Ways to 'save'

In contemporary Italian it is possible to find the preposition 'salvo' with two apparently contrasting meanings: ‘except’ and ‘provided’, ‘subject to’. That is, the same element can introduce a negative or a positive condition. Speakers are aware of this apparent ambiguity and consciously react to it, showing that the process has reached a diachronic tipping point. I try to reconstruct how this point was reached, and show that the exceptive use, which is nowadays prevalent, arose as an innovation in the diachronic development from Latin to Italian, whereas the ‘provided’ meaning combines a conservative semantics with an innovative form. The case of Italian 'salvo' is yet another witness to the theoretical and diachronic interest of exceptive constructions.