Parlare di niente. Appunti per un lessico dell’inesistente

Abstract

In contemporary linguistic studies, some classical topics of philosophical speculation, such as being and definition, have been revisited, attracting the interest of linguists for a different perspective of inquiry. In this article, we propose to extend this interest to an equally fascinating topic: niente (nothing, nothingness). Niente and many other lexemes (starting with the near-synonym nulla) form the lexicon of the non-existent, present in Italian as in all natural languages. To begin the work, we will discuss some metalinguistic descriptions.