Noun+Noun Compounds in Italian

Book excerpt: This book investigates one concrete compounding pattern in present-day Italian within a larger overview of Italian compounding. Various accounts and classifications of Noun + Noun combinations in Italian are reviewed, with special focus on the status of the lexical integrity hypothesis. The author sets out to propose an integrated approach to the Noun + Noun compounding pattern, rigorously based on large representative data sets that were extracted from the Italian web corpus ItWaC as both automatically and manually post-processed frequency lists. On the basis of such data, it is aimed to show the behaviour of various subtypes of Noun + Noun compounds. Starting out with the Bisetto-Scalise classification, the author carefully examines the status of coordinate compounds, ATAP compounds (i.e., the group comprising attributive and appositive structures) and subordinate compounds (comprising verbal-nexus and grounding compounds), discussing both theoretical and empirical implications of this classification scheme. Moreover, the original Bisetto-Scalise model is supplemented with further classification levels in order to capture specific compounding types such as relational (i.e. inherently trinominal) compounds. A major merit of the present study lies in the quantitative dimension of the data it deals with. In light of this data, the author emphasizes the gradient nature of the traditional dichotomy between syntax and compounding. The book will thus appeal not only to the linguists interested specifically in Italian word-formation, but also to a larger community of scholars who seek a more general view of the word-formation phenomena.