On the productivity of the Italian suffix -ista and the English -ist
This study compares the Italian suffix -ista with its English counterpart -ist
in terms of productivity. While in English -ist is often used to designate a person who devotes himself to some
science or branch of knowledge (linguist), or refers to an adherent of some creed, doctrine, or art
(idealist), Italian -ista has extended its use to new meanings (e.g. supporter of a
politician, an artist, etc.), and possible bases, from roots to phrases. Moreover, -ista has also extended its
applicability to recent loan words and abbreviations, thus becoming more frequent than -ist and often
corresponding to the -er suffix (e.g. shampooer vs. shampista) or nominal
compounds (e.g. taxi driver vs. tassista) in the formation of agent nouns. The present
contrastive (corpus-based and dictionary-based) analyses confirm that -ista is more productive than
-ist in terms of possible bases and varied meanings, which have entered the Italian lexicon and are available
for the formation of neologisms.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The methodology
- 3.The productivity of -ista vs. -ist
- 3.1Frequency
- 3.2Semantic coherence and extension of semantic meanings
- 3.3Availability
- 3.4Application to recent loan words and abbreviations
- 3.5Extension of possible bases from roots to phrases
- 4.The suffix -ist
- 4.1Structural properties
- 4.2Meanings
- 4.2.1The type economist
- 4.2.2The type anarchist
- 4.2.3The type dentist
- 4.2.4The type chorist
- 4.2.5The type linguist
- 5.The suffix -ista
- 5.1Structural properties
- 5.2Meanings
- 5.2.1The type anglista
- 5.2.2The type idealista
- 5.2.3The type barista
- 5.2.4The type sindacalista
- 5.2.5The type salutista
- 5.2.6The type tennista
- 5.2.7The type collezionista
- 5.2.8The type violinista
- 5.2.9The type futurista
- 5.2.10The type borsista
- 6.Derivatives in -ista and their corresponding English formations
- 6.1Corpus investigation: OPUS2 Italian viz-à-vis OPUS2 English
- 6.2
-er formations
- 6.3Nominal compounds
- 7.Conclusions
- Notes
-
References
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