Bracketing paradoxes in Italian

0. Introduction

0.1 Bracketing in linguistics

0.2 Bracketing paradoxes

0.3 Aim of the work

0.4 Methodology

1. Prefixal relational adjectives

1.1 Aim of the chapter

1.2 Binarism in word formation

1.3 Parasynthesis

1.4 Prefix-suffix combination

1.5 Intermediate steps

1.6 A constructionist approach

1.7 The role of prefixes

1.8 The role of adjectives

1.9 Novel PRAs

1.10 Word Internal Anaphora

1.11 Transcategorization

1.12 False heads

1.13 Alternation

1.13.1 Phrasal constituents

1.13.2 Ambiguity

1.13.3 Postnominal position

1.13.4 Non-relational usages

1.13.5 Factorization

1.13.6 Specialised meaning

1.13.7 Language-specific factors

1.14 Processing issues

1.15 Conclusions

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2. Bracketing paradoxes in phrasal morphology

2.1 Aim of the chapter

2.2 Phrasal bracketing paradoxes

2.3 Language-specific factors

2.4 Phrases as lexical units

2.5 Semantic issues

2.6 Differences between NA and NPP constructions

2.7 Survey of phrasal nouns

2.7.1 Academic

2.7.2 Sport

2.7.3 Music

2.7.4 Locative/collective nouns

2.8 Adjectival phrasal BPs

2.8.1 Extension

2.8.2 Hyphenation

2.8.3 Factorization

2.8.4 APP costructions

2.9 Pragmatic constraints

2.10 A constructionist account

2.11 Processing Issues

2.12 Novel phrasal BPs

2.13 Conclusions

Final remarks

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0. Introduction

0.1 Bracketing in linguistics

Bracketing has the purpose of making the structure of a complex form explicit. Beit a syntactic or a morphological item, bracketing allows to represent the hierachicalconfiguration of its constituents, based both on linguistic analysis and on speakers'perception: expecially in morphology, occasionally the two plans suddenly divergebecause of a reanalysis operated by a speaker who interprets a complex word as derivedby different means than those which actually produced that result: famous is the case of[[hamburg]er] reinterpreted as [[ham][burger]].

In the domain of morphology, bracketing is a notational tool aiming at capturingthe internal complexity of words, but it is not cross-linguistically applicable:nonconcatenative languages, i.e. those whose word formation does not involve stringingmorphemes together, do not allow the recognition of single isolable units which unitarilycontribute to the derivation process and thus cannot receive a standard bracketing.Arabic, for instance, employs triconsonantal roots which are modified through theirvowel pattern, e.g. the root k-t-b derives in /kita:b/ 'book', /katab/ 'he wrote' etc.: it wouldnot be possible to bracket such derived words isolating their constituents.

0.2 Bracketing paradoxes

What are bracketing paradoxes? In "bracketable" languages, a number of expressionshave been labeled as paradoxical because for various reasons two incompatiblebracketing were assumed. This was often ascribable to the mismatch occurred betweentwo representational levels, namely morphosyntax and semantics (most of the times)or morphosyntax and phonology: let us consider the often-cited examplesantifebbrile 'antifever', trasformational grammarian and unhappier:

It. [anti[febbrile]] vs. [[antifebbr(e)]ile] 'antifever'[[trasformational] [grammarian]] vs. [[trasformational grammar]ian][un[happier]] vs. [[unhapp(y/i)]er]

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In [Prefix-Noun-Suffix]A relational adjectives like It. antifebbrile (Montermini2008:205), although the semantic instruction should lead to a [[Pre][N]][Suf] bracketing,the Noun-Suffix string is often identical to the adjective already available in the lexicon,even though the affix has scope over the complex base (whether attested or not).The expression transformational grammarian does not have the same morphosyntacticproperties of old grammarian, and two bracketings can be assumed, each meetingthe demands either of semantics (in [[trasformational grammar]ian] the relation withthe base transformational grammar is explicit) or of morphosyntax ([[trasformational][grammarian]] reflects the structure of an adjective-noun pair and the fact thatgrammarian is already established in the English lexicon).

The phonological restriction on the attachment of the English comparative suffix -er (which may attach to monosyllabic adjectives and a small class of bisyllabic ones) isnot compatible with the meaning of forms like unhappier, where the affixation of thebase (adding one or more syllables) does not prevent it from conforming to the standardphonological pattern.

0.3 Aim of the work

The present work will deal with two kinds of bracketing paradoxes in Italian, namelythose posed by prefixal relational adjectives (e.g. antifebbrile 'antifever') and phrasalconstructions (e.g. chitarrista elettrico 'electric guitarist'). An analysis of their propertieswill be carried out and an attempt will be made to explain their "paradoxical" nature.A critical assessment of the literature on bracketing paradoxes will help focusing thetheoretical puzzle and trying to define the limits of the phenomenon. The focus on Italiandata will offer a rather different perspective than the English-based traditional approach.Rather than considering bracketing paradoxes as a "bug" in linguistic theory, the presentwork will try to offer a contribution to the explanation of their natural occurrence ineveryday language.

Although the analysis of bracketing paradoxes in Italian will not be strongly theory-oriented, the assumptions encountered in the generative-transformational literature willbe generally discarded or ignored, and preference will be given to some tenets of theConstruction Grammar framework, expecially insightful with respect to the boundarybetween syntax and the lexicon (see chapter 2).

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0.4 Methodology

A methodological choice was drawing on data coming from the Web. As a verylarge source of linguistic data, the Web allows to tackle the problem of data sparseness,expecially in word formation studies where the focus of a study can be representedby rare patterns surrounding the core standard, and even hapax can provide interestinginsights and shed light on the rest of the data. As pointed out by Baroni & Ueyama(2006:209), "the Web contains a huge quantity of textual data for an ever increasingnumber of languages, it contains many different genres and specialized texts, and,of course, it is a "renewable" source of language, as long as people post new data".Whenever sufficient data was available, the present work drawn on web corpora (inaddition to La Repubblica corpus, Baroni et al. 2004).

Web corpora have their own advantages and disadvantages. Issues related to size(crucial in the light of Zipfian properties of language) and speed of the building processspeak in favour of them. Moreover, the Web contains spontaneous written texts whichdisplay characteristics of oral communication, and as its usage for archival purposesspreads, it is likely to contain more and more instances of traditional written genres.Major disadvantages are the "noise" (non-linguistic material, duplicated documents) andthe control over content. As noticed by Baroni & Ueyama (2006:210), it is not correctto refer to such problems as problems of Web corpora: "rather, they are problems oflarge corpora built in short time and with little resources, and they emerge quicklywith Web corpora since the Web makes it possible to build 'quick and dirty' largecorpora". The corpus used in the work is ItWaC (Baroni et al. 2009), a 2 billion wordcorpus constructed crawling all .it web domains. ItWaC was part-of-speech tagged withTreeTagger.

In order to enhance the understanding of how speakers cope with a range ofconstructions that lie at the heart of the phenomenon studied, native speakers wereoccasionally asked to provide judgments of sentences containing critical words orparaphrases for comprehension.

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1. Prefixal relational adjectives

1.1 Aim of the chapter

Bracketing paradoxes can be found at word level. This chapter will narrow its scopeby looking at prefixed relational adjectives: why can we find instances of bracketingparadoxes in this construction domain? How can we relate this to word formationtheory? Are there constraints at play on such complex words' coinage and usage?

Prefixal relational adjectives (henceforth PRAs) represent a productive wordformation pattern in which discrepancies arise between compositional meaning andmorphosyntactic structure. Let us consider the already mentioned Italianadjective antifebbrile: despite its semantic interpretation as a suffixally derivedcompound, the adjectival suffix is assumed to pertain to the nominal base rather thanto the complex form, on the basis of the independent attestation of the embeddedrelational adjective febbrile. Further arguments come from allomorphic adjectivation,which sistematically overrules large scope affixation, expected on a semantic basis.

it. antifebbrile lit. anti-fever.adjsuff 'antipyretic'[[anti] [febbr(e)]][ile][anti] [[febbr(e)][ile]]

it. prealfabetico lit. pre-alphabet.adjsuff 'prealphabetic'[[pre] [alfabet(o)]][ico][pre] [[alfabet(o)][ico]]

There has been little agreement on the morphological interpretation of the pattern, aswell as on the general assumption that a mismatch between compositional meaning andmorphosyntactic structure is at play. After reviewing some of the main theoretical issuesinvolved in the attempts to describe and explain the phenomenon, and comparing themwith corpus data from Italian, an account will be provided of some of the factors whichcan be held responsible for the pervasiveness of the pattern in World languages. A morein-depth corpus-based analysis of specific patterns in Italian will then try to answer somequestions on prefixed relational adjectives' usage contexts and alternation with similarconstructions.

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A few preliminary observations on binarism will outline a brief picture of bracketingcontroversies in the word formation domain.

1.2 Binarism in word formation

At least since Aronoff (1976) and Booij (1977) a binary approach is generallydefended in morphological processes. Complex words containing more than two co-occurring morphological elements are assumed to mirror binarism in syntacticstructures. Such words are thus expected to correspond to either a [A+[B+C]] or a[[A+B]+C] structure.The Binary Branching Hypothesis states, in fact, that morphological structuresare (regardless of their complexity) binary (see the figure below, taken from Scalise &Guevara 2005:163).

Such theoretical claim, however, cannot straightforwardly account for a range ofmorphological structures in which some evidence speaks against the possibility of a neatbinary analysis. Predictably, such unclear cases pose particular bracketing difficulties.

If one rejects the Separation Hypothesis (Beard 1995), claiming that morphosyntacticand morphophonological processes are two different analytic levels, and tries to outlinenon-mismatching representations, a range of phenomena appears in which assigningconstituency is problematic. Guevara (2006:3) offers a review of such word formationcases.

Rainer (1989) highlights that some kinds of coordinate compounds like anglo-italo-american cannot hold a binary representation. If we move from compounding toderivation, however, exceptions become rarer.

Synaffixes are conceived as complex affixal clusters (consisting of two or moreanalyzable formants operating simultaneously on the morphological base) which behaveas single units both from a functional and a semantic point of view. The best-known

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Italian synaffix is probably -istico, formally consisting of the two independent suffixes-ista and -ico. Let us consider the examples below:

pensionistico 'related to pensions' ?pensionistapaesaggistico 'related to landscape' ?paesaggistainfermieristico 'related to nurses' ?infermierista

Apparent intermediate formations in -ista are either unattested (°pensionista,°infermierista) or devoid of any derivational relationship with the -ico adjectivalforms: paesaggistico means 'related to landscape' (paesaggio), not to landscape architect(paesaggista). It seems reasonable to argue that sometimes the adjective in-istico receives a mixed reading (e.g. see It. giornalistico, both 'related tonewspaper', giornale, and 'related to journalist', giornalista) As highlighted by Guevara(2006: 5), in fact, the affix-cluster -istico is "functioning as a single suffixing unitwhich builds binary structures, despite the fact that three recognizable morphologicalformants seem to be joined at once". The possibility of assigning a non-binary structurelike N+Suffix1+Suffix2 is thus discarded. Major theoretical approaches to -istico-likeadjectives have either recognised it as an independent complex suffix (licensing thebinary N+[complex suffix] representation, see Bauer 1990), or maintained the statusof the individual suffixes (see Scalise 1990) accepting the intermediate step in thederivation as a possible base even if unattested (bringing to a [[N+Suffix1]Suffix2]bracketing).

Another major challenge to binarism in word formation is represented byparasynthesis, i.e. concomitant prefixation and suffixation. Some accounts ofparasynthesis are ternary (e.g. see Serrano-Dolader 1999), while binary representationsdiffer in the proposed hierarchical structure (summarising, [[AB]C] vs [A[BC]]bracketings, see for instance Corbin 1980 and Scalise 1994). Circumfixation (ordiscontinuous affixation) can superficially be regarded as the same phenomenon, i.e.the simultaneous attachment of two affixes, even though some approaches make a"principled distinction [...] based on a fundamental criterion: only in circumfixation dothe interrupted parts form a single morphological constituent" (Guevara 2006: 8). Asalready mentioned, if one agrees with the Separation Hypothesis, two non-isomorphicrepresentations can be stipulated which make these cases only apparent counterevidenceto binarism (see figure below, ivi), being a) the morphosyntactic level and b) themorphophonological one.

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Parasynthesis and discontinuous affixation will be addressed later with respect totheir adequateness for explaining prefixal relational adjectives.

Globally speaking, the mentioned word formation cases in which controversies ariseabout hierarchical structure do not pose a strong challenge to a binarist approach tomorphology. Prefixed relational adjectives, as the next section will show, display aformal structure mismatching with the expected semantic representation. Binarism,however, is not challenged since the two representational levels are both binary. It willbe suggested that the formal constituenthood could also be influenced by a generalpreference twards right-branching constructions.

1.3 Parasynthesis

The traditional approach to PRAs is a parasynthetic analysis, i.e. complex formsare conceived as the outcome of a derivational process based on the simultaneousapplication of a prefix and a suffix on a word base. Since none of the possibleintermediate derivational steps (Pref+N or N+Suf) actually occurs, parasynthesisgenerally represents a challenge in a bracketing perspective: one cannot assign neitheran [A[BC]] bracketing, nor an [[AB]C].

giallo > in+giall(o)+ire 'to yellow' *ingiallo, *giallirebarca > im+barc(a)+are 'to embark' *imbarca, *barcare

Italian PRAs have received such treatment because of the form/meaning mismatchwhich did not allow them to project structural hierarchy onto morphosyntacticbracketing. It must be noticed, however, that PRAs differ from traditional parasyntheticcases in an important aspect: whereas their binary form are not attested (as can beseen from the above examples, they are often prefixed verbal constructions), PRAs'constituents are indeed attested, but since structural mismatch hampers a properbracketing, a flat structure is stipulated.

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Tollemache (1945:112, my translation) discusses Latin and Italian cases which "must bejudged parasynthetic regarding meaning". He points out that

cisalpinus [...] does not mean "an alpine who is beyond". [...] However, ifwe look at the form, we have to admit that cisalpinus iscis+alpinus, transpadanus trans+padanus; i.e. adjectives already existed beforecompounding; these compounds are thus logically parasynthets, whereasformally ordinary compounds. [Among Italian examples] thereare cismontano, internazionale, transiberiana, ultramontano.

Other analyses were based on the notion of circumfixation (or discontinuousaffixation) formulated by Booij (1977:32), which may apply to cases where it is difficultto recognise consistent word formation steps (in a rule-based approach to morphology)and the solution can consist in stipulating that two affixes are actually two segments ofthe same affix:

The “one affix a rule hypothesis” is the hypothesis that WF-rules add onlyone affix to a word. Generally, this hypothesis seems to be correct. Theonly counterexamples are such words as gebergte (‘mountain range’)< berg (‘mountain’) and geboomte (‘trees’) < boom (‘tree’). But ge-te can beconsidered a discontinuous affix because ge- and -te do not contributeindividually to the meaning of the complex word.

In the domain of PRAs prefix and suffix are thus conceived as a unit which applies to anoun base, so that the following examples would be analysed as follows:

circumequatoriale: circum__ale + equatoreantiparassitario: anti__ario + parassitaantisismico: anti__ico + sisma

The circumfixal approach suffers from similar weaknesses to the ones found inthe parasynthetic analysis. As pointed out by Guevara (2006: 12), circumfixation andparasynthesis are superficially "the same phenomenon: simultaneous attachment of twomorphological elements, one to the left and one to the right of the base". Only incircumfixation, however, "the interrupted parts form a single morphologicalconstituent". The most important drawback is probably the fact that the semantics of

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every would-be circumfix would be based on the exclusive contribution of the firstsegment (i.e. the prefix). This means that many circumfixes with the same "prefix"would share the same semantics, see for instance

anticlericale, antisolare, antiparassitario, antiberlusconiano, antisismico, antifungino,antigovernativo, anticompromissorio, antiaugusteo, antivaioloso, antiterrestre etc.

and that the same "suffix" (final segment of the circumfix) would in turn correspond todifferent meanings:

adimensionale, anticlericale, circumequatoriale, cisretinale, codecisionale, denominale,disfunzionale, exconiugale, extracontrattuale, internazionale, pluridirezionale etc.

Such analysis also fails to consider synonymous constructions where no suffix isattached to the base.

1.4 Prefix-suffix combination

As noticed by Iacobini (2004), one major drawback of this approach is that this doesnot explain why the adjectival suffix of the parasynthetic adjective is always identicalto that of the nonprefixed one: why, assumed that costituzionale and rivoluzionario areindependently attested adjectives, are anticostituzionale or antirivoluzionario licensedunlike °anticostituzionario1 or °antirivoluzionale?Parasynthesis applied to PRAs is also inconsistent with the fact that the same prefix maycombine with different suffixes, which makes such description antieconomic. I will nowprovide corpus-based evidence on prefix-suffix combination in Italian PRAs.

There is no general agreement on the definition and enumeration of Italian prefixes(see Montermini 2008:25). Corpus data will be limited to the list of prefixes providedby Iacobini (2004). The table below summarizes the attested combinations (195) andprovides a random sample for each one. It is apparent that a parasynthetic approachbecomes antieconomic when dealing with a wide range of combinations, since it shouldmaintain that each one corresponds to a single word formation rule (see Booij 1977's

1. Words preceded by ° are possible but unattested words.

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"one affix a rule" hypothesis). It is worth noticing that a large number of prefix-suffixcombinations also strongly challenges the circumfixal approach, which should stipulatea high number of affixes. Moreover, this evidence moves out the theoretical possibilitythat adjectival attestation could be explained in terms of prefixal selection (i.e., prefixesselecting specific adjectives according to their derivational affix). The table includes aselection of productive prefixes and denominal adjectival suffixes.

