Chapter 6
The morphosyntax of Italian ethnic adjectives
In this study, we address ethnic adjectives in Italian,
challenging the dichotomy between ‘thematic’ and ‘classificatory’ ethnic
adjectives recently posited by Alexiadou
& Stavrou (2011). Drawing upon the frameworks of Manzini & Savoia (2011a), Manzini & Franco (2016), Franco & Manzini (2017b), Savoia et al. (2017), and Franco et al. (2020), we present a
unified characterization of Italian ethnic adjectives. We propose that the
derivational morphemes shaping these adjectives serve as a derivational
counterpart of the genitive adposition “di” (of) (along with other types of
obliques), sharing a common predicational core and signature with them.
Furthermore, we suggest that the framework proposed for ethnic adjectives
can be broadly extended to relational adjectives in general.
Article outline
- 6.1Introductory remarks
- 6.2Background on ethnic adjectives
- 6.3Italian ethnic adjectives and how they are built: An overview
- 6.4A morphosyntactic analysis of ethnic adjectives in Italian
- 6.4.1The relational content of ‘ethnic’ suffixes
- 6.4.2Deverbal nominalization patterns
- 6.4.3A note on Agree (and the connection with Suffixaufnahme)
- 6.4.4The representation of qualifying possessive adjectives
- 6.5Conclusion
-
Notes