Zur Wiedergabe der Verbpartikel herum im Italienischen

This paper examines the German verb particle herum and problems regarding its translation into Italian. In particular, it focuses on the pre-verbal function of herum in those verb combinations where it is mainly productive and conveys a lexicalized meaning such as “unplanned”, or “without a precise aim”. When herum has this meaning, it does not really act on the semantics of the base verb in order to develop a completely new meaning. It functions instead as a lexical modifier that, according to the context-of-situation in which it is used, tends to characterise the action of the base verb in terms of “inconclusiveness”, or “repetition”, or “indefinite duration”. Referring to concrete examples taken from literary texts and their Italian translations, this paper aims to show that the main problems concern the semantic behaviour of the verb particle itself. Since it can indeed form a semantic-pragmatic interface, this behaviour cannot easily be understood and translated in a systematic way.