Data come from complex queries performed on La Repubblica corpus (Baroni etal. 20042,) and ItWaC (Baroni et al. 2009), consulted online through Sketch Engine(Kilgarriff et al. 20043). Although such corpora are not morphologically tagged,individual queries were performed specifying POS, initial and final segment of theword. The forms obtained were then evaluated according to their correspondence to themorphological configuration searched for (i.e. words containing segments homophonousto prefixes and/or suffixes were discarded). Additional words were included if at least10 hits were available on the web (via Google Search).

2. Available online at http://dev.sslmit.unibo.it/corpora/corpora.php

3. Available online at http://www.sketchengine.co.uk/

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TABELLA

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1.5 Intermediate steps

Other approaches to PRAs formation claimed that a ternary structure cannot accountfor them and that intermediate steps in the derivation must be assumed. Accordingto Sgroi (2007), for instance, the adjective sottomarino 'submarine' is derived froman unattested compound °sottomare 'under-sea'. Although such analysis does nottreat sotto- as a prefix, it can be extended to PRAs in terms of an intermediate unattestedderived word. The issue of why the suffixing form is identical to the one applying to thesimplex word (sottomare+ino, mare+ino) remains unexplained.

Corbin (1999) analyses PRAs' status along the debate about prefixal categorization.Maintaining that PRAs are converted prefixed nouns speaks against the "dominantconception" that prefixes have no categorizing capacity. She points out that adjectivesformed via prefixation on nominal bases often display a suffix ending which has only acategory-marking role. A semantic analysis is invoked in order to discard other possiblestructural analyses:

so antigrippal 'antifever.Suff', which seems segmentable in anti+grippal,cannot be semantically explained starting from a structure combining these twoconstituents given that its sense can be compositional only in relation with anti-and grippe (vaccin antigrippal 'antifever.Suff vaccine' has the same meaningand usages of vaccin antigrippe 'antifever vaccine')

Corbin introduces the notion of "paradygm integrator" as a purely class-markingsuffix with no constructional function in the complex word, and provides an accountof PRAs inspired (as highlighted by Montermini 2008:203) to the Optimality Theory.According to such model this word formation pattern would be constrained by twopartially conflicting conditions at play in the grammatical output: (i) a SemanticConformity Constraint, on the basis of which the optimal form of an affixed wordcorresponds to the concatenation of every form contributing to the definition of itsmeaning; (ii) a Categorial Conformity Constraint, predicting that the optimal form of anadjective formed via affixation has a suffix-like ending.

Let us consider the above mentioned examples antigrippeAdj and antigrippalAdj:Corbin states that while the former represents the "victory" of the Semantic ConformityConstraint, the latter represents that of the Categorial Conformity Constraint.

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A question that arises naturally from such formulation is up to what extent one canpredict the outcome of the interplay between constraints, and thus the morphosyntacticconfiguration of the word, on the basis of a range of factors: semantic, pragmatic, orrelated to usage contexts. What role do different factors play in the "victory" of eithersemantic or categorial constraints? The issue will be addressed later.

According to Corbin (1980) seemingly parasynthetical PRAs can be analysedassuming a two-step derivation: the prefixation of the nominal base and the suffixationthrough copy of the relational adjectival suffix of the base noun. Corbin criticisesthe parasynthetical approach's assumption that no other word formation process canbe described: this "dehierarchizing" (Corbin 1980: 190) view of morphology cannoteffectively cope with the choice of the affixes (unless, as previously shown, bystipulating many specific word formation rules) and cannot explain why suffixedadjectives alternate with non-suffixed ones. As insightfully highlighted by Corbin(ibidem: 201, my translation),

The adjective antialcoolique is the exact equivalent, on a semantic andsyntactic basis, of the unattested adjective antialcool. This equivalence doesnot exist, in turn, between alcooliqueAdj and alcoolN.

Corbin's solution saves both morphosyntactic hierarchy and offers an explanation forsuffixal selection. According to the proposed pattern (Corbin 1980: 207) a copy of thenominal suffix is stipulated to occur facultatively in the adjectival derivative: this wouldexplain why it is the same that would apply to the simplex base root.

[Pref [X]]A/N +copy]A/N

This notation can be applied to five cases of prefixal adjectives with differentmorphosyntactic and categorial properties. Let us consider the following Italianexamples (extracted from ItWaC):

[Pref [X]]A #669304525 Questi i farmaci antifebbre. Per combattere la febbre

[Pref [X]]N #1137876106 l' Artemisia annua come efficace antifebbre; un altro

[Pref [X]+copy]A #38452428 dotazione personale di farmaci antifebbrili e antidolorifici

[Pref [N]+copy]N #243768054 38°ricorrere ad un antifebbrile per uso pediatrico

[Pref [NP]]A #1076940707 antiparotite, antirosolia, antifebbre gialla. Rinvio per

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Corbin's approach, as already mentioned, has the advantage of highlighting thenominal nature of prefixal adjectives and the fact that suffixation can be said optional.As noticed by Montermini (2008:204), however, it is redundant in the assumption thatevery suffix in the mentioned forms is a homophone suffixoid with categorial-onlyfunctions. It is more economical to assume that PRAs are based on the attested adjectivesand that a mismatch occurs between structure and meaning.

As can be seen from Italian data extracted from ItWaC, some examples offercounterevidence for a model of PRAs based on the copy of the suffix. Cases likethe following cannot be straightforwardly ascribed to a mere process of suffixation,and probably involve the access to more complex paradigmatic relationships (see thefollowing example for a case of "empty morpheme"):

#85842728 obbiettivo l'insegnamento post-obbligatorio piuttosto che la gestione

Corbin (1980:206) claims that her model can account for the impossibility of attachinga suffix to a NP / multiword expression, given that no affix can have previousrelationships with it. Some Italian examples seem to contradict such generalization,see for instance Gaeta (2006) for a collection of affixed phrases (with varying degreesof lexicalization): doppiolavorista ‘who is having a double job’, stileliberista ‘crawl-swimmer’ etc. Moreover, the claim that suffixes have only categorial functions may notapply to some cases of suffix alternations. The issue will be addressed later.

1.6 A constructionist approach

The Costruction Grammar approach to word formation has the main merit ofproviding a theoretical and notation model which can fruitful deal with the issuesrelated to intermediate steps. In particular, Booij (2007) suggest under this theoreticalframework a thorough revision of debated word formation issues. The main point putforth by Booij is the adoption of a schema-based approach to morphological processes,rather than a purely rule-based. Word formation patterns are based on "abstract schemasthat generalize over sets of existing complex words with a systematic correlationbetween form and meaning" (Booij 2007:34). Schemas are productive, since theyspecify how new complex words can be created, by describing partially-filled patterns,i.e. in which some spots are occupied by specified items and some can vary accordingto each instantiation. From a costructional viewpoint, it is possible to get rid of thenotion of intermediate step. This allows the description of productive word formation

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patterns to ignore the nonattestedness of items embedded in complex words. A classicproblematic word like blue-eyed is dealt with by assuming that a unification betweentwo schemas occurred, namely between the [A+A]A compounding schema and thedenominal adjectival derivation in -ed, which are productive constructions in English:

Compounding: [A+A]A

Derivation: [N+ed]A

[A + [N+ed]A]A ‘having N with property A’

Although eyed is not attested (this specific issue was explained by Ackerman &Goldberg 1996 in terms of "Non Redundancy" constraints, since it would be unfelicitousfrom a pragmatic viewpoint to have a word describing the property of having a bodypart - modifying it would rather be informative: four-legged, right-handed etc.), theschema is nonetheless solid and describes a wide number of possible instantiations. Thesame approach allows a treatment of parasynthetic words which, although recognisingthe simultaneity of the affixation process (the concept was introduced by Darmesteter1877:129) fully specifies the word internal underlying hierarchy: Booij (2005:38)describes the Dutch [on-A]A + [V-elijk]A = [on[[V-elijk]A]A unification pattern which,fed by deverbal adjectives like beschrijf-elijk 'describable' > on-beschrijf-elijk ‘undescribable’ represents the formation of words like ongelofelijk 'incredible' withno V-elijk base (°gelofelijk).

Gaeta (2006) offers an analysis of complex words like terzomondiale 'of the ThirdWorld' in which a conflation of two schemas is assumed in order to deal with the effectsof paradigmatic relationships. Gaeta (2006:4) adopts a box notation representing eachinternal constituent (see figure below).

[X X]N terzomondo 'Thirld World'[[N]Nale]A mondiale 'mundial'[X [[X] ale]A]]A terzomondiale 'of the Third World'

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Gaeta claims that the same conflation process can be assumed with Italian parasyntheticverbs:

[im[mettere]V]V ‘to put in’ ← mettere ‘to put’[s[caricare]V]V ‘to unload’ ← caricare ‘to load’

Can the same constructionist approach be applied to PRAs? As a starting point, it ispossible to state that a unification pattern could better deal with the status of the internalrelational adjective, e.g. settimanale in infrasettimanale. The critical point to consider isthe Pref+N/Pref+N+Suf alternation, which forces the description to opt for either oneor the other. Gaeta claims that the prefixal+suffixal unification pattern in parasynthesisassigns a priority to the suffixal schema - "this is justified by the occurrence of wordpairs displaying different prefixes [like] infornare/sfornare ‘to put into/to take out ofthe oven’"(Gaeta 2006:6). This claim is hard to extend to PRAs, since an alternation isfound between synonymous suffixed and non-suffixed forms, and even (rare) word pairsdisplaying different suffixes are attested.

If we take a look at the overall configuration of Italian prefixed adjectives, threekinds of words displaying different properties can be taken into account on a firstapproximation. The first one is represented by qualifying adjectives compositionallymodified by prefixes, involving no scope ambiguity.

ultraleggero 'ultralight'semiserio 'semiserious'stracontento 'very very happy'

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These forms are grounded on a construction which allows a straightforwardmodification of the embedded adjective (be it complex or simplex). Below an outlineof the progressive instantiation of the pattern: [ultra[A]A]A 'extremely A',[semi[A]A]A 'half A' and [stra[A]A]A 'exceedingly A' schemas were taken as examples:

When it comes to PRAs based on a headed construction, e.g. vicepresidenziale 'vice-presidential', microsismico 'microsismic', macroregionale 'macroregional', a[Pref[A]A]A analysis reveals its inadequacies. On the basis of the word meaning it ischallenging to assume a stepwise derivation Adj > Pref+Adj based on the recognisablesimplex adjective, namely presidenziale, sismico or regionale for the above mentionedexamples. The prefixal subcategorization frames would be violated (Italianprefixes vice-, micro- and macro- attach, in fact, to nouns only), and no consistentsemantics could be derived.

Such adjectives are rather based on a Pref+N word, in ourcase vicepresidente 'vicepresident', microsisma 'microquake', macroregione 'macroregion'.What is at issue here, as already stated, is the formally easy bracketing Pref+Adj, at oddswith the semantic structure of the word. A conflation schema could here account for theunification of [Pref[N]N]N and [[N]Nale/ico]A:

[Pref[N]N]N vicepresidente, microsisma, macroregione[[N]N ale/ico]A presidenziale, sismico, regionale[Pref[[N]N ale/ico]]A vicepresidenziale, microsismico, macroregionale

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With respect to this restricted class of PRAs, however, another argument can beput forth which does not apply to all PRAs. Hoeksema (1985) proposes that manyderivational processes can be conceived as head operations, i.e. processes involving onlythe head of a word although having scope on the whole. In the words of Beard (1998),

English derived verbs exhibit the effect of a head operation in maintainingtheir conjugations even when serving as a base in a derivate. The past tenseof understand is understood, and that of overdrive is overdrove. This seemsto indicate that although past tense has scope over the entire derivation (orcompound) in these instances, morphology applies strictly to stand and drive,respectively; otherwise, we might expect the past tense to be*understanded and *overdrived.

It seems fairly obvious to assume that it is not possible to extend the head-basedapproach to prototypical exocentric PRAs. Let us consider some examples:

antifebbrile 'antifever'infrasettimanale 'midweek'postbellico 'postwar'

None of these adjectives can be traced back to a headed construction (although theprefixes attached occasionally enter headed words, see e.g. antieroe 'anti-hero'). Theyrepresent a class of PRAs in which the prefix has a relational function rather than amodifying one: antifebbrile, in its adjectival form, means 'related to something againstfever', infrasettimanale 'in the middle of the week' etc. Whereas in headed PRAs thebracketing paradox could be motivated by a head operation, nothing seems to justifya corresponding bracketing for headless PRAs. We should remember that such wordsdisplay an alternation with non suffixed forms:

[Pref[N]N]A vs [Pref[[N]N RAsuff]A]A

antifebbre vs antifebbrile

How can we explain that three kinds of prefixed adjectives with different semanticproperties are susceptible of the same formal analysis? Rather than focussing on thisquestion, it could be more fruitful to ask instead what factors could prevent this fromhappening.

20

A constructionist perspective allows us to hypothesize that an analogical extensionoccurred of the schemas involved along the just sketched continuum. If we excludethe ultraleggero kind of adjective, where the [Pref[A]A]A construction is unproblematic,and turn to the head-based adjectives vicepresidenziale, microsismico,macroregionale some factors can be held responsible for motivating the attractiontowards the already available derived adjective: first of all, the possibility of the alreadyintroduced derivational head-operation. It should be added that it parallels other head-based morphological processes, like inflection. Consider for instance headed compoundpluralization in Italian (see Stump 1991 for examples of diminutives' headpluralization):

capostazione (left-headed, pl. capistazione) 'stationmaster'terremoto (right-headed, pl. terremoti) 'earthquake'cassapanca (dvandva, pl. cassepanche) 'blanket chest'

Moreover, the meaning of the embedded adjective often has a closer semanticrelationship with the final PRA (although this aspect largely depends on the individualprefixal semantics) if compared to exocentric PRAs. We can generalize that, unlike thelatter, the meaning of the prefixal adjective is often in a hyponymic relation with thesimplex adjective (sismico/microsismico, regionale/macroregionale etc.). We shouldalso be aware that, unlike exocentric PRAs, such forms do not license an alternationwith non suffixed forms, because their non affixed bases (always attested, as nouns: seee.g. microcredito 'microcredit') would not be categorially undetermined like exocentricones (if we maintain that prefixes are not category-changing). A similarity lies, however,on the fact that both constructions, due to their prefixal subcategorization frame, donot allow the idiosyncratic meanings of their internal adjectives to emerge. In order toshow this, let us have a look at the possible interpretations of prefixed words embeddingadjectives ambiguous between a relational and a qualifying reading: if we considerthe adjective febbrile 'feverish' [both literal and figurative], a non-attested constructionlike ultrafebbrile would arguably receive both a relational and a qualifyinginterpretation, namely either 'very feverish' or 'beyond fever', whereas the qualifyingsense of febbrile could not be selected in (the unattested) microfebbrile or postfebbrile.

In order to account for the pervasiveness of the [Pref[A]A]A pattern, we canhypothesize that this schema was strengthened along the continuum leadingfrom ultraleggero to postbellico, so that Italian speakers can rely on a range ofconstructional idioms (in the sense of Jackendoff 2002, constructions with lexicallyempty slots) like those below:

21

[pre[[N]N RAsuff]A]A'before N'[post[[N]N RAsuff]A]A 'after N'[anti[[N]N RAsuff]A]A 'against N'[pro[[N]N RAsuff]A]A 'in favour of N'...

The meaning conveyed by different prefixes is in my opinion crucial in theinterpretation of the complex word. As far as we know, PRAs are the outcome of astructurally underspecified pattern. This means that PRAs display a level of structuralcomplexity which is inferior to what one would expect on a semantic basis. It isreasonable to hypothesize that such mismatch is due to economical factors: the languagesystem does not need a tripartite Prefix - Noun - Affix construction where a less complexPrefix - Adjective string can accomplish the same communicative functions. What areat issue here are the reasons behind such underspecification: a first answer could be thatthe semantics of prefixes itself allows the word to express a certain meaning withoutenriching its morphosyntactic structure.

The focus of the following section will be, in fact, providing a clearer picture aboutthe role played by prefixes in the domain of PRAs.

1.7 The role of prefixes

From the observation of the patterns considered above, it is possible to sketch astructured continuum based both on prefixal subcategorization frames and the meaningexpressed by each prefix. This picture can help identifying the reasons for the spreadingof the constructionist schema. If we take two variables into account, namely selectionof nouns vs adjectives and temporospatial vs negative/alterative meanings, a clearerpicture emerges of the intersection between sets (see figure below). We can thus accountfor the different behaviour of vicepresidenziale-like vs postbellico-like constructions:although both are noun-based (the +A, ALT stracalorico, on the other hand, selectsonly adjectives even when attaching to relational/qualifying adjectives), only the lattercan "loose" the adjectival suffix maintaining the same meaning (we will see later towhat extent this can happen), since the former would turn in a perfectly transparentPref+N, which is instead often the base upon which the word is formed(vicepresidenziale > vicepresidente). It should be noticed that in the case of suffixed /non-suffixed PRAs' alternation, there is evidence speaking in favour of both directions(i.e. non-suffixed forms acquiring the suffix or, rarer, suffixed forms losing it), see for

22

instance infrasettimana 'midweek', widely attested in web searches (more than 50000Google hits) and totally unattested in the examined Italian dictionaries and corpora.

