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Historical Linguistics 2015: Selected papers from the 22nd International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Naples, 27-31 July 2015
Edited by Michela Cennamo and Claudia Fabrizio
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 348] 2019
► pp. 133–148

Chapter 7
Where do Italian -ata nouns come from?

Some new diachronic evidence on a Romance derivational pattern

The issue of the rise of -ata action nouns has been intensively discussed. Two major hypothesis have been put forward to account for the emergence of this derivational pattern: according to the first one, -ata action nouns are participial nouns; according to the second one, -ata formations must be rather traced back to Latin -tus (<*-tū-) action nouns, through their neuter -tum variants. In this papers, new evidence is provided in support of the latter position. In particular, it is shown that the emergence of -ata nouns, both in Italian and in other Romance languages, is due to an overall reshaping of the nominalizing strategies in Late Latin, and is connected to the loss of ground of the -tus (<*-tū-) suffix, originally devoted to nominalize intransitive (mainly stative and achievement) predicates. Beyond their etymological source, -ata nouns are also investigated with regard to their functional role in the domain of Italian nominalizations, especially from the point of view of the interplay between the Aktionsart etc. of the predicate and the semantic value of the resulting action noun.
Keywords: -ata nouns, Latin nominalizations, Italian action nouns, Romance languages, Aktionsart
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.At the beginning of the story: the -tus (<*-tū-) suffix and its receding
  • 3.Arguments supporting the -tus (<*-tū-) hypothesis
  • 4.The so-called Romanian “supine”
  • 5.The expansion of -ata nouns
  • 6.The “place in the system” of -ata nouns
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Aknowledgments
  • Abbreviations
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 September 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.348.07fab
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