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Article published In:
Languages in Contrast
Vol. 20:1 (2020) ► pp.1–30

On the productivity of the Italian suffix -ista and the English -ist

ORCID logo | University of Pisa

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.

Keywords: Italian, English, suffix -ista , suffix -ist , productivity, 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
Published online: 14 January 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lic.18003.mat
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