This outline is not claiming that each prefix can only fit one kind of construction.Many Italian prefixes do in fact enter more, due to their attachability to more than onelexical category. Let us consider the following examples containing the prefix ultra-mainly retrieved from La Repubblica corpus (Baroni et al. 2004):

i) raffinatezza , con il lino ultradelicato , le tuniche bianche di lana leggerissimaTelevisore portatile ultrasottile : sarà leggero , pieghevole , grande più o menole organizzazioni politiche ultraconservatrici , violano il vostro diritto , sancito

ii) il grande sogno di popolo ultramarino sparso tra " il Minho e Timor ".di natura e origine ultrasensoriale , possono essere decisivi per la vostra vita .il segreto della sua longevità, l'ultracentenario rispondeva che essa consisteva in

Some evidence, however, encourages the view that, albeit a common etymologicalorigin, two homophonous ultra- prefixes are now active in Italian. It is apparent how(i) express an alterative meaning (involving the selection of a qualifying adjective,e.g. delicato in ultradelicato 'ultradelicate') whereas (ii) build a relational adjective ona noun base. Where the adjective is ambiguous between a relational and a qualifyingmeaning, two readings of the outcome emerge: (iii) represent instances of thehomophonous adjective ultraeuropeo 'very european/europeist' or 'beyond Europe':

iii) io sono ultraeuropeo! ma non sono a favore dell'europa governata da[www.italiamac.it/forum/showthread.php?p=739740]

giunge a lambire anche aree produttive europee ed ultraeuropee. Esso[www0.provincia.bologna.it/.../00ECO01R_Imprese_impr_circ_Imola.DOC]

Acknowledging this aspect could also shed light on some inconsistencies foundin descriptions of contemporary Italian prefixal system. Iacobini (2004:111)'s analysis

23

of prefixes' base selection could probably benefit from more distinctions with respectto prefixes which would attach to either nouns, qualifying adjectives or relationaladjectives, that is to say

a-

anti-

co-/con-

extra-

infra-

inter-

ipo-

multi-

neo-

pluri-

retro-

sotto-

sub-

super-

ultra-

Although Iacobini (2004:113) recognises that in some circumstances "the prefixcan express different values according to the interpretation of the base adjective(extraprovinciale 'very hick', 'extraprovincial'), it is never hypothesized that, expeciallywhen dealing with distant meanings (in the case of extra-, an alterative vs atemporospatial one), two homophonous prefixes could be assumed. We will not addressrelated diachronic issues: it seems however reasonable to hypothesize that it was indeedthe semantic dissimilarity which favoured the cohabitation of the homophonous prefixes'couples.

The point to focus seems, in fact, the role of prefixes rather than the "interpretationof the base adjective". If we assume that both noun-based and adjective-basedconstructions share the same formal properties, it is possible to rely on thedisambiguation between homophonous prefixes only, e.g. betweenalterative extra- (extravergine, extragenuino etc.) andtemporospatial extra- (extraparlamentare, extrauterino etc.) which allows the speakerto map each constituent differently, according to the prefixal subcategorization frame.

The rise of such template in Italian is most probably the result of the extension of the[Pref[A]A]A schema which is unproblematic for the description of modified qualifying

24

adjectives, and partially motivated by a head operation in the case of headed noun-based PRAs. Such extension to headless bases is not blocked because it is generallyunambiguous and perfectly fits into the Italian adjectival system. It must be noticed,however, that since Italian also licenses invariable adjectives (we will address later theissue of language-specificity), suffixed adjectives, as already mentioned, can turn intonon-suffixed. Let us consider the following examples:

preguerra 'prewar'intramuscolo 'intramuscular'infrasettimana 'midweek'

These words are unattested in many dictionaries, but widely attested in the Web (morethan 20,000 Google hits each) and corpora:

rispolverato la sua tattica preguerra, che è quella di tentare di[La Repubblica Corpus]

Sono utilizzati anche coagulanti intramuscolo o endovena a base[La Repubblica Corpus]

reduce da una goleada nel turno infrasettimana di lunedì scorso.[http://www.labolletta.com/Forums-file-viewtopic-t-6741-view-previous.html]

Let us recall Corbin (1999)'s constraints mentioned earlier:

(i) SEMANTIC CONFORMITY CONSTRAINT:The optimal form of an affixed word corresponds to the concatenation of every formcontributing to the definition of its meaning;

(ii) CATEGORIAL CONFORMITY CONSTRAINT:The optimal form of an adjective formed via affixation has a suffix-like ending.

We can draw the conclusion that in such forms the Semantic Conformity constraint isprevailing, since the affixal form lost is not necessary for the definition of its meaning. Acomplementary perspective can be offered referring to Lieber (2004:161)'s RedundancyRestriction which states as follows:

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Affixes do not add semantic content that is already available within a baseword (simplex or derived).

If we adopt Lieber (2004)'s lexical semantic model, an account of many prefixalconstructions can shed light on their core semantic structure, which does not rely on thepresence of a suffix. The most prototypical "exocentric" PRAs are in fact those formedwith a prefix which resembles a preposition (e.g. anti-, post- and sopra- share manyfeatures with the prepositions contro, dopo and sopra). As pointed out by Bierwisch(1988) prepositions are "bi-argumental categories", since they involve two argumentswhose relation is specified through their semantics. In syntax, prepositional phrasesare not thus autonomous. Likewise, in morphology this gives rise to exocentric words:the head position is, in fact, represented by the external argument, absent at the wordlevel (although many Pref+N adjectives have been analysed as embedded constituents ofcompounds, like riscaldamento prepartita 'prematch warm-up': in this case the externalargument is collocated in another node of the same word).

Let us analyse a small sample of prepositional-like PRAs according to Lieber'stheoretical approach. According to Lieber (2004), the semantic representation of alinguistic unit can be defined as consisting of a semantic/grammatical skeleton anda semantic/pragmatic body. The skeletal representation of the Italian prefix post-, forinstance, involves two arguments, one of which cannot be coindexed (the Principle ofCoindexation formalizes referential integration) with any internal argument:

[+ Temp ([i ] [([j ])] 'j happens after i'post

A PRA like infrasettimanale 'midweek' conveys the meaning related to somethingtemporally situated in the middle of a settimana 'week', indexed as i below. Theadjective itself does not provide semantic clues about this entity, but a coindexationtakes place between the adjectival suffix and the external argument (j).

[dynamic([j ])] [+ Loc ([i ] [([j ])] ([+material ([i ])])] 'sit.ed in the middle of the week'ale infra settimana

The same holds, for instance, for the following PRAs:

subepidermico

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[dynamic([j ])] [+ Loc ([i ] [([j ])] ([+material ([i ])])] 'situated under the epidermis'ico sub epidermide

extracomunitario[dynamic([j ])] [+ Loc ([i ] [([j ])] ([-material ([i ])])] 'sit.ed outside of a community'

ario extra comunità

intracellulare[dynamic([j ])] [+ Loc ([i ] [([j ])] ([+material ([i ])])] 'situated inside a cell'

are intra cellula

This representation makes explicit how the core semantics is determined by theargumental structure of the prefix. The adjectival suffix has a coindexation functionwhich arguably depends on contextual factors, such as the discourse availability of theexternal argument: this explains why the non-suffixed form is probably perceived asmore natural where the argument is easily retrievable and indexed, e.g. in a postnominalposition, i.e. where the adjectival suffix is not necessary from a morphosyntacticviewpoint, that is to say for marking the grammatical relationship between the adjectiveand the external argument. In the analysis of the alternationof infrasettimanale and infrasettimana, a strong preference for the suffixed form inpredicate function was found. Specific queries aiming at assessing the most attested formafter copulas yielded the following results:

"è/sono infrasettimanale/i" 1008 hits'is/are midweek(+suffix)'

"è/sono infrasettimana" 86 hits'is/are midweek'

Another factor at play is probably the adjectival status itself, less prototypical inpostnominal position (where its role can be a compound constituent). It must be noticedthat the non-suffixed form can also be employed with other part of speech functions,being categorially underspecified. Infrasettimana, e.g., was adverbialized in aconsiderable number of hits (34 out of the first 100 Google hits). See for instance

anche la festa della polizia la si faceva infrasettimana.[http://www.fiammeblu.org/forum/pop_printer_friendly.asp?TOPIC_ID=1193]

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Mi hanno invitato sull'isola infrasettimana... dal lunedì al venerdì.[http://community.fondali.it/forum/viewtopic.php?p=144562]

Ti consiglio di ritornarci, magari infrasettimana, perchè nei week-end è[http://www.baltazar.it/ristoranti-santarcangelo-di-romagna/5876]

per fortuna noi possiamo andare infrasettimana e con la pioggia![http://briggis-recept-och-ideer.blogspot.com/2009/07/insalata-di-5-cereali.html]

per questo quando posso vado infrasettimana[http://www.hwupgrade.it/forum/archive/index.php/t-1296693.html]

This aspect further provides evidence for the purely categorial function of the suffix.It is reasonable to assume that the form infrasettimana, originated from the suffixedform, has then spread towards usages other than adjectival. Another problem is posedfor theories conceiving prefixes as heads, which should face the fact that the same prefix(with the same meaning) can give rise to more than one change in word-class (or thatthey do not cause word-class changing at all).

Summarising, although the [Pref[A]A]A schema expanded itself, semantic constraintsare however at play and favour the rise of alternative concurrent constructions, arguablypreferred by speakers because of their simplicity (less formal units required) and theirsemantic transparency. Moreover, the non-suffixed forms can be employed as adverbs,for instance, with no risk of ambiguity. According to the mentioned approaches (Corbin1999 and Lieber 2004) we can combine the claims that the non-suffixed form is theoptimal output of the word formation process, and that the adjectival suffix does notadd content already available within the base. The latter could be an obvious claim formany suffixes forming relational adjectives, since they only have a formal function.We will see later, however, that although the Italian adjectival suffixes involved oftenhave a purely transpositional function (from noun to adjective), PRAs also draw on non-relational suffixes/adjectives.

1.8 The role of adjectives

An aspect which deserves a closer look is the role of independent relational adjectivesin the formation of paradoxical PRAs. It is acknowledged that relational adjectives resultfrom the categorial transposition of nouns. As Bally (1944:97) observed, a relationaladjective "substitutes nouns without changing any aspect of their value". Relationaladjectives display a syntactic behaviour which set them apart from other types ofadjectives (qualifying, descriptive etc.); the tests which usually apply are:

28

i) Prenominal position (for Romance languages)

a. Mario è un bravo studente 'Mario is a clever student'b. *Quella è una marina onda 'That is a sea.Adj wave'

ii) Predicate in copular sentences

a. L'energia che usiamo è rinnovabile 'The energy we use is renewable'b. ?L'energia che usiamo è solare4 'The energy we use is solar'

iii) Gradability

a. Mario ha dei problemi molto seri 'Mario has some very serious problems'b. *Mario ha dei problemi molto coniugali 'M. has some very marital problems'

Unlike other adjectives, relational ones cannot modify a noun in a prenominal position(i.b), be normally used in copular sentences (ii.b); quantifiers are not accepted as RAsare not scalar (iii.b). As already shown above, Italian displays a quite clear-cut range ofdenominal adjectival suffixes. Some properties of these adjectives should however betaken into account: first, most suffixes do not only form relational adjectives; second,purely relational adjectives can develop idiosyncratic meanings partially shifting fromthe "transposed noun" reading.

Italian suffix -oso can have both a qualifying and a relational value. As a matterof fact, some adjectives are only qualifying, some are only relational and some areambiguous between either interpretation (see examples below from ItWaC).

Qualifying-only#252260 gli studi medi presso una prestigiosa scuola privata e conobbe il

Relational-only#63908630 replicazione delle cellule cancerose, da rallentare la progressione

Ambiguous

4. Grammaticality judgments vary among speakers, since copular sentences areprobably the context where relational adjectives are most acceptable among the onesemployed in the tests.

29

#1410230 solo le reazioni a livello di sistema nervoso autonomo o di mimica.#1920740 esprimermi al meglio. Sì, ero nervoso, e mi sono lasciato andare

Relational adjectives can thus be homophones to qualifying adjectives, or qualifyingmeanings can derive from the former. Apart from ambiguous suffixes, in fact, it must benoticed that relational-only suffixes also produce idiosyncratic meanings which cannotbe reduced to the grammatical transposition of the base noun. Let us consider a smallsample of relational adjectives containing different suffixes:

funzionale 'functional'solare 'solar'letterario 'literary'abortivo 'abortive'africano 'african'marino 'marine'etnico 'ethnic'planetario 'planetary'

A random list of 600 attestations (75x8) of the lemmas (in their occurrence asadjectives) was extracted from ItWaC in order to have a general idea about their meaningin context. The data confirm the assumption that qualifying and relational meaning oftencohabit.

Sample concordances Relational Qualifying

#39587 processo di integrazione funzionale tra le rispettive e biblioteche.

#232919 alfabetizzazione che sia funzionale al successivo orientamento28 47

#208458 che in Italia) si utilizzano i pannelli solari dieci volte più di noi,

#3960163 piaciuto molto quel clip, mi era sembrato molto solare , e mi55 20

#226305 di un patrimonio artistico e letterario , scientifico e tecnico,

#521837682 Questo romanzo è molto letterario ma è anche un romanzo68 7

#75434299 a seconda dei soggetti della vicenda abortiva: la posizione

#84771296 effetto della pillola del giorno dopo è abortivo o meno?30 45

#14099 10% imprenditori di origine africana ed extracomunitaria che di

#1152550 Fu un diplomatico africano a consegnare ai servizi italiani39 36

#514507 importanza dell' ambiente marino e le interazioni che si sviluppano 73 2

30

#1621459203 Il fango dell' Elba, infatti, è marino ed è simile, ricco com' è di

#618270 sulla razza o l' origine etnica , le religioni e le convinzioni personali

#2334270 attributo di etnico: musica etnica, cibo etnico , artigianato etnico50 25

#843076 tutti i problemi su scala planetaria - si tratti della guerra, di

#4329286 far avere una mentalità più ampia, più planetaria . - "66 9

Total409

(68.16%)

191

(31.83%)

A more in-depth consideration of this feature raises some questions about the statusof adjectival affixes in the forms we are now considering. How do ambiguous adjectivesinteract with prefixal constructions? What role do non-relational adjectives play intheir morphosyntactic and semantic outcome? As the data above suggest, it is notuncommon to find instances of denominal adjectives in which the qualifying use prevailson the relational one. In the small sample considered, let us consider theadjective abortivo 'abortive': it is derived from the noun aborto 'abortion' and results ina relational meaning 'related to abortion' and a qualifying one 'causing abortion'. AGoogle query of the most productive prefixes attached to the lemma abortivo yielded thefollowing hits. If we look at the word inside PRAs, however, it is quite reasonable toassume that no trace of the non-relational use remains, since the argument structure ofthe prefixal construction only involves the selection of the noun; the adjectival endingonly has a categorial function.

scatena tutto questo fanatismo antiabortivo che credo sia portatoil vissuto emotivo preabortivo e l'atteggiamento delle utenti delsintomi da stress postabortivo: le americane nel 39% dei casiDeltacortene perché sono un soggetto poliabortivo. Insieme al

Denominal adjectives which are both relational and qualifying find their noun baseselected by the semantics of the prefix giving rise to paradoxical PRAs. From thisobservation, we could assume that in the formation of such words relational adjectivesare selected regardless of their concurrent qualifying use. A closer look at adjectivalforms in PRAs allowed to go beyond and see that the word formation process does notonly rely on the retrieval of relational adjectives: other kinds of adjectives, in fact, can

31

become constituents of the word in presence of a (looser) relationship with a noun form.The following forms were encountered:

#645716926 anno di corso, se non dallo stesso biennio postobbligatorio.#1476988475 dominati dal pathos di una sopravvivenza oltrevitale, ponendo#1791724564 di stanchezza; un effetto antiansioso, ossia riducono l'ansia#541399038 amministrazione. Il comportamento antidoveroso dell' agente

The examples above are cases in which the adjectival forms are not relational. Theyare nonetheless exploited probably because of their recognisable noun base. An analysisof the first 100 ItWaC hits of each simplex adjective (obbligatorio, vitale etc.) wasperformed in order to ascertain their use, which resulted in a very poor index of relationaluse (less than 5%).

These data shed light on Corbin (1980)'s claim that suffixes have only a category-marking function: it seems confirmed by the fact that the morphological constructiondraws on adjectival forms whose idiosyncratic meaning is not relevant at all in thecomplex prefixal forms, and which enter the construction only because of theirmorphological relationship with a base noun.

1.9 Novel PRAs

Do schemas capture a productive shortcut word formation pattern? One of the maintheoretical aims of the constructionist approach is a description aiming at both simplicityand psychological reality. Booij (2005:38) refers to the domain of cognitive psychology,where evidence was found (Anderson et al. 2004) of the tendency towards thecombination of different cognitive tasks into one "that has the effect of both”, and linksthis to the explanatory and predictive power of unificated templates, which allow thespeaker to create complex words without unnecessary intermediate steps.

A closer look at the strategies employed by language users in comprehension canfurther shed light on the nature of the constructions we have dealt with in the previoussections. In order to better understand how Italian native speakers comprehend and coinPRAs and thus compare the descriptive level with the actual usage of the templatesintroduced, a series of tests was performed aiming at evaluating whether and to whatextent Italian language users can have access to the an active schema defining thestructure of PRAs for comprehending novel instances of the construction and coiningnew ones on the base of a semantic instruction.

32

A set of 10 novel words was created to be tested for comprehension among 20 nativespeakers (mean age: 27, ranging from secondary school to postgraduate education).The words created had to meet the following requirements: (i) be unattested in theweb; (ii) conform to the [Pref[A]A]A template; (iii) be plausible, both from a pragmaticand a semantic viewpoint. Both transparently suffixed and allomorphic adjectives wereemployed as constituents. These morphologically legal novel words were then put intosentences, and participants were asked to paraphrase the meaning of the PRA in context.

One would predict that, if the template can be easily retrieved by speakers, they willbe able to infer the paradigmatic relationships necessary for establishing the argumentalconnections between the nominal base of the adjective and the prefix, e.g. the allegednoun base of antiadottivo (adozione) and its relation with the prefix anti-. This doesnot mean that the parsing of the adjective should pose more difficulties than otherforms, since the main advantage of the unified template should be that of being simplerup to the extent to which comprehension is not more demanding (unlike a theoreticalrepresentation which does not correspond to the user's strategies, albeit economical orsimple). The novel words employed were the following:

proinfantile, antiadottivo, intraarboreo, circumcanadese, multiabortivo,proscolastico, ipoterreno, oltreelettorale, infratraumatico, prodecisionale;

They were built through a prefix attached to a relational adjective, e.g. pro-+ infantile 'in favour of children, childhood'. Looking at the paraphrases provided byparticipants, it was clear that in most cases they were able to understand the intendedmeaning. They were able to individuate the noun base and derive the adjectival meaningon the basis of the prefixal semantics.

