Corpus data and theoretical implications

With special reference to Italian V-N compounds

Davide Ricca | University of Turin

The chapter aims at showing the usefulness of quantitative, corpus-based investigations to get a better understanding of a word formation procedure, taking as a case study the Italian VN compounds found on a large newspaper corpus. Corpus data make it possible to compare the weight of the process with respect to competing derivational strategies, and to evaluate the relevance of tendential phonological and morphological restrictions. Moreover, the hapax data, being a powerful tool to distinguish empirically between production and lexicalization/storage, may offer a new insight into the long-debated issue of the output category of this word-formation rule. It is argued that while the Unitary Output Hypothesis may basically hold for the lexicalized items, it cannot be adequate to describe the formation procedure itself.

Published online: 28 April 2010
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.311.18ric

Cited by

Cited by 6 other publications

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NÃ³brega, Vitor A. & Shigeru Miyagawa

2015. The precedence of syntax in the rapid emergence of human language in evolution as defined by the integration hypothesis. Frontiers in Psychology 6

Pellegrini, Matteo & Davide Ricca

2019. An instance of productive overabundance: The plural of some Italian VN compounds. Word Structure 12:1 ► pp. 94 ff.

von Heusinger, Klaus & Christoph Schwarze

2013. Italian V+N compounds, inflectional features and conceptual structure. Morphology 23:3 ► pp. 325 ff.

Zonneveld, Wim

2014. Laurie Bauer, Rochelle Lieber & Ingo Plag, The Oxford reference guide to English morphology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. x + 691.. Journal of Linguistics 50:3 ► pp. 705 ff.

Štichauer, Pavel

2016. Verb-noun compounds in Italian from the 16th century onwards: an increasing exploitation of an available word-formation pattern. Morphology 26:2 ► pp. 109 ff.

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