Idiomatic Constructions in Italian
A Lexicon-Grammar approach
This study is devoted to the analysis of Italian idioms with either ordinary or support verbs (also called light verbs). The research focuses on the exhaustive description of idioms, and is based on their systematic classification according to the principles of the Lexicon-Grammar methodology developed by Maurice Gross (1975, 1979 and further). A thorough examination of the literature shows strong disagreement on the acceptability of some idiomatic constructions. For this reason, the Web was used as a corpus to verify judgments on the supposed ungrammatical constructions. This approach showed that idiomatic constructions which have always been considered ungrammatical are instead perfectly acceptable if contextualized. The results obtained include the following: passive is not a "special case" when it concerns idioms, and idiomatic constructions show the same complexity as non-idiomatic constructions.
[Lingvisticæ Investigationes Supplementa, 31] 2014. vi, 259 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 14 November 2014
Published online on 14 November 2014
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
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Introduction | pp. 1–4
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Chapter 1. Ambiguity and creativity | pp. 5–14
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Chapter 2. Compositionality and syntactic productivity | pp. 15–28
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Chapter 3. The Lexicon-Grammar of Italian idioms | pp. 29–36
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Chapter 4. Passive | pp. 37–50
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Chapter 5. Si-constructions | pp. 51–68
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Chapter 6. Adjectival passive | pp. 69–72
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Chapter 7. Subject idioms | pp. 73–84
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Chapter 8. Other syntactic constructions | pp. 85–88
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Chapter 9. Modification | pp. 89–98
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Chapter 10. Comparative constructions | pp. 99–112
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Chapter 11. Derived nominals and VC compounds | pp. 113–118
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Chapter 12. Nominalizations and passive | pp. 119–124
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Chapter 13. Idioms with support verbs | pp. 125–138
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Chapter 14. Natural language processing | pp. 139–146
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Conclusions | pp. 147–148
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References
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Annex 1. The passive of tirare | pp. 159–256
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Annex 2: Idioms and "body-parts" nouns | pp. 161–208
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Annex 3: Classification and notations | pp. 209–256
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Index | pp. 257–260
“In this work Vietri confronts current linguistic and psycholinguistic approaches to idioms with an extensive web-based empirical study of Italian idioms in the contexts of their actual usage. Her findings will be invaluable both to researchers in the cognitive sciences of language and to linguists interested in Italian grammar and the lexicon.”
Joan Bresnan
“Prof. Vietri's study demonstrates the continuity between idiomatic and non-idiomatic expressions: her extensive collection of corpus examples shows that semantic opacity, syntactic flexibility, and lexical specificity are scalar properties. Hence, contrary to what has been assumed in most work in theoretical syntax, idioms are not categorically different from other constructions. This book will be the definitive work on Italian idioms for years to come.”
Tom Wasow
“The basic assumption of this book is provocative: There is no essential distinction between idioms on the one hand and non-idiomatic constructions on the other. You can agree or disagree, but the data and the analyses presented in support of this assumption cannot be neglected.”
Giorgio Graffi
“[T]here is no doubt that it is the fruit of an exhaustive and in-depth analysis and represents an important contribution to Italian phraseology.”
Laura Pinnavaia, Università degli Studi di Milano, in International Journal of Lexicography, Vol. 28 No. 2 (2015)
“The book offers the reader a comprehensive view of the most significant recent research on idioms carried out both in linguistics and experimental psychology, and provides an exhaustive description of the linguistic model adopted and of Italian idioms with ordinary or support (or light verbs) backed up by an extensive web-based empirical study in the contexts of their actual usage, thus casting a new light on this complex linguistic phenomenon and its syntactic productivity.”
Johanna Monti, University of Napels, in Lingvisticæ Investigationes, Vol. 39:1 (2016)
Cited by (4)
Cited by four other publications
Kourtin, Asmaa, Asmaa Amzali, Mohammed Mourchid, Abdelaziz Mouloudi & Samir Mbarki
2020. The Automatic Generation of NooJ Dictionaries from Lexicon-Grammar Tables. In Formalizing Natural Languages with NooJ 2019 and Its Natural Language Processing Applications [Communications in Computer and Information Science, 1153], ► pp. 65 ff. 
Pelosi, Serena
2020. Semantically Oriented Idioms for Sentiment Analysis. A Linguistic Resource for the Italian Language. In Advanced Information Networking and Applications [Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 1151], ► pp. 1069 ff.
Monti, Johanna & Maria Pia di Buono
2019. PARSEME-It: an Italian corpus annotated with verbal multiword expressions. Italian Journal of Computational Linguistics 5:2 ► pp. 61 ff.
Elia, Annibale
2018. Introducción teórica a un léxico-gramática del español.. Cultura Latinoamericana Revista de estudios interculturales 28:2 ► pp. 210 ff.
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Subjects
Main BIC Subject
CF/2ADT: Linguistics/Italian
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General