Sentence with novel PRA Paraphrase

Questa legge proinfantile protegge i diritti umani dei minori. "a/in favore/aiuto dell'infanzia" (95%)

Le malattie intraarboree colpiscono spesso le querce."(sviluppate) dentro l'albero/gli

alberi"(80%)

Questa legislazione antiadottiva ha fatto [...] "contro/contraria all'adozione" (70%)

Il viaggio circumcanadese di Gianni è finito ieri. "attorno/intorno al Canada" (85%)

La paziente multiabortiva ha partortito un figlio."che ha subito/avuto/praticato molti

aborti/più di un aborto" (90%)

33

I provvedimenti proscolastici del governo hanno [...]."a/in favore/sostegno della scuola"

(90%)

L'inquinamento ipoterrestre è molto pericoloso. "sottoterra/sotto la terra" (75%)

L'entusiasmo oltreelettorale del candidato ha sopreso tutti."(che è) andato/durato oltre/aldilà del/

dopo le elezioni/ l'elezione" (75%)

Il suo atteggiamento prodecisionale ha aiutato l'azienda."che favorisce/ a/in favore di (la/una)

decisione/le decisioni " (75%)

Maria ha avuto un'esperienza pluritraumatica."caratterizzata da/che (le) ha provocato/

causato/procurato" molti traumi (80%)

This confirms the claim that the template is productive and can be retrieved byspeakers in order to understand novel instances. Without entering the details of thediachronic processes related to the issue, it must be highlighted that manyrepresentatives of the pattern were inherited from Latin (Italian cisalpino derives fromLatin cisalpinus, cf. Tollemache 1945). Words not derived from Latin, combined withthe coinage of new (comprehensible) instantiations of the template, demonstrate that thepattern is productive in Italian.

1.10 Word Internal Anaphora

Another relevant argument is related to morphological constituents' reference. SincePostal (1969) the notion of anaphoric islandhood has applied to complex words: theirinternal constituents cannot be coreferential with other words. Lexical IntegrityHypothesis, in turn, states that syntax has access to the word as a whole, not to itscomposing parts. This set of principles would categorically rule out word internalanaphoras (WIA) like the following (the discussion will be limited to 'outbound'anaphora):

*Mary hates guitariists because she doesn't like iti.

As pointed out by Montermini (2006) in his detailed review, cross-linguistic evidenceshowed how the criteria invoked to categorially judge as impossible these constructionswere actually too strong and that WIAs could be acceptable up to a certain extent. Awide range of facilitating conditions have been thus proposed that could account for thevariation in the acceptability of WIAs, including both semantic-pragmatic constraints

34

and morphosyntactic ones. Although some scholars treat anaphors as a non-grammaticalissue (Montermini cites Ward et al. 1991:450's claim that “there is no principle ofgrammar that explicitly prevents word-internal antecedents for pronominal anaphors”),there is evidence that speaks in favour of a role played by morphology. Montermini(2006:133) shows that full NPs are much more acceptable as anaphors than pronouns /zero forms:

(i) Seppur non sia milaniese, per diversi motivi sono vicino a questa cittài

‘Though I am not a Milanese for many reasons I am close to this city’

(ii) *?Seppur non sia milaniese, per diversi motivi lei sono vicino‘Though I am not a Milanese for many reasons I am close to it’

How can WIA shed light on the formal properties of PRAs? In order to fully assessthe role of affixation in such constructions, a fruitful approach may be represented bya comparison between affixed and non-affixed forms, evaluating their behaviour withrespect to WIA. What is at issue here is whether there are differences in the degree ofacceptability of WIA due to the morphosyntactic configuration of the PRA involved. Asrecalled by Montermini, an often underrated aspect of lexical semantics is the absence ofany intrinsic referential power. Sproat (1988:294)'s claim that “a noun such as dog [...]does not pick out any particular dog or any particular set of dogs. Only NPs have thisproperty” may thus be the reason why WIA is not licensed. In the words of Montermini(2006:129),

The very reason why anaphoric expressions cannot be coreferential with aword included within a more complex lexical item is that, indeed, words arenot per se referential entities. [...] Referential capacity is a matter of phrases(and NPs are the prototype of referential units), not of words, or, as we wouldsay today, of lexemes. Of course a lexeme has a semantic representation, butit remains a virtual one, and can only be instantiated when a word is used indiscourse via a syntactic construction. Since it is commonly assumed [...] thatmorphological rules operate on lexemes, i.e. on pre-syntactic units, there is noreason to think that the base of a complex word should maintain an autonomousreferential power.

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Montermini concludes that, since WIAs are actually attested, two theoretical pathscan be followed. Either we accept that units larger than words (NPs) can enter wordformation, or we abandon the claim that lexemes have no referential capacity withincomplex words. It is observed that WIAs prefer bases with a strong referential power,expecially proper names. Does this imply that such names are not lexemes? Montermini(2006)'s main insight is probably the observation that the same range of prefixesfavouring WIAs (with proper names as bases) was also the same favouring theattachment of phrasal units and inflected nouns (among the examples, manifestazioneanti-Bush ‘anti-Bush demonstration’, marcia anti moschea di Lodi ‘anti Lodi mosquedemonstration’, prodotto antirughe ‘anti wrinkles product’). Although proper namescan enter a wide range of prefixed constructions, in fact, only some prefixes(namely post- and anti-) exploit the referential power of the individuals involved.Montermini (2006:139) notices that the following examples differ with respect to thesemantic contribution of the proper name to the complex word.

(i) manifestazione anti-Bush ‘anti-Bush demonstration’

(ii) imberlusconirsi ‘to become like Berlusconi’

(iii) mussoliniano ‘mussolinian’

Whereas (i) clearly denotes a demonstration against the individual called Bush, in (ii-iii) "the meaning of the derived word is not constructed on the individual himself, butrather on some stereotyped characteristics of his person, ideology, activity, etc. Someonewho has imberlusconito has not become Berlusconi himself, but has become similar tohim, by adopting some peculiar features of his personality, by subscribing his policy,and so on". Montermini (2006:139) remarks that this asymmetry mirrors the differentproperties of "two sorts of prefixes: those whose behavior recalls that of suffixes andthose whose behavior recalls that of compound words". Let us consider Italian PRAs:formally, they are not compound-like, but they rather involve affixed constituents like(iii). Generally speaking, a PRA like postberlusconiano shares formal and semanticcharacteristics with both Pref+N and N+Suf adjectives. Their WIA behaviour canarguably be considered very relevant in contributing to their description.

Corpus data (specific queries were designed in order to find instances) and Googlesearches yielded the following results:

non sono io ad essere antiberlusconianoi, è luii che è un corruttore.

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[http://www.reportonline.it/2010040241951/politica/lequivoco-dellantiberlusconismo.html]

Gli antiberlusconianii vogliono le stesse cose di luii senza lui;[http://indipendenza.lightbb.com/politica-italiana-f2/antiberlusconismo-t458.htm]

#1833996035 Adesso è solo antiberlusconiiana ... pur essendo liberista come luii#993625452 basta essere antiberlusconiiani , vogliamo essere alternativi a luii#592997138 polemica anticristiania : una grande religionei e una grande#156560777 campagna antirutelliiana [...] in occas. della suai seconda rielezione#231715100 Non sono mai stata antiamericiana anzi, guardavo [...] questa nazionei

#625660845 qui infatti il titolo sembra antifelliniiano per eccellenza: luii così legato

In order to gain further insights on acceptability, an informal survey was submittedto 40 native speakers of Italian (mean age: 32, ranging from secondary school topostgraduate education), asking them to give judgments about sentences containingWIAs with antecedents embedded in both prefixed and non-prefixed adjectives (Yes =acceptable sentence, No = unacceptable sentence). Two set of sentences were built, eachone containing either the prefixed or the non-prefixed version of each adjective, so thatnone of the participants could judge two versions of the same sentence. The table belowsummarizes the results.

Sentence Yes No ?

1a. Maria è berlusconiana perché è un politico capace. 4 16 0

1b. Maria è antiberlusconiana perché è un politico incapace. 11 8 1

2a. L'America obamiana apprezza il suo carisma. 6 13 1

2b. L'America postobamiana apprezzerà il suo operato. 14 2 4

3a. Maria era veltroniana quando era il sindaco di Roma. 1 19 0

3b. Maria era antiveltroniana quando era il sindaco di Roma. 9 9 2

4a. I tifosi juventini credono che la sua dirigenza sia la migliore. 1 19 0

4b. I tifosi antijuventini credono che la sua dirig. sia la peggiore. 8 11 1

5a. Dario è felliniano: ama tutti i suoi film. 6 12 2

5b. Dario è antifelliniano: odia tutti i suoi film. 9 6 5

6a. L'opera manzoniana è stata influenzata dalla sua vita. 3 17 0

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6b. La critica postmanzoniana è stata influenzata dalla sua vita. 12 7 1

7a. I sonetti shakespeariani contribuirono alla sua fama. 7 13 0

7b. I critici proshakespeariani contribuirono alla sua fama. 13 3 4

8a. Le trasmissioni defilippiane sono seguite dai suoi fan. 7 10 3

8b. Le dichiarazioni antidefilippiane sono odiate dai suoi fan. 15 3 2

9a. La propaganda mussoliniana si fondava sui suoi discorsi. 9 11 0

9b. La propaganda promussoliniana si fondava sui suoi discorsi. 12 5 3

10a. La politica italiana è essenziale per il suo sviluppo. 6 12 2

10b. La politica antiitaliana è nociva per il suo sviluppo. 9 7 4

Total (non-prefixed)50

(25%)

142

(71%)

8

(4%)

Total (prefixed)112

(56%)

61

(30.5%)

27

(13.5%)

The theoretical relevance of the attestation and acceptability of WIAs in PRAs builton proper names is twofold. First, another argument in favour of a purely formalsuffixation of PRAs is added to the debate. If we combine, in fact, the evidencepresented by Montermini (2006) and coming from the above web and corpus data, itseems reasonable to assume that a clear trend is manifested: proper names embeddedin PRAs tend to maintain their referential power although they are formally identicalto a construction where the semantics is not "constructed on the individual himself"(Montermini 2006:139). Whereas the adjective berlusconiano arguably does not containany active referential unit, antiberlusconiano does, licensing WIA:

antiberlusconii Xi

antiberlusconiiano Xi

berlusconiiano X*i

On the other hand, it would be difficult to assume, as suggested by Montermini for thecase of Pref+N constructions, that the second formal constituent of the word could be aphrase and not a lexeme.

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The second, consequent conclusion which can be drawn is a general confirmationof the similarity between Pref+N and Pref+N+Suf constructions. These data couldrepresent a first step in assessing the differences in their behaviour and/or the reasons oftheir coinage. The issue will be explored later.

1.11 Transcategorization

PRAs can be the source of transcategorized nouns. This means that some nouns can bethe result of a categorial shift from adjective to noun, see for instance antifebbrile, bothadjective meaning "against fever" and noun denoting a drug against fever. With respectto this process, differences emerge between suffixed and non-suffixed forms, since thetranscategorization shift occurs in different manners according to the thematic relationsunderlying the source word and other functional properties. An outline will be offered ofthe main paths followed by Italian constructions.

Let us consider the semantic representation of antifebbrile:

[dynamic([j ])] [+ Loc ([i ] [([j ])] ([+material ([i ])])] 'against fever'ile anti febbre

As we have argued above, a coindexation occurs with an external argument in theutterance (this is reflected in number and gender agreement of the suffix). When aconventional association arises between a (set of) referent(s) and a property expressedby a PRA, however (the same happens for simplex adjectives e.g. la nazionale, lit. thenational 'the national team') the adjective itself is employed as a noun belonging to thatclass of referents and connotated by the properties expressed in the PRAs. It is impliedthat such noun fills the external argument of the PRA:

[[dynamic([j ])] [+ Loc ([i ] [([j ])] ([+material ([i ])])]]j 'drug against fever'ile anti febbre

If we limit ourselves to antifebbrile, a fairly productive class of transcategorizednouns can be individuated, i.e. that of drugs with the purpose of acting "against" a certainillness or undesired psychophysical state. A survey carried out on La Repubblica corpusand the web yielded several occurrences of this pattern:

e grana medico-legale con un anticoncezionale intrauterino.Drug Administration come un antidepressivo e poi bloccata

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xorubicina -- scrive -- è un antitumorale sul quale perdiale di coppie che usano un antifecondativo sicuroa letto e di inghiottire un antidolorifico . E fin quandonecessari 6/10 milioni per l'antitetanico monodose ;La Spirulina è un antivirale ma anche un tonico moltoLo Zirtec è un antistaminico di nuova concezioneZonisamide, è un antiepilettico. Le crisi epiletticheassumere un antiadiposo che agisce sulla tiroideL'uso degli antinfiammatori è stato limitato sin dall'origine

Note that transcategorization is generally conceived as a derivational process, adevice "alternative to morphology-based word formation rules such as derivation andcompounding, to create new words out of existing ones" (Jezek & Ramat 2009:398). Itis reasonable to assume, however, that from a constructionist viewpoint the systematicoccurrence of a template with certain formal, semantic and categorial properties canfeed an independent constructional idiom, so that we can formalise one describing theproperties of anti- drugs in Italian:

[anti[[UNDESIRED PSYCHOPHYISICAL ENTITY/STATE/PROCESS]N RAsuff]N 'drug against N'

From a functional viewpoint, it should be noticed that the suffixed form has theadvantage of having a morphological exponent on which inflection can be realized.Unlike with adjectives, in fact, Italian does not display productive patterns for generatinginvariable nouns. Second, it does not lead to ambiguities with headed prefixalconstructions in anti- (e.g. antiromanzo 'antinovel', antieroe 'antihero' etc.). Withrespect to the last point, however, non-suffixed forms are limitedly favoured inconstructions based on exocentric prefixes. Antifebbre is attested as a noun (as wellas prefixed words with no available derived adjective, e.g. pregara), because althoughit has little inflectional power, the thematic relations introduced by anti- can beinstantiated in a noun. On the contrary, alterative prefixes generate ambiguity witha headed structure modified by a prefix. Let us consider the transcategorizationof multistratoAdj 'multilayered' > multistratoN 'multilayered wooden panel'. It is likelythat since the prefix multi- can directly modify the internal constituent strato, thenoun multistrato can be interpreted as being headed by strato. We know, instead, thata multistrato is not a strato, but a specific object with many layers. This is testified bythe frequent occurrence (300+ Google hits) of a pluralized form which indeed denote theinterpretation of strato as a head, i.e. multistrati:

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Anche per i multistrati sono numerosi gli spessori ed i formati[http://www.bonomipattini.com/]

This is prevented (with exocentric prefixes too) in transcategorized prefixal adjectiveswhere the output word's gender and/or number are different from those of the internalnoun constituent, e.g. multisala 'multiplex cinema', prevendita 'pre-sale', postpartita'post-match TV programme' (all male nouns with female bases). A last remark onheaded nouns based on exocentric prefixes, e.g. preesame 'pre-exam', prepartita 'pre-match', antiromanzo 'antinovel', antieroe 'antihero' etc. A semantic analysis has to myknowledge never been attempted.

My idea is that such constructions could be conceived as follows: the same constituentoccupies both the argumental roles introduced by the prefixal semantics, i.e. we havea referent which is specified by a relation with the same class of referents it belongsto: an antiromanzo 'antinovel' is a novel which displays features going against theconventions related to them, like the unfolding of a sequential plot, a "novel against thenovel":

[+ Loc ([i ] [([i ])] ([-material ([i ])]i 'antinovel'anti romanzo

Likewise, a pre-esame 'pre-exam' is an exam to be taken before another exam, andan antieroe 'antihero' is a hero whose character is contrary to that of the archetypal hero.

[+ Temp ([i ] [([i ])] ([-material ([i ])]i 'pre-exam'pre esame

[+ Loc ([i ] [([i ])] ([-material ([i ])]i 'antihero'anti eroe

1.12 False heads

As already pointed out earlier, the rise of bracketing paradoxes in PRAs can partiallybe ascribed to head-based adjectival derivations (e.g. vicepresidente 'vicepresident'> vicepresidenziale 'vicepresidential'). This analysis cannot be applied to exocentricconstructions, since they are headless by definition. There is, however, a morphologicaldomain where operations occur on non-heads: inflection. Italian display a wide range of

41

cases where non-heads are inflected. For the present purposes, a brief account will beprovided of headless prefixal forms.

Montermini (2008:208) mentions the case of Italian prefixed nouns which are"occasionally pluralized" in the following way:

sing. sottobicchiere 'coaster'under.glass

plur. sottobicchieri 'coasters'under.glasses

This exocentric construction, defining "[something] under a glass" is pluralizedas if one of its constituents, the noun bicchiere, was the head. It is not surprisingto see how this is related to grammatical factors. Montermini notices that this kindof pluralization occurs only when the grammatical gender of the complex noun isthe same of the constituent (in this case, sottobicchiere is masculine as bicchiere). Amasculine noun like antiforfora 'anti-dandruff' with the embedded feminineconstituent forfora 'dandruff' cannot pluralize in *antiforfore. Sottoveste 'petticoat',instead, a feminine noun with the embedded feminine constituent veste 'dress', canpluralize in sottovesti. We will ignore words with embedded pluralized constituents (seefor instance antirughe 'anti-wrinkles').

