Su alcuni presupposti e limiti linguistici della comicità

When humour is conveyed in language and produced by verbal means, its inherent formal limitations and possibilities are deeply bound up with language-specific structures. Thus, verbal humour cannot be translated without loss into another language – which is only one aspect of the more general (intersemiotic, interlinguistic, and intralinguistic) notion of untranslatability of verbal humour. This article analyses some humorous texts built upon language-specific properties, aiming to illustrate how the notion of ‘markedness’ can help understanding the cognitive mechanisms which are associated with humour.