the syntactic placement of adverbials systematically reflects their semantic and pragmatic roles within the sentence structure. The study distinguishes between valency-bound and circumstantial adverbials, observing their typical positions and communicative functions. Initial positions often indicate thematic “scene” elements, while final positions frequently host rhematic “specifications”. The article also explores didactic implications for teaching Italian as a second language, especially to Slavic-speaking learners. Understanding how adverbials contribute to the information structure can help students improve both reading comprehension and text production and raise awareness of contrastive patterns between their native language and Italian.