Traditional morphological theory ascribes to the head of a word the property ofpercolating its features (among which the lexical category) to the whole complex word.We can imagine that speakers assume such grammatical match (probably reinforced bythe determiner employed) as a sign of the headedness of the word, and consequentlypluralize it. Although in the majority of cases the semantics of the word is transparentlybased on the constituent as a non-head, this is nonetheless pluralized most of thetimes. A Google search of the pluralized forms of sottobicchiere 'coaster', yielded 62hits of "i sottobicchiere" (clue that the semantic structure is however still active), and2,820 hits for "i sottobicchieri". Italian also displays pluralization on "false heads"in the case of exocentric compounds. See for instance the pluralizationof grattacielo 'skyscraper', asciugamano 'hand towel': grattacieli, asciugamani.

It seems reasonable to assume that a similar process could occur in the derivationdomain, in particular with prefixal constructions. A large body of literature (at leastfrom Williams 1981) asserts that prefixes are not susceptible of having head properties.The most recalled criterion is the transcategorization property: unlike suffixes, whichdetermine the lexical category of the word they are attached to, prefixes rarely do,

42

expecially in Romance and Germanic languages. Most orld languages display a tendenceto mark morphological categories and values through suffixes rather than prefixes, andthis is reflected on the possibility of heterocategorial combinations. As highlighted byMontermini (2008:210), in Italian and French suffixes can realize all six conceivablecombinations between lexical categories, whereas prefixes can enter only three of them.According to Corbin (1999:80) a wide range of factors has led scholars to build a"dominating conception" according to which prefixes cannot be heads.

Although non-Indoeuropean languages display class-changing prefixation, theprototypical role played by prefixes in Italian probably leads speakers to assume thatthey cannot be the morphological exponent of the word. Unlike with suffixed forms,the categorial assignment is thus unclear and other morphological means are required inorder to make the word conform to its expected grammatical properties. In the same wayas vicepresidente 'presidential' derives the adjective vicepresidenziale 'vicepresidential',a Pref+N exocentric prefixed adjective (be it attested or not) can be conceived as thebase of a formally Pref+Adj adjective in which the suffixation scopes over the wholeword:

antifebbre > antifebbrile 'antifever'°postguerra > postbellico 'postwar'°internazione > internazionale 'international'

Let us now consider other kinds of evidence coming from morphological reanalysis.Corbin (1999)'s Categorial Conformity Constraint predicts that the optimal output inword formation exhibits a categorially consistent ending, i.e. for instance an adjectivewith an adjectival ending. This does not imply that such ending is ascribable to amorphological operation based on the compositional semantics of the word. Theword antifascistaAdj, 'antifascist' for example, displays an adjectival ending which isreanalysed as the derivational and inflectional marker of the word, as attested by theforms antifasciste, 'antifascist.F.pl', antifascisti 'antifascist.M.pl'. Here forms foundin La Repubblica corpus:

fu uno dei pochi professionisti antifascisti che rifiutarono sempredelle sue idee antifasciste , anzi le manifesta in modo spericolato

The suffix -ista is not transparently added to the noun base to which it is semanticallyrelated, i.e. antifascismo 'antifascism' (-ista and -ismo are mutually exclusive: we cannotdetermine which is the base of the other) which in turn is a case of categorial conformity:

43

the noun ending -ismo is consistent with the category of the word, although it originallybelongs to an internal constituent.The semantic representation of the word displays a double role of the suffix, coindexedwith both the internal and the external argument of the prefix:

[dynamic([i ])] [+ Loc ([i ] [([j ])] ([-material ([i ])])] 'sth. opposite to fascism'ismo anti fascismo

Corpus evidence shows that this is reflected in pluralization:

cioè non tutti gli antifascismi sono di per sé democratici e ha citatovariegata galassia degli anticomunismi cattolici: Dossetti, La Pira

We can generalise that the grammar tendentially requires a morphological exponenton which morphosyntactic properties can be realised. As long as this does not leadto parsability and/or comprehension problems (prefixal argumental structures play amajor role in this), it is not necessary that the exponent is transparently external tothe semantic item to which it applies, creating thus two analysis levels, the formaland the semantic one. The benefits for the language system are probably lying in an"economy" of suffixation, both for non class-changing and class-changing derivation. Inthe first case (fascismoN > antifascismoN or fascistaAdj > antifascistaAdj, although thelatter should be in my opinion taken as a derivate of the former) avoiding a sequence oftwo identical morphemes (or with very similar functions, see Lieber 2004). In the secondcase, employing an already established relational adjective instead of creating a morecomplex formal structure requiring an external suffix.

1.13 Alternation

Is the alternation between suffixed and non suffixed PRAs due to specific grammaticaland/or contextual factors? The aim of this section will be outlining some of the factors atplay in the alternation between antifebbre-like and antifebbrile-like constructions. If it ismaintained that such forms are synonymous, some conditions might exist which favourone of the two forms in different contexts. Corpus and web data was extracted containingalternating forms. We will now review the main remarks drawn upon the observation ofhow the usage of suffixed and non suffixed PRAs can be ascribed to semantic, syntacticor morphological factors.

44

1.13.1 Phrasal constituents

One of the conditions which leads to the usage of a non-suffixed form is arguablythe exigence of modifying the internal noun base, i.e. of obtaining an adjective with anembedded phrase. As we can see in the following examples extracted from the web, thesame function is performed either by a noun (on which the relational adjective is based)or by a phrase:

incentrato sulle manifestazioni antibelliche tenute nel 1968[http://www.movieplayer.it/personaggi/3378/liev-schreiber/filmografia/]

E poco si sa del movimento antiguerra in Iraq che sta prendendo piede[http://www.teatrostabiletorino.it/pressdata/031250.pdf]

adesione a quel banale razionalismo postconciliare che ritiene degno[http://www.ratzinger.us/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=223]

Nella elaborazione post-concilio di Nicea, il Credo diventa[http://mysterium.blogosfere.it/2006/03/il-concilio-di.html]

Inutile promettere posti di lavoro preelettorali - ha rimarcato Stanzione[http://www.dentrosalerno.it/web/2009/05/29]

posti di lavoro fisso preelezioni regionali ...rischiamo di parlarci[http://retenazionaleeducatori.forumup.it/post-7932-retenazionaleeducatori.html]

In the latter forms we have an adjective (e.g. regionali) or a prepositional phrase(e.g. in Iraq) attached to the noun base of the alternating suffixed form, which furtherspecify the meaning and the reference of the noun. They cannot arguably perform thisfunction if the noun is embedded into an adjective, see for instance le manifestazioniantibelliche in Iraq lit. 'demonstrations antiwar.suff in Iraq' or sondaggi preelettoraliregionali, lit. 'polls preelection.suff regional' in which the modifier is interpreted asattaching to the noun modified by the PRA: le manifestazioni antibelliche in Iraq are notdemonstrations against the war carried out in Iraq, but rather anti-war demonstrationscarried out in Iraq, etc. An attempt to find instances of this hypothetical pattern (basedon post-, pre-, anti- and pro- prefixes) was in fact unsuccessful, apart from oneexception:

trovare sfogo nell'ambito prescolastico dell'obbligo.[http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/retescuole/message/3]

45

In the context encountered, the ambito prescolastico dell'obbligo, lit 'spherepreschool.suff of the obligation' is only conceivable as the pre-compulsory educationsphere, thus representing a violation of the above generalization (and maybe of theLexical Integrity Hypothesis to a certain extent) because the PP dell'obbligo is boundto one of the internal constituents of prescolastico, namely scuola. The data examinedshow, however, that the generalisation is solid. Finally, let us consider the followingform:

collaborazione stretta con la Brigata anticriminale francese.[La Repubblica corpus]

We can add that among the examined instances of PRAs, some seemed to display thesuffixed form for the complementary reason, i.e. avoiding in a Noun - PRA - Adjectivesequence triggering the interpretation attaching the final adjective to the noun base of thePRA: as we have seen above, it is generally not licensed where the PRA is suffixed (thelast example addresses a french anticrime brigade, not a brigade against french crime).

1.13.2 Ambiguity

Iacobini (1992) states that a condition on the formation of Pref+Adj PRAs (and notPref+Noun) is the independent attestation of the relational adjective. This could be asufficient condition but not a necessary one: since many attested Pref+N adjectives arebased on nouns with independently attested relational adjectives, it is not straightforwardthat, where the relational adjective exists, it must be included in the PRA based on thenoun. Montermini (2008:205) mentions anticrimine 'anticrime', antigravità 'antigravity'(the respective relational adjectives criminale 'criminal'and gravitazionale 'gravitational' are available in the lexicon). It can be hypothesizedthat one of the factors involved is the potential ambiguity triggered by constituents,i.e. a potential constituent is avoided and another is preferred because the former couldgenerate ambiguity in the interpretation of the PRA. Among the examined instancesof scarcely (or un-) attested suffixed PRAs, the candidate forms in -ale raised the issuewhether the nouns undergoing trascategorization ("the categorial shift of a lexical itemwith no superficial marking, resulting from its employment in a new (morpho)syntacticenvironment" as defined in Jezek & Ramat 2009:391) can yield sucheffect. Criminale 'criminal' is both the relational adjective derived from crimine 'crime'and a trancategorized noun meaning 'crook'. Due to prefix subcategorization, the form

46

could be interpreted as a noun and thus mislead the interpretation, e.g. in the caseof anticriminale "against the crime" vs "against (a) crook(s)". On the other hand, insome cases the non-suffixed form can be ambiguous between two parts of speech,e.g. in adverb - adjective couples like oltreoceano - oltreoceanico 'overseas',where oltreoceano can be either an adverb or an adjective (this case is not due todifferent parsing options, but rather to an undefined categorial status).

che rimbalzavano oltreoceano trasmettendo l' immagineperché non inventarne uno oltreoceanico tra la Toscana

Summarising, due to the part-of-speech ambiguity that in some circumstances canarise, it is reasonable to assume that the unambiguous form is usually preferred and theambiguous one is either unattested or less frequent.

1.13.3 Postnominal position

Montermini (2005:90) suggests that postnominal [anti-X]A constructions can beregarded in many cases as constituents of a compound: in this perspective pannoantifebbre 'antifever cloth' could be conceived not only as a noun phrase([pannoN antifebbreA]NP), but also as a compound ([panno antifebbre]N) with threeinternal constituents (this kind of compound is widespread in Germanic languages).Does the postnominal position favour the non-suffixed form? In order to investigatewhether such factor has a consistent effect, a series of web searches was performedon Google. The aim was calculating if we have a clear predominance of postnominalcontexts where non-suffixed forms are attested. 10 words were selected pertaining tocouples of suffixed/non-suffixed PRAs (the first 50 relevant hits were considered foreach of them).

A reliable analysis should, in fact, consider PRAs with a concurrent suffixed form:where such condition does not exist, we cannot have clear indications because theywould represent the only lexical item available to express a certain meaning. Thefollowing words were selected:

antimissile (with concurrent suffixed antimissilistico) 'anti-missile'antimafia (antimafioso) 'anti-mafia'antigoverno (antigovernativo) 'anti-government'antiberlusconi (antiberlusconiano) 'anti-Berlusconi'antiterrorismo (antiterroristico) 'anti-terrorism'

47

prematrimonio (prematrimoniale) 'pre-marriage'precongresso (precongressuale) 'pre-congress'postelezioni (postelettorale) 'post-elections'postsisma (postsismico) 'post-earthquake'postolimpiadi (postolimpico) 'post-olympic'

PostnominalNonpostnominal

Pref+N 381 (76,2%)119(23,8%)

The results indicate a strong correlation between Pref+N structure and postnominalposition. It seems that they are largely employed to form compound-like structures. Aswe will see in the next section, combining this aspect with contextual usages where thesuffixed form is preferred can provide a clearer picture of the alternation.

1.13.4 Non-relational usages

Although the object of this chapter was defined relational adjective, there is evidenceof usages which are "often closer to qualifying adjectives" (Montermini 2005:90).Are suffixed ore non-suffixed forms more inclined to a qualifying/gradable usage?The issue was investigated through the analysis of anti- PRAs in contexts where theyare employed as predicates, coordinated with other adjectives, modified by adverbs,and available in comparative forms. The queries were all performed on LaRepubblica corpus. Many instances were found of clearly non-relational usages (226 intotal):

non vuole apparire meno anti-israeliano di quanto non sianoA leggerlo , i passaggi più anti-Bossi sono quelli in cui si depuò assumere atteggiamenti troppo anti-serbi senza rischiareè un film molto anti-femminista, lui ha paura delle

Pref+N Pref+Adj

Non-relational

62 (27.4%)164(72.6%)

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The results show a clear tendency. Suffixed forms are preferred when PRAs havea qualifying function. Moreover, it must be noticed that many Pref+N constructionsemployed as non-relational adjectives are not ascribable to an alternant couple, but arerather probably coined on the spot for specific contextual communicative reasons, withno parallel suffixed form already established in the lexicon, e.g.

che fra i Democratici è il più anti-Cossiga. D' Alema però adessoro, cioè Juve, e quindi molto anti-Inter. Anche se stasera a Rav

In Gaeta & Ricca (2009)'s terms, such forms would be labeled [-lexical], sincethey do not enter the lexicon albeit based on a productive word formation pattern. Inorder to confirm this, a specific query was performed on a widely attested couple ofadjectives, namely antiberlusconi and antiberlusconiano 'anti-Berlusconi', extracting allthe instances cooccurring with predicate verbs, adverbs and coordinated forms. Theresults clearly show that the suffixed form is the only one employed in such contexts.No instance of the non-suffixed form was in fact found in La Repubblica corpus (against13 suffixed). Maybe more interestingly, the result was strongly confirmed by a series ofGoogle searches, yielding a vast majority of hits for the suffixed form:

"è antiberlusconi" (330 hits, 7%) 'is anti-Berlusconi'"è antiberlusconiano" (5,020 hits, 93%)

"troppo antiberlusconi" (7 hits, 1%) 'too anti-Berlusconi'"troppo antiberlusconiano" (468 hits, 99%)

"più antiberlusconi" (48 hits, 6%) 'more anti-Berlusconi'"più antiberlusconiano" (698 hits, 94%)

"meno antiberlusconi" (1 hit) 'less anti-Berlusconi'"meno antiberlusconiano" (100+ hits, 100%)

"fortemente antiberlusconi" (5 hits) 'strongly anti-Berlusconi'"fortemente antiberlusconiano" (245 hits, 98%)

It should also be considered that the input for the suffixed form was the singularmasculine (one out of four inflectional possibilities); searches including the otherpossible desinences would turn in stronger results. The general trend highlighted by

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corpus data encourages the view that suffixed forms are preferred in non-relationalusages because some contexts, for instance predicative usages, require moregrammatical information to be expressed. In addition to this, the evidence that non-suffixed constructions are preferred in compound-like complex words is strengthened,since modifiers in postnominal position typically accomplish a non-gradable function.

The results produced by the investigation of the postnominal context and non-relational usages shed new light on the "division of labour" at play between suffixedand non-suffixed forms. Although such forms cohabit and can reasonably be consideredsynonymous in most cases, corpus and web data show that their morphological structurehas a consistent effect on some of the contexts in which they are employed.

1.13.5 Factorization

Prefixal constructions can be factorized, i.e. if two coordinated words contain prefixesattached to the same lexical item, it can be omitted once avoiding a double, see forinstance

La radioterapia, pre- o post-operatoria, d’altra parte[http://www.aimac.it/stampa_tv_web.php?id=k6SUmA==]

The adjective operatoria is omitted in the first of the two disjuncted forms(preoperatoria). Does factorization favour one of the two concurrent forms? Being it aformal operation unrelated to meaning, we can expect that no relevant difference canbe encountered. In order to ascertain this, specific web searches (La Repubblica corpusdid not provide sufficient data) were performed aiming at finding several instances ofconjuncted/disjuncted prefixal forms and assessing whether either the suffixed or thenon-suffixed forms show a significantly higher presence. The first 100 relevant hits wereconsidered for each search: "pre e post", "post e pre", "anti e pro", "pro e anti", "pre opost", "post o pre", "anti o pro", "pro o anti". Here a sample of the hits

Pre o post-conciliari che siano, il Papa non ha[http://paparatzinger2-blograffaella.blogspot.com/]

possono avere un'azione anti o pro-infiammatoria. Il dosaggio è[http://www.omegor.it/ricerca/omega3-sistema-immunitario.html]

foglio di adozione e controlli post e pre adozione[www.ilcercapadrone.it/gatti16.htm]

è un decreto anti o pro crisi? La maggior parte

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[www.mininterno.net/fmess.asp?idt=2964]

The table below summarizes the results:

+N +Adj

FactorizedPrefixes

445 (56%) 355 (44%)

The slight difference in percentage confirms the prediction that both constructions canbe factorized. It is important to stress that, apart from the difference with non-suffixedforms, the possibility of factorizing suffixed ones is itself another piece of evidence ontheir morphological status. The formal segmentation of the word shows that languageusers perceive it as a combination of a prefix plus an adjective, i.e. in the same way aswords which do not pose bracketing paradoxes.

