Right-headed verbal compounds (e.g. teleriscaldare ‘to supply district heating’, termovalorizzare ‘to extract thermal energy from waste’, videochiamare ‘to videocall’) are a construction arising from scientific and technical registers spreading into current Italian. Besides describing the characteristics and the origins of these verbs, the paper focuses on the conditions that may favor the emergence of a new lexeme-formation pattern. The theoretical framework of Construction Morphology provides an adequate explanation for the passage from the formation of a new kind of complex lexeme (through reanalysis or analogical extension) to the establishment of a productive lexeme-formation pattern, and it also allows a proper collocation to be given for compounding patterns whose head position differs from the canonical one.
A constructionist account of the emergence of a new lexeme-formation pattern: Italian right-headed verbal compounds
IACOBINI, CLAUDIO
2014
Abstract
Right-headed verbal compounds (e.g. teleriscaldare ‘to supply district heating’, termovalorizzare ‘to extract thermal energy from waste’, videochiamare ‘to videocall’) are a construction arising from scientific and technical registers spreading into current Italian. Besides describing the characteristics and the origins of these verbs, the paper focuses on the conditions that may favor the emergence of a new lexeme-formation pattern. The theoretical framework of Construction Morphology provides an adequate explanation for the passage from the formation of a new kind of complex lexeme (through reanalysis or analogical extension) to the establishment of a productive lexeme-formation pattern, and it also allows a proper collocation to be given for compounding patterns whose head position differs from the canonical one.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