1.13.6 Specialised meaning

During the perusal of PRAs some forms were encountered which cannot be labeledas synonymous, although they exhibit the same structure of the synonymouscouples. Multirazza 'multi-race' and multirazziale 'multi-racial' select two meanings ofthe base noun razza 'race', respectively the one related to the zootechnical field (animalbreed) and the one related to the general concept of ethnic group:

l'addestramento di cani multirazza e meticci fondato[http://www.cani.com/allevamenti-di-cani/]

il cuore alla società multietnica, multirazziale e multireligiosa[http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/2003/giugno/19/]

The data observed demonstrate that some cases of alternation are semanticallymarked: although the derivational possibilities of a noun with two or more meaningscould lead to both a suffixed and a non-suffixed form (e.g. l'addestramento di cani*multirazziali; società *multirazza), each form is assigned a unique meaning, related toone of the word senses. In other cases, where no clear distinction between senses canbe established, a neat divergence can be found in the usage contexts from a semanticviewpoint. In order to have clear indications on the context, the "Word Sketch" functionof the Sketch Engine platform (Kilgarriff et al. 20045) was exploited. It provides

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a corpus-based automatic summary of a lemma's grammatical and collocationalbehaviour. Analysing the word sketches (from the ItWaC corpus) of several couples ofPRAs, it was possible to ascertain what words systematically co-occurred and thus geta picture of the meaning expressed by each form. Let us consider the word sketches ofthe multifunzione / multifunzionale couple. The four most frequent co-occurring lexicalitems were selected:

multifunzione multifunzionale

display 39 sportello 127

apparecchio 23 agricoltura 115

schermo 10 ruolo 84

fotocopiatrice 8 polo 25

In this case it is clear that multifunzione is restricted to the domain of concrete objects('display', 'appareil', 'monitor', 'photocopier') provided with multiple functionalities andfeatures (e.g. a fotocopiatrice multifunzione 'multifunctional photocopier' can scan, printetc.). Multifunzionale, on the other hand, seems to be rooted on the more abstractmeaning of funzione, i.e. that of "purpose" and "service", so that nouns modified byit are generally characterized by a wide range of purposes and/or services: a ruolomultifunzionale 'multifunctional role' is characterized by many contemporaneousfunctions. Where no sufficient data was available on ItWaC, collocational informationwas searched through WebCorp (Kehoe & Renouf 20026). According to WebCorp, forinstance, the most plausible collocation candidates for multirazza and multirazziale arerespectively allevamento 'farm' and società 'society'. Other couples of PRAs wereevaluated according to their collocational behaviour, and for some of them a clear trendemerged towards the assignment of specialised meanings (associated to different sensesof the noun base) to each form.

1.13.7 Language-specific factors

An investigation on the alternation cannot disregard language-specific features whichhelp better focus the phenomenon within the grammatical constraints posed by eachlanguage. Montermini (2005) looks at the attestation of suffixed and non-

5. Available online at http://www.sketchengine.co.uk/

6. Available online at http://www.webcorp.org.uk

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suffixed anti- adjectives. It is suggested that the possibility of having invariableadjectives like antifebbre is highly correlated with the language-specific presence ofsimplex invariable adjectives. As highlighted,

the morphological process which [licenses] this kind of adjectives should be(almost) exclusively active in languages which independently stipulate theexistence of invariable adjectives, as in the case of Italian. On the contrary,in languages where [it] is rarer if not impossible, the raising of this kind ofderivates should be highly disfavoured (Montermini 2005:92, my translation).

Montermini (2005) carries out his case study considering English, Italian and Russiandata. These languages differ in the above mentioned property, since English licensesinvariable adjectives (they are rather obligatorily invariable), Italian licenses bothvariable and invariable (see e.g. alto/a/i/e 'high' and viola 'violet') and Russian onlyadmits variable adjectives. The prediction that each of these languages should behavedifferently is confirmed by the attestation of non-suffixed anti- adjectives (see the figurebelow, translated from Montermini 2005:94).

Pref+N Pref+Adj Total

English 200 (73%) 72 (26,5%) 272

Italian 84 (43,7%) 108 (56,3%) 192

Russian - 89 (100%) 89

As expected, Russian did not display any invariable adjective among the selectedformations in anti-. I performed a survey of Russian prefixed adjectives looking at otherprefixes, with the help of a native speaker. The results obtained in a small randomsample (100 hits) confirm Montermini (2005)'s conclusions, since no adjective wasfound with no suffixal marking.

#458489 прошли пятнадцать лет … Постсоветское время - немалый срок, какpost.soviet.Suff 'postsoviet'

In order to test the language-specificity of the alternation, I performed a similaranalysis on two web corpora of the Dutch language (Kilgarriff et al. 2009a) andPortuguese language (Kilgarriff et al. 2009b), aided by two native speakers. A query

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was performed in order to extract all anti- adjectives. The aim was assessing whether themorphological configuration of PRAs in Dutch and Portuguese was influenced by theiradjectival morphology. See for instance

Portuguese: Especialistas em luta antiterrorista e no complexo puzzle desistemas electrónicos de defesa antimíssil, em uso na aviaçãoanticorpos radioactivos anti-cancro (ou seja, dirigidos comoos tempos da luta anti-corporativa, defendendo o protagonismodevido aos protestos antiguerra, motivou críticas dos donos

Dutch: iedereen is eigenlijk in een soort anti-Bush sfeer hier, waardoorvoorspellen dat een grootscheepse anti-terrorisme campagneZe infiltreerden er in terroristische anti-Cubaanse organisatiesEuropese hoofdsteden in ruil voor anti-Russische retoriek de

Among the adjectives prefixed with anti-, a count was made of formally Pref+N andPref+Adj adjectives. The results are below:

Pref+N Pref+Adj total

Dutch 64 (36.2%) 113 (63.8%) 177

Portuguese 74 (32.2%) 156 (67.8%) 230

Portuguese adjectives were mostly of the Pref+Adj type (67.8%). This is consistentwith the grammatical constraints of the language, which require, as in the case of Italian,the marking of both gender and number but license invariable adjectives. Dutch datadisplayed a slightly different trend: the percentage of Pref+Adj adjectives is quite high(63.8%) even though the inflectional morphology requires marking in a limited rangeof cases, i.e. only in the singular form introduced by indefinite articles. A necessaryremark is that Dutch probably displays a less clear borderline between derivation andcompounding: as a matter of fact, many anti- constructions were embedded intocompounds:

Wat nu aan de gang is met de antidiscriminatiewetgeving, doorbreekt dit principe.'antidiscrimination legislation'

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This may lead to the conclusion that in Dutch the same modifier function is realizedthrough both adjectives and compounds' constituents (many instances of adjectives have,however, a rigid prenominal position), so that the final number of Pref+N adjectives isinferior to the expectations.

1.14 Processing issues

As pointed out by Bertinetto (1995:7), it is important to ackwnowledge thatcompositional and non-compositional patterns in morphology are related to bothproduction and comprehension, so speakers "make use of both compositional anddecompositional procedures". A theory of word formation must thus cope with bothstructural issues and processing mechanisms. The cognitive operations performed by thespeakers can shed new light on grammatical idiosincracy and/or inconsistency and helpunveiling some of the factors involved in the structural makeup of words.

I will now provide a brief review of some processing issues related to derived words,which will contribute to motivate discrepancies in the meaning/structure interface ofPRAs.

It seems reasonable to assume that bracketing paradoxes in PRAs can be related togeneral properties of prefixation and suffixation in world languages. On the basis ofGreenberg (1966)'s observations on prefixing and/or suffixing languages ("There is adistinct predominance of suffixing. Exclusively suffixing languages are fairly common,while exclusively prefixing languages are quite rare"), Hall (2000) reports that thepresence of suffixation strongly exceeds that of prefixation across a wide sample ofworld languages. This has led scholars to consider the suffix class prototypical in thedomain of affixes and to speak of a "suffixing preference". A number of arguments havebeen proposed in order to account for such asymmetry. Cutler et al. (1985) argues thatthe overall preference for suffix morphology results from the way language is processedby its users: word onsets are more psychologically salient and stems are more likely tobe processed before affixes.

Could this elements speak in favour of structural mismatches in PRAs? In a purelyformal perspective, the bracketing paradox issue could be analysed in terms of acompetition between prefix and suffix towards the attachment to the innermostconstituent: Prefix - [Noun - Suffix] vs [Prefix - Noun] - Suffix. Prefixes, however,do not produce formal changes on their bases, unlike suffixes. This suggests thatthe morphosyntactic formal properties of the output word can be affected by suchmorphological asymmetry, ovveruling compositional semantics in the word formationprocess.

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Another piece of evidence related to the processing of PRAs comes from so-called"prefix-stripping" models. Studies on visual and auditory recognition of prefixed words(see Taft & Foster 1975) have claimed that they are analyzed into their constituentmorphemes before the occurring of lexical access, so that a PRA like antifebbrilewould have its adjectival root febbrile accessed before the lexical access to the wholeword. Establishing direct causal relations between processing strategies and attestedmorphological structures is far from unproblematic: however, the prefix-stripping modelcan shed light on the fact that bracketing paradoxes in PRAs allow the access to anadjectival form which is already in the lexicon. A non-paradoxical form would in turnrequire the access to the lexical item as a whole. Again, as long as this does not posecomprehension problems to the language user, it is reasonable to assume that a formcontaining independently accessible words is preferred. In addition to this, a paradoxicalform probably allows a faster recognition of the noun base because of its paradigmaticrelationships with the adjectival form embedded.

A further issue involved in the processing of PRAs is the role of hierarchicalmorphological structure. It might be argued that PRAs' special morphosyntacticconfiguration is somehow easier to process than hypothetical concurrent forms. Thebracketing paradox involved concerns the analysis of a PRA according to a left-branching (expected on a semantic basis) vs a right-branching structure, actuallyobserved, and the only one which can account for allomorphic adjectival forms, as canbe seen below.

Libben (1994) assessed the role of morphological structure in lexical processing. Apatient who showed sensitivity to the formal complexity of multimorphemic strings wastested in a naming latency experiment with affixed nonsense roots that were constructedso that the resulting complex nonwords were either left-, right-branching or illegal (seefigure below, from Libben 1994:52)

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Libben argues that due to his deficit-related diminished resources interacting withthe computational demands of normal lexical processing "he might show effects ofdifferences in hierarchical structure that could not be detected in the investigation ofnormal subjects" (Libben 1994:51). Among the morphologically legal nonwords, thesubject showed more difficulty with left-branching structures than with right-branchingones. As PRAs show a right-branching structure where semantics demands a left-branching one, it seems plausible to imagine that (although the present evidence wasobtained through verbal, not adjectival stimuli) the ease of the processing can be relatedto the preference towards a semantically divergent morphology.

1.15 Conclusions

The previous sections have tried to outline an analysis of the phenomenon ofbracketing paradoxes in the domain of prefixed relational adjectives. Unlike manyscholars treating bracketing paradoxes as a "bug" in morphological theory, I have triedto offer a broad characterization of its instantiation in Italian taking into account themultifaceted nature of word formation, without any claim of exhaustiveness. It wasapparent from the discussion that data did not allow to establish clear-cut boundaries.Corpus and web data, however, combined with the review of some of the main wordformation models, have contributed to shed light on some aspects related to the presenceof BPs in PRAs, as well as on their morphological, syntactic and semantic properties.

The combinatorial possibilities of prefixes and suffixes have shown major drawbacksin theoretical models conceiving PRAs as a special word formation phenomenon tobe assimilated to parasynthesis. The forms addressed in the chapter display a structurewhich does not challenge binarism, although their structure is unexpected on a semanticbasis.

The categorial-only function of the suffix (endorsed by Corbin 1999) has beenunveiled providing arguments related to the semantics of PRAs, looking at Italian data inwhich non-relational suffixes were employed as "paradigm integrators", and observinghow speakers were able to map PRA-internal anaphors in an acceptability test.

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Thanks to comprehension data elicited from native speakers, it was also possible toobserve how novel instantiations of the described constructionist template were easilyintegrated.

The alternation of suffixed vs non-suffixed forms allowed to better focus theircommon nominal nature, and provide some generalisations about the factors favouringeither form and their respective role in the lexicon.

A rapid treatment of issues related to language processing has helped us establisha bridge between attested structural morphological properties and the way speakersnaturally process complex words: although no direct conclusion can be drawn, boththe preference for multimorphemic right-branching words and prefix-stripping theoriesof lexical processing can provide clues about the potentials reasons for some cross-linguistic aspects of lexicon's structure.

Bracketing paradoxes in the domain of PRAs can thus be conceived as a natural stateof affairs in Italian. On the basis of a range of structural and semantic properties theyfit perfectly in the Italian adjectival system and represent a productive word formationpattern.

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2. Bracketing paradoxes in phrasal morphology

2.1 Aim of the chapter

This chapter will deal with phrasal bracketing paradoxes (henceforth phrasal BPs),i.e. those phrasal constructions in which a mismatch occurs between morphosyntacticstructure and semantic reading. As can be seen from the English electric guitarist, somecomplex expressions appear to license two competing accounts of their morphosyntacticstructure, each of them capturing just one level of representation, namely eithergrammatical (i) or semantic (ii):

(i). [electric] [[guitar][-ist]](ii). [[electric] [guitar]] [-ist]

The research to date has tended to focus on the solution of the theoretical puzzlerather than on its description as the result of a productive pattern in World languages.Far too little attention has been paid to the role of BPs in the lexicon/syntax interface.The majority of studies on phrasal BPs were skewed towards English data: as we willshow, language-specific issues will shed light on phrasal BPs' formal properties.

The morphosyntactic and semantic properties of phrasal BPs raise interestingquestions about the role of phrases in word formation and enhance our understandingof the blurred boundary between the notions of word, phrase, and lexical unit. Previousstudies on phrasal bracketing paradoxes focussed on personal nouns (at least sinceSpencer 1988), i.e. expressions denoting the actors of specific (often professional)activities e.g. modern linguist, transformational grammarian, baroque flautist etc. Theyhave not dealt with the phrase-based derivation of adjectives e.g. energetico solare'solar energetic', scolastico dell'obbligo 'related to compulsory education' etc. In order tocontribute to fill this gap, a wide documentation of phrasal BP constructions in Italianwill be provided: both from the domain of personal nouns and from that of phrase-basedadjectives.After a survey of the relevant literature and its critical assessment with respect to Italiandata, a descriptive section will highlight the formal and semantic properties of phrasalBPs in Italian. Some space will then be devoted to the assessment of how languageusers cope with this phenomenon in comprehension and production.

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2.2 Phrasal bracketing paradoxes

As noticed by Scalise (1994:250, my translation) a nuclear physicist is not

a "physicist who is nuclear": the semantic constituent "nuclear physics" doesnot correspond to any morphological constituent.

We can observe that phrasal nouns are actually NPs whose interpretation is not thesame of head+modifier NPs. In addition to adjective + noun NPs, Romance languagesdisplay a set of phrasal BPs involving a PP instead of an adjective, e.g. It. calciatore acinque lit. soccer.player to five 'futsal player', tennista da tavolo 'table tennis player'.

Kerleroux (2007) addresses the semantics of pêcheur sous la glace 'fisherman underthe ice' and similar French constructions. Referring to a picture seen in Le Monde withthe caption "Pêcheurs sous la glace", she reports she "looked at the picture, trying todiscern, under the ice, any fisherman. But the fishermen were on the ice, where theywere putting a wire and a hook". At first glance, in both constructions it is hard tointerpret the APs and PPs as attaching to the complex noun.

A major challenge in the relation between modifier PPs and APs is that posed byLexical Integrity issues. In a nutshell, the LIH (Bresnan & Mchombo 1995) assumesthat the internal structure of words is not accessible to syntax processes. This impliesthat in an AP/PP + complex noun NP the former cannot "see" the word's internalcomponents and have a semantically restricted scope over any of them. Let us considerthe following examples:

good truckdriverskilled designer

In the above phrases the adjective can only have its scope on the complex noun, soa good truckdriver is not a driver of good trucks and a skilled designer is obviously adesigner who is skilled. Unlike the examples mentioned, the structure of some phrasesappears to cast doubt on the validity of the LIH. Booij (2009:146) discusses DutchNPs in which "[...] the adjective may have scope over the first constituent of thecomplex word only, rather than over the complex word as a whole": a [[A]A[N-suffix]N]NP wetenschappelijke onderzoeker ('scientific researcher') is not a researcherwho is scientific, but rather someone who carries out scientific research". Likewise,Kerleroux (2007:141), assuming that "the syntax neither manipulates nor has accessto the internal form of words" (Anderson 1992:84), wonders whether a syntactic

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relationship can hold between a constituent (the PP sous la glace) and the internal partof a word, i.e. the verbal base pêcher 'to fish' from pêcheur 'fisherman'.

One of the first attempts to offer a formal representation of this kind of constructions,capable of reconciling the demands from morphology and semantics, is that providedby Williams (1981). The notion of Lexical Relatedness stipulates that two items canbe related if they only differ in one head position (see figure below). The LexicalRelatedness principle thus accounts for the conceptual link between nuclearphysicist and nuclear physics despite the absence of any derivational clue.

The long-lasting attempt to solve the BP has turned attention away from the issue ofexplaining the nature of this construction. The purely formal treatment of BPs wasbased either on postulated additional representational levels (Williams' LexicalRelatedness) or on complex transformational mechanisms "repairing" the surfacestructure, mainly by means of manipulating the internal word structure in order toguarantee the respect of selectional restrictions, e.g. Pesetsky's (1985) Affix Raising.Approaches of this kind carry with them various limitations when dealing withnonconcatenative morphology, where no clear segmentation can be made and it isproblematic to identify morphemes in order to specify their hierarchical position andpostulate their internal movement. Consider the Italian cases below, which display anincreasing loss of transparency (including suppletive formations):

Transparent chitarra elettrica chitarrista elettrico 'electric guitarist'

Back-formation linguistica cognitiva linguista cognitivo 'cognitive linguist'

Suppletive diritto del lavoro giurista del lavoro 'labour lawyer'

A word like chitarrista is transparently derived from the noun chitarra, so noproblems are posed for theories involving operations on the affix -ista. On the otherhand, the relationship between linguista ''linguist' and linguistica 'linguistics' is not sotransparent and thus discourages a similar treatment.

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One major step forward has arisen out of Spencer's (1988) insight into the prominentrole of the paradigmatic dimension. In Spencer's view, the key issue is represented by theglobal word formation process which is not restricted to the word itself, but connectedto the availability of other related lexical units which license the BP phrase by means ofproportional analogy.

Spencer points out that the phrasal expression on which the final construction isbased must be lexicalized, i.e. stored in the lexicon. In our example, we could saythat unlike electric guitar, an unlexicalized phrase like big guitar could not lead to bigguitarist (in the sense of 'player of big guitars'). Likewise, it is stressed that "the secondprerequisite is that the meaning of the individual components be identical". That is, thesense of guitar in guitarist and electric guitar must be the same.

2.3 Language-specific factors

Looking at data on BPs coming from languages other than English, it is rather clearthat theoretical models approaching the issue cannot but face the different manifestationsof the phenomenon. English-based accounts have long ignored crucial language-specificfeatures, essential in both the definition of the BP issue and in its description. I willnow provide an outline of two major grammatical aspects of the language-specificinstantiations of phrasal BPs. The issue of word order is crucial in the definition of BPsas "paradoxes". The purely morphological phenomenon (i.e. BPs attested at the wordlevel) was traditionally conceived as a mismatch between a phrase's semantic scoperelations and its structural makeup, since

"[...]while the affix seems to be merged with the second constituent followingits own usual selection and allomorphy patterns suggesting a [α + [β + γ]] analysis, semantically it has scope over the complex base, supporting anopposite [[α + β ] + γ ] analysis" (Bisetto & Melloni 2008:7)

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A theory involving the assignment of an unambiguous structure is concerned with thechoice of the most appropriate bracketing. Since there are two possible bracketings, [α+ [β + γ ]] and [[α + β ] + γ ], the paradox arises because both display some kind ofinconsistency, i.e. they both lack a match with either the semantic or the grammaticallevel. The question to be anwered is why they are both possible bracketings of theword. If we look at English, it is clear from both the word and the phrase level that twoalternative structures can be conceived.

This paradox is made possible by the linear order of morphemes and the basicsyntactic word order of English, which license the formation of structures XYZ in whichY can be attached to both Y and Z. If we take a look at Italian, however, we have adifferent situation. On the one hand double bracketing is still possible at the word level,but on the other hand most phrases cannot be conceived as structurally paradoxical.Due to Italian adjective-noun basic order, chitarrista elettrico cannot receive twobracketings, because of the constituents' position.

Word Bracketing 1 Bracketing 2

Eng electric guitarist [electric [guitarist]] [[electric guitar]ist]

Ita chitarrista elettrico [[[chitarr(a)]ista] [elettrico]] ?

English-only studies focussed their insight on the parallel ambiguity of affix semanticand structural scope. In the phrase domain, it is evident that while the external positionof the affix allows English to have a double bracketing, Italian cannot provide analternative structural makeup of the word, making the affix scope mismatch unsolvableby means of linguistic notation. It seems to me that, from a comparative perspective, thisfinding can itself help to enhance our understanding of the phenomenon.

As I have reviewed in the previous section, Spencer's approach to BPs gets rid of theassumption that they must be "repaired" by means of additional levels of description and/or transformational mechanisms. Turning attention to the paradigmatic level, Spencerboth recognizes the crucial role of what is already available in the lexicon and identifiesthe close relation between phrasal BPs and their alleged base, that is to say a normalphrase. Booij (2009:96) argues that the fourth proportional scheme proposed by Spencerworks only up to a certain extent:

ln Spencer’s (1988) analysis, the restricted scope interpretationof transformational grammarian is related to the existence of a lexical

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unit transformational grammar and the word pair grammar-grammarian, andtherefore analysed as an analogical formation. However, restricted scope alsooccurs in cases where such an explanation cannot be invoked. ln the examplesof restricted semantic scope given above such NPs are not available. Forinstance, [...] there is not a well-formed phrase wetenschappelijkeonderzoek ‘scientific research’ that can be related to wetenschappelijkeonderzoeker ‘scientific researcher’ since the correct phrase is wetenschappelijkonderzoek, without a final schwa on the adjective.

The same holds for Italian, where there is no independent *chitarra elettrico onwhich chitarrista elettrico is based. The gender (and number) agreement discouragesthe view that a straightforward analogical scheme applies, and highlights the mismatchbetween the grammatical and semantic properties of the adjective in the final BPoutcome. Booij (2009:97) claims that this clearly shows that "word-internal structuremust be visible to rules of semantic interpretation" (see figure below).

Italian phrasal BPs are made up of a noun and an adjective agreeing in numberand gender. The analogical formation process fails to predict this aspect of the finalexpression. As a matter of fact, this is caused by Italian inflectional morphology, thatunlike English obligatorily marks number and gender in adjectives. Consequently, wehave an adjective whose inflection is unpredictable just on the basis of the adjective'soccurrence in the base phrase (elettrico is inflected in masculine, whereas the basephrase chitarra elettrica displays a feminine adjective).

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An analogical scheme thus does not straightforwardly apply to form what we callphrasal BPs. Although strong arguments speak in favour of analogy playing animportant role in the emergence of such constructions (e.g. allomorphic complexnouns), a fourth proportional scheme does not capture some facets of the phenomenon.I will argue that this is one of the central issues their linguistic hybrid status.

As we have seen from the above examples, the examination of two instances inlanguages other than English has provided us with a clearer picture of the phenomenon.Italian data, in particular, not only did challenge the analogical approach, unfamiliar withthe treatment of complex noun - adjective agreement (in the same way as Dutch), butalso offered clear counterevidence to long-standing theoretical models built upon thenotion of paradox.

Ackema & Neeleman (2004) identify two mapping principles (between morphosyntaxand morphophonology) which are relevant for the discussion on phrasal BPs. The LinearCorrespondence (Ackema & Neeleman 2004:140) predicts that

if X is structurally external to Y,X is phonologically realized as /x/, andY is phonologically realized as /y/

then /x/ is linearly external to /y/.

The Linear Correspondence principle thus predicts that affixes are phonologicallyexternal to the base they are attached to. Ackema & Neeleman (2004) claim thatthis mapping principle can be violated because of "conflicting demands". This can berepresented by the Input Correspondence, stating that

if an AFFIX selects (a category headed by) X,

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the AFFIX is phonologically realized as /affix/, andX is phonologically realized as /x/,

then /affix/ takes /x/ as its host

According to this principle, the position of the affix is ruled by the base's head and canthus violate standard Linear Correspondence. This is the case of Italian phrasal BPs: aconflict between Input Correspondence and Linear Correspondence is triggered becauseof the left-headedness of the bases involved. Let us consider the already mentionedexample chitarrista elettrico 'electric guitarist'. Deriving from chitarra elettrica 'electricguitar', the output of derivation could conform to either principles:

Linear Correspondence: chitarraX elettricaY > *chitarraX elettricaY +istaZ

Input Correspondence: chitarraX elettricaY > chitarraX +istaZ elettricaY

Only the input correspondent mapping is grammatical in this case, since the affix -istaZ is attached to the head of the noun phrase (i.e. X). The affixation on left-headedconstructions must "disobey" one of the two constraints, since the affix cannotcontemporarily be external and hosted by X: the result is a [[/x/ /affix/] /y/] constructionwhere standard bracketing is hindered by the "internal" phonological realization of asemantically "external" affix.

Some remarks are needed on the number/gender agreement between the derived nounand the adjective. It seems that the formal properties of the phrasal base are maintainedthroughout the derivational process, so that the agreement is present both in the inputand in the output. We can label this as expletive agreement, since the semantic propertiesrelated to gender and number are not relevant and the formal agreement has the onlyfunction of marking the dependency between noun and adjective.

2.4 Phrases as lexical units

We will now dwell on the role of phrases in the lexicon. The aim of this section will beto highlight how phrasal BPs are rooted in the possible functional equivalence betweenwords and phrases.

The role of phrases in word formation has been longly debated, at least since Aronoff(1976:21) "All regular word formation processes are word based. A new word is formedby applying a regular rule to a single already existing word" and Botha (1984:137)'s NoPhrase Constraint (henceforth NPC), stating that "lexical rules do not apply to syntactic

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phrases to form morphologically complex words". Bresnan & Mchombo (1995:181)argue that "words are built out of different structural elements and by different principlesof composition than syntactic phrases. Specifically, the morphological constituents ofwords are lexical and sublexical categories - stems and affixes".

These theoretical positions have led many scholars to seek potential counterevidencein the form of words containing phrases as constituents. Lieber (1992:11) (i-iii) andBauer (1983:164) (iv-v) point out English compounds with a phrasal non-head:

i) [over the fence] gossipii) an [ate too much] headacheiii) [God is dead] theologyiv) [what do you think?] movementv) [don’t tell me what to do] look

In such compounds phrases of different types have come to occupy the constituentspot traditionally reserved to words. Bresnan and Mchombo (1995:194) addresscriticism towards the NPC stating that

where syntactic phrases appear to undergo morphological derivation, it is byvirtue of their being lexicalized. Although lexicalization can be innovative, thenonsyntactic status of lexicalized phrases embedded in word structure can bedetected in properties such as lexical gaps, and can be confirmed by the otherlexical integrity tests.

Bresnan and Mchombo maintain that violations to the NPC apparently occur becausephrases are lexicalized and thus do not pose a real challenge because of their"nonsyntactic" status. Lieber & Scalise (2006) suggest that the insertion/modificationtest (probably the best known for distinguishing lexical forms from syntactic ones)discloses challenging findings in Italian phrasal compounds, e.g. produzionescarpe 'shoe production', whose constituents reveal a partially syntactic nature beingmodifiable by adjectives. Let us consider the examples below (from Lieber & Scalise2006:15):

produzione accurata scarpe lit. production accurate shoes 'accurate shoe production'produzione scarpe estive lit. production summer shoes 'summer shoe production'prod. accurata sc. estive lit. prod. accurate shoes summer 'accur. sum. shoe prod.'

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The authors conclude that an interplay between morphology and syntax must not beexcluded a priori. With respect to phrasal BPs, it is important to stress that English-only accounts have equated expressions containing phrasal constituents with phrase-based expressions, i.e. old maidish with transformational grammarian, both representedas suffixed phrases:

[[old maid]Nish]A

[[transformational grammar]Nian]A

As we have already pointed out, left-head languages offer clear counterevidence tothis generalisation, because if an adjective modifying a noun is on the right side, the affixscoping on the whole phrase will not always find itself on the right side. Italian displaystwo different word formation patterns involving phrases. Let us consider the followingexamples:

(i) [[pan dolc(e)]Naio]N

(ii) [chitarrista elettrico]N

Whereas the former can be represented as a lexicalized phrase + an affix, the latteris conceivably a phrase which underwent derivation (chitarra elettrica 'electric guitar'> chitarrista elettrico 'electric guitarist'), so that no more than one bracketing structurecan be stipulated. Can syntactic phrases be the base of word formation processes? In hisconsiderations on the relationship between syntax and morphology, Botha (1984:137)specifies that

syntactic rules are excluded not only from the class of word-formation rules,but also from the class of rules that form the bases to which word-formationrules may apply.

Bresnan and Mchombo (1995:190) defend the position that most "phrasal" constructionsare often based on quotes or foreign expressions:

a mea culpa lookthe ich bin ein Berliner speecha certain je ne sais quoi quality

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We will not argue that every possible phrase can enter paradoxical constructions like(ii). Data, however, confirm that a wide range of phrasal bases can enter word formation,albeit not quotative and/or foreign. A certain degree of "fixedness" is required, butItalian phrasal nouns display a structure with clear syntactic properties, both inderivation input and output (N/A number and gender agreement). Sprenger (2003:4,cited in Booij 2009) delves into the notion of "fixed expression":

Fixed expressions (FEs) refer to specific combinations of two or more wordsthat are typically used to express a specific concept. [...] The defining featureof a FE is that it is a word combination, stored in the Mental Lexicon of nativespeakers, that as a whole refers to a (linguistic) concept.

As highlighted by Booij (2009:219) the naming function is central with respect to thisissue. Apart from complex and simplex word, in fact, phrases too can establish a directlink between an expression and a concept. The phrasal naming strategy is one amongthe many mechanisms for the formation of new names: De Caluwe (1990) enlists phraseconstructions, borrowings, brand naming, acronyms, clippings and semantic extension(in addition to standard word formation, i.e. derivation and compounding). So phrasescan perform the same function of words and give rise to lexical units. Let us considersome examples:

Italian mulino a vento 'windmill'guerra fredda 'cold war'

Spanish luna nueva 'new moon' (Rainer & Varela 1992)Greek tritos kosmos ‘Third World’ (Ralli & Stavrou 1998)English french fries

Italian phrasal BPs are rooted in the functional equivalence between phrases andwords. Both can be bases for word formation processes. In the literature pertaining toboth the NPC and bracketing paradoxes, the boundary between words and lexical unitshas been ignored. As we have illustrated, although a certain degree of fixedness is acentral feature of phrasal naming units, this does not imply that phrasal units involvedin word formation should be equated with words (lexemes, syntactic atoms). Booij(2009:221) concludes that "lexical units can be constructed by means of syntactic rules".

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The constructionist approach to word formation assumes as its starting point thehypothesis that there is no evidence of a strict division between what scholars havelabelled "lexicon" and "syntax" (see Chomsky, 1965). According to Goldberg (1995)both lexical and syntactic constructions form essentially the same type of "[...] datastructure: both pair form with meaning". On this view, the boundary is not clear-cut,but blurred, due to basic commonalities between the two constructions. This assumptionallows the theoretical description to combine structures pertaining to both traditionallyseparated levels and let them cohabit in order to provide an in-depth characterization oflinguistic phenomena. For the same reason, rules are not accepted, and it is rather putforward an all-encompassing notion of generalization as a primary source of linguisticprocesses.

Within this framework, Masini (2009) focuses phrasal lexemes, "a kind ofintermediate unit between syntax and the lexicon", analysing the properties of ItalianNoun + Adjective and Noun + Preposition + Noun constructions in Italian. Masini(2009:259) shows that some tests may be applied which demonstrate phrasal lexemes'paradigmatic and syntagmatic cohesion (and thus lexical nature), e.g.paradigmatic variation is blocked, since words cannot be replaced by near-synonyms,which pose no problems for standard phrases:

casa di cura lit. home of treatment ‘nursing home’*abitazione di cura lit. dwelling of treatment

Furthermore, the constituents cannot be "individually modified". Neither numberinflection on non-head nor adjectivation with narrow scope can be realised:

*casa di cure lit. home of treatments*una casa accogliente di cura lit. a home cosy of cure ‘a nursing cosy home’

Phrasal lexemes display a certain degree of lexicalization: some remarks shouldbe done on this. The notion of lexicalization has received many definitions and theboundaries between the conceptual and the formal side of it have not always been veryclear, i.e. scholars have often referred to lexicalization addressing some possible peculiarformal counterparts, e.g. univerbation (in grammaticalization processes, a complexexpression may be reanalysed as a single unit and be assigned a new function/meaning,see e.g. Bybee 1985:18). Bauer (1983) operates a distinction between syntactic,semantic, morphological and phonological lexicalization. The notion of semanticlexicalization is however far from that required in the present discussion. Bauer

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(1983:55) presents instances of compounds and derivatives which lost and/or lacksemantic compositionality, so that the notion has often been considered synonymous ofidiomatization (Lipka 2002:113). As we have seen, phrasal lexemes and the potential"bases" for phrasal BPs are not inherently idiomatized. It is thus maybe more fruitful torefer to the notion of fixedness rather than lexicalization and/or idiomatization. Sprenger(2003:4, cited in Booij 2009) states that typical examples of fixed expressions (FEs)

[...]often have an opaque meaning or a deficient syntactic structure, forexample, by and large or kick the bucket. However, these properties are notessential. [FEs are] “non-compositional“ in the sense that the combination andstructure of their elements need not be computed afresh, but can be retrievedfrom the Mental Lexicon. However, the degree of lexical and syntacticfixedness can vary.

Booij (2009:221) highlights that "a fixed expression may be completelycompositional, but nevertheless stored because it is a conventional name for a particularconcept". In sum, the "bases" of BPs are fixed expressions with independent constituents(no univerbation); their meaning can have different degrees of idiomatization and this isnot a prerequisite.

Masini (2009) clearly illustrates the semantic affinity between morphological andphrasal lexemes (see figure below, from Masini 2009:268).

Unlike regular phrases and morphological lexemes, characterized by both eithercompositional or non compositional form and meaning, phrasal lexemes manifest adissociation between form and meaning, i.e. a syntactic form and a "morphological"meaning (naming a unitary concept, replaceable with an either complex or simplexword). It is reasonable to assume that this mismatch is at the bottom of the bracketingparadox phenomenon, since phrasal lexemes are not syntactic atoms albeit displaying asemantics licensing unitary derivation, and cannot thus undergo a derivational processas words do. Derived phrases maintain their syntactic internal dependency, e.g. the

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number/gender agreement in the case of Noun + Adjective constructions: all four Italiandeclensional possibilities (masculine or feminine and singular or plural) can be realised:

chitarrista elettrico 'electric guitarist'

m.sing. un eccellente chitarrista elettrico e [http://www.hwupgrade.it/forum/]f.sing. promettente chitarrista elettrica, avevo [http://italiano.peterschaefer.info/]m.plur. Molti chitarristi elettrici preferiscono [http://gobilumusic.wordpress.com/]f.plur. violiniste che chitarriste elettriche, ciò non [http://forum.musicoff.com/]

Summarising, phrasal BPs are rooted in the functional equivalence between wordsand a certain class of phrases which, albeit maintaining their structural and formalproperties, have been institutionalized and brought to express a unitary concept. Thesemantic equivalence of the latter with morphological lexemes itself licenses derivation;their formal properties prevent derivation from being formally realised on the phrase as awhole (i.e. externally). The output of the derivational process is thus a phrasal lexeme inwhich a derivational morpheme can be found which has scope on the whole expressionbut is attached to only one constituent.

2.5 Semantic issues

In order to provide a clearer picture of phrasal BPs, some remarks on their semanticsare necessary. The main point to address is to test their being "special" under atheoretical viewpoint. This section will outline some of the issues related to the reasonswhich set phrasal BPs apart from other type of constructions, addressing both Noun +Adjective and Noun + Prepositional Phrase types.

At least since Beard (1995), some claims were advanced against the existence ofNoun + Adjective bracketing paradoxes. Beard (1995)'s claim is semantic in nature:he considers bracketing paradoxes from a semantic scope perspective (i.e. the wordinternal scope of the adjective in a construction like criminal lawyer), and argues thatsimilar issues concern some cases of underived head nouns. In the examples below,no ambiguity between a base vs complex word adjectival reading can arise, since theirstructure is different from attribute phrases like first violinist, i.e. involving a complexword (violin+ist) and thus cannot be related to different word formation levels: goodathlete usually refers to someone who is good as an athlete, rather than "an athlete whois good (as a person)". According to Beard, this would support the claim that BPs are notspecial in their semantic composition, since instances of compositional ambiguity can be

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found also among phrases with unequivocal morphosyntactic structure, namely made upof simplex words.

good athlete 's.o. good as an athlete' vs. 'an athlete who is good as a person'old friend 'actor in an old friendship' vs. 'old actor in a friendship'

In order to provide a semantic notation of the adjectival modification process forboth structurally ambiguous and unambiguous phrases, Beard analyses the emergence ofmultiple meanings in terms of featural composition among constituents, i.e. leading theadjective to compose with one of the features of the head noun's semantic representation.Be it a simplex (e.g. friend) or a complex (e.g. lawyer) word, the adjective will modifyone particular feature of the head, licensing two different semantic readings (see figurebelow, from Beard 1995:34).

Although Beard puts forward interesting insights on the similarities between phrasalBPs and ambiguous phrases, some distinctions should be laid out. It should be clearfrom the previous sections that according to the position defended here phrasal BPs arenot analysable in terms of noun-adjective combination. Number and gender agreementof the adjective in Romance languages always follows the complex noun, so it wouldspeak in favour of a misleading semantic composition (a chitarrista elettrico is nota chitarrista who is elettrico). This additional mismatch should contribute to definingphrasal BPs as a special class of expressions. Phrasal BPs represent an instance ofphrase-based word formation: this means that the adjective has no semantic relationshipwith the derived noun, since the latter "comprises" the former, i.e. has scope over thewhole original phrasal lexeme (e.g. chitarra elettrica) and has no proper modifyingfunction. In most cases, the adjective could not be analysed as a modifier because ofsemantic selectional restrictions, e.g. [-HUMAN] adjectives.

The adjectives involved cannot be analysed as intersective (the semantic compositioncannot be characterized in terms of the intersection of noun and adjective extensions): letus consider chitarrista elettrico vs. chitarrista famoso 'famous guitarist'. We can assume

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that whereas the latter can be defined as the intersection of chitarrista and famoso, theformer cannot:

chitarrista (α) famoso (β) 'famous guitarist'[[α β]] = [[α]] ∩ [[β]]chitarrista (α) elettrico (β) 'electric guitarist'[[α β]] ≠ [[α]] ∩ [[β]]

The same holds for the following examples:

sociologo (α) svizzero (β) 'Swiss sociologist'[[α β]] = [[α]] ∩ [[β]]sociologo (α) criminale (β) 'criminal sociologist'[[α β]] ≠ [[α]] ∩ [[β]]

sciatore (α) professionista (β) 'professional skier'[[α β]] = [[α]] ∩ [[β]]sciatore (α) alpino (β) 'alpine skier'[[α β]] ≠ [[α]] ∩ [[β]]

flautista (α) anziano (β) 'elderly flutist'[[α β]] = [[α]] ∩ [[β]]flautista (α) dolce (β) 'sweet flutist'[[α β]] ≠ [[α]] ∩ [[β]]

The representation of phrasal BPs' semantic composition must take into account theproperties of the base (a phrasal lexeme), the unit on which the modifying or purelyclassifying function of the adjective takes place. As highlighted by McNally & Boleda(2004:180), the fact that John is a male architect entails that John is male and that heis an architect, whereas if John is a technical architect we cannot infer that John istechnical and that he is an architect. In formal semantics a more adequate account canbe provided thanks to Siegel (1976)'s definition of predicate modifiers, i.e. propertiesof properties, rather than properties of individuals. If we conceive the adjectives asproperties of another predicated property, we can have a better approximation of theactual semantic composition of phrasal BPs. Let us consider the above mentionedexamples:

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Mario è un sociologo criminale T(sociol. crim.) = λx[((sociol.)criminale)(x)]Mario è uno sciatore alpino T(sciatore alpino) = λx[((sciatore)alpino)(x)]Mario è un flautista dolce T(flautista dolce) = λx[((flautista)dolce)(x)]

The predicate modifier representation sheds light on the subordination of the adjectiveand on the properties of its base, namely a phrasal lexeme in which the adjective iscombined with a noun. With respect to N + PP phrasal BPs, standard syntax stronglydeviates from the actual lexical reading of the construction. The alreadymentioned pêcheur sous la glace-like class investigated by Kerleroux (2007), forinstance, is not based on a locative relation between PPs and complex nouns, since theformer are part of the lexical unit which functioned as base. The nouns embedded in PPshave no referential force having become part of a fixed expression, i.e. a phrasal lexeme,as clearly stated in Masini (2009:264):

The loss of referential force of incorporated elements indicates that we donot have to do with a true phrase. Therefore, incorporated elements do notintroduce new referents, but have the function of creating a new reference incombination with other elements.

Let us consider for instance locative PPs: in pattinatore sul ghiaccio lit. skater on.theice 'ice skater' the PP sul ghiaccio does not have any autonomous locative meaning inthe phrasal BP since it is part of the lexical meaning of the phrasal lexeme on which thederivation is based. As we will see later, this is reflected in the combinatorial propertiesof these units in context.

The semantics of N+PP nominals is the object of Johnston & Busa (1996). Themeaning composition of such complex constructions has been longly debated and noabsolute generalisation can be proposed regarding the individual contribution ofprepositions and/or embedded nouns, i.e. the way in which meaning is built combiningtwo nouns connected by a preposition. Adopting Pustejovsky’s (1995) GenerativeLexicon (GL) model, however, they sketch a qualia-based account of how head andmodifier nouns can compose in different Italian phrase schemata. Johnston & Busa(1996:3) highlight, in fact, that

In English, the form of the semantic relation that holds between the modifyingnoun and the head noun is unspecified and left implicit, while in the

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corresponding Italian complex nominals, it is partially specified by thepreposition which introduces the modifying noun.

In the GL, qualia are a representational tool for expressing the componential aspect ofword meaning, each expressing a different facet:

FORMAL: The formal quale distinguishes an individual within a larger setCONSTITUTIVE: The constitutive quale specifies the internal constitution of an entityTELIC: The telic quale consists of the typical function of the entityAGENTIVE: The agentive quale expresses the origin of the entity

Johnston & Busa (1996) argue for instance that we can account for the meaningof 'N da N' Italian constructions on the basis of an operation of "qualia modification'.According to the authors this construction's preferred interpretation is that in whichthe modifier noun relates to the purpose of the head noun, encoded in thetelic quale, representing the inherent typical purpose of that lexical item, e.g. to cutthings for a knife. Let us consider a small sample of Italian 'N da N' phrasal lexemes:

bicchiere da vino 'wine glass'polvere da sparo 'gun powder'fucile da caccia 'hunting rifle'

In these examples the meaning of the complex expression can be derived bypostulating that the modifier noun specifies an individual argument of the head noun'stelic quale, e.g. vino 'wine' specifies what the bicchiere da vino typically contains.Analogous qualia operation are postulated for 'N di N' and 'N a N' constructions, i.e.an 'Agentive Modification' and a 'Constitutive Modification', that is to say operationsthrough which arguments of either the agentive ('N di N', e.g. succo di limone 'lemonjuice') or the constitutive ('N a N', e.g. porta a vetri 'glass door') qualia are specified bythe modifier noun.

Johnston & Busa (1996) thus provide a semantic characterization of three productivephrasal lexeme patterns, which seem to capture the most common semantic propertiesof these N Prep N expressions. Although some inconsistencies may be found (it seemsto me that a productive class of 'N a N' constructions has been ignored, i.e. thatcontaining mulino a vento 'windmill', treno a vapore, lampada ad olio 'oil lamp', inwhich I argue that the modifier specifies the agentive subquale of the head's telic quale),

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Johnston & Busa (1996)'s approach seems to be succesful in handling the semanticsof a wide range of constructions. See below (taken from Johnston & Busa 1996:7)an instantiation of the constitutive qualia operation (the modifier glass specifies theconstitutive quale of the head noun door):

If we rely on this semantic representation, it is apparent how a wide range of phrasalBPs cannot be interpreted according to head-modifier relation usually introduced by thecorresponding preposition. Let us consider some examples from theconstitutive qualia schema:

il padre è calciatore a cinque affermato con un palmares[http://www.calcioa5anteprima.com/lazio/]

David Drudis, strumentista a corde di Barcellona.[http://www.musicclub.it/musicclub/]

il famoso corridore a ostacoli di origine Cinese[http://www.motoclub-tingavert.it/t353872s60s.html]

Such expressions cannot be understood in terms of relations between modifier andhead nouns, i.e. there is no adequate qualia operation which would allow an appropriateinterpretation of the complex nominals on the basis of the conceptual interplay betweenthem, and the standard constitutive qualia operation is excluded: in no way a calciatorea cinque lit. soccer.player to five 'futsal player' can be analysed as a player 'formedby five (players)'; the interpretation of strumentista a corde 'string instrumentist'and corridore a ostacoli 'obstacle runner' poses analogous challenges.

Saying that no argumental relation could be available between the head and themodifier noun would be a very strong claim; rather, it is essential to highlight how thephrasal lexemes on which such phrasal BPs were derived perfectly fit into Johnston &

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Busa (1996)'s generalisations on 'N a N' constructions. Unlike English, which displaystotally underspecified NN nominals, Italian allows to trace phrasal BPs back to theirphrasal lexeme bases. Once again, the formal and semantic properties of the outputprovide clues about the derivational path followed by the construction.

2.6 Differences between NA and NPP constructions

Although having a common origin, NA and NPP phrasal BPs display differences intheir syntactic behaviour. It seems that, even if both are rooted in a phrasal lexeme, theNPP pattern leads to a higher level of internal cohesion. If we apply standard syntactictests, we can see that in both constructions constituents are not individually modifiable:

*chitarrista esperto elettrico lit. guitarist expert electric*hockeista giovane su ghiaccio lit. hockeist strong on.the ice

Such constructions can be modified as a whole, i.e. externally (with an adjectivepreceding or following the expression, e.g. chitarrista elettrico esperto 'expert electricguitarist', giovane hockeista su ghiaccio 'young ice hockeist'). In order to investigatewhether exceptions to this preference existed, specific Google searches were performedto find instances of NA or NPP BPs internally "interrupted" by adjectives. The searchyielded significant results for the NA pattern, but none for NPP. Let us consider theexamples below:

Davig Gogo, chitarrista blues elettrico canadese [http://www.ird.it/oldnews.htm]dei massimi chitarristi italiani acustici: l'abruzzese [http://www.tricesimohomepage.it/]

It seems that NA constructions can be arranged more freely. Apart from occasionalinternally modified ones, a significant number of occurrences were found in whichconstituents were separated. In particular, factorized expressions were found in whichthe noun head was omitted in order to avoid its repetition:

è un chitarrista classico, acustico ed elettrico, frequenta [http://www.kisskiss.it/]hanno aderito filologi classici, romanzi, moderni [http://prin2008.miur.it/]degli scienziati naturali, sociali, economici e politici. [http://www.oilcrash.com/]

The difference between the two constructions probably lies in the nature of theinternal modifier. Unlike adjectives inside phrasal lexemes, which can be reanalysed

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as relational modifiers of the derived forms, PPs cannot have but a locative/temporalfunction outside of the phrasal lexeme in which they were originated. In order to betterunderstand such difference, an informal survey was submitted to 20 native speakers ofItalian (mean age: 26, ranging from secondary school to university education), askingthem to give judgments (Yes = acceptable sentence, No = unacceptable sentence)about sentences containing NA and NPP agent nouns with separated constituents (eitherA/PP modifiers were employed as copular (dislocated) predicates or agent nouns werefactorized). Two set of sentences were built, each one containing either the NPP or theNA version of each sentence, so that none of the participants could judge two versionsof the same sentence. The table below summarizes the results:

Sentence Yes No ?

1a. Quel chitarrista è elettrico. 5 3 2

1b. Quell'hockeista è su ghiaccio. 2 4 4

2a. È nautico quello sciatore. 3 4 3

2b. È di fondo quello sciatore. 2 5 3

3a. Il flautista che ho visto è traverso. 2 7 1

3b. Il flautista che ho visto è di pan. 0 9 1

4a. C'erano nuotatori sincronizzati e pinnati. 4 4 2

4b. C'erano sociologi della comunicazione e della letteratura. 3 5 2

5a. Mario è un filologo sia romanzo che germanico. 3 3 4

5b. Mario è un hockeista sia su prato che su ghiaccio. 1 7 2

6a. Non è cognitivo quello scienziato. 2 8 0

6b. Non è della materia quel fisico. 0 9 1

7a. È un linguista bravissimo computazionale. 2 8 0

7b. È un giurista bravissimo del lavoro. 0 9 1

Total (NA)21

(30%)

37

(52.8%)

12

(17.2%)

Total (NPP)8

(11.5%)

48

(68.5%)

14

(20%)

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These acceptability judgments confirm the assumption that although NA and NPPforms are both uninterruptible (both are rejected in more than 50% of the sentences),adjectival modifiers are not perceived as bound to the nominal constituent as PPs in NPPforms (30% accepted vs. 11.5%).

2.7 Survey of phrasal nouns

We will now have a look at a wide range of phrasal nouns involving a bracketingparadox. The data collected come from Google searches and La Repubblica corpus(Baroni et al. 2004). The collection relied both on pattern queries and individual focusedsearches. During the collection it was clear that some major categories presented ahuge number of phrasal BPs, all in the domain of "personal nouns" (Spencer 1988), i.e.denoting actors of specific (often professional) activities. The next sections will illustrateinstances belonging to the classes of academic, sport and musical activities. This doesnot mean that phrasal BPs can be found in these domains only: the following outline hasonly an illustrative function and it should not be forgotten that they come from disparatedomains (see the following examples):

azionista ordinario 'owner of common stocks'banconista alimentare 'owner of food desk'cronista rosa 'gossip columnist'nudo proprietario 'holder of a residual life estate'parlamentare europeo 'member of the European Parliament'giocatore di ruolo 'RPG player'

2.7.1 Academic

Many instances of phrasal BPs were found in the field of jobs and activities relatedto the academic world. The complex constructions involved often denote specialistsin academic subdisciplines named by a phrasal lexeme. Many academic subdisciplinesare represented in Italian by a phrasal lexeme, comprehending a noun (the academicdiscipline, e.g. economia, chimica, linguistica, sociologia) followed by either anadjective (e.g. politica, cognitiva, organica) or a PP (e.g. della letteratura, dellacomunicazione).

The nouns to name professionals in these academic sectors are mostly formed bythe agentive form derived from the noun (e.g. economista, chimico, linguista, sociologo)

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followed by the same modifier of the base phrasal lexeme (in case of adjectives, agreeingin number and gender), e.g.

chimico industriale 'industrial chemist'chimico molecolare 'molecular chemist'chimico nucleare 'nuclear chemist'chimico organico 'organic chemist'economista culturale 'cultural economist'economista finanziario 'financial economist'economista politico 'political economist'filologo classico 'classical philologist'filologo germanico 'germanic philologist'filologo moderno 'modern philologist'filologo romanzo 'romance philologist'filosofo del diritto 'philosopher of law'filosofo del linguaggio 'philosopher of language'filosofo della mente 'philosopher of mind'filosofo etico 'ethic philosopher'filosofo morale 'moral philosopher'filosofo politico 'political philosopher'filosofo teoretico 'theoretical philosopher'fisico della materia 'matter physicist'fisico molecolare 'molecular physicist'fisico nucleare 'nuclear physicist'fisico tecnico 'technical physicist'fisico teorico 'theoretical physicist'giurista civile 'civil lawyer'giurista del lavoro 'work lawyer'giurista europeo 'european lawyer'giurista penale 'criminal lawyer'linguista applicato 'applied linguist'linguista cognitivo 'cognitive linguist'linguista computazionale 'computational linguist'linguista dei corpora 'corpus linguist'matematico applicato 'applied mathematician'matematico teorico 'theoretical mathematician'psicologo cognitivo 'cognitive psychologist'

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psicologo del lavoro 'work psychologist'psicologo sociale 'social psychologist'sociologo clinico 'clinical sociologist'sociologo del diritto 'sociologist of law'sociologo della comunicazione 'sociologist of communication'sociologo della letteratura 'sociologist of literature'sociologo politico 'political sociologist'scienziato applicato 'applied scientist'scienziato cognitivo 'cognitive scientist'scienziato giuridico 'law scientist'scienziato informatico 'computer scientist'scienziato politico 'political scientist'scienziato sociale 'social scientist'

2.7.2 Sport

Many sport names in Italian are phrasal lexemes, e.g. hockey su ghiaccio 'icehockey', lotta svizzera 'swiss wrestling', calcio a cinque 'futsal'. The professionalsinvolved in such sports are named drawing on the agentive form derived from the headnoun, e.g. hockeista, lottatore, calciatore combined with the base modifiers. Here someforms encountered:

arrampicatore sportivo 'sport climber'artista marziale 'martial artist'calciatore a cinque 'futsal player'calciatore gaelico 'gaelic football player'cestista in carrozzina 'wheelchair basket player'ciclista su pista 'track cyclist'ciclista su strada 'street cyclist'corridore ad ostacoli 'obstacle runner'corridore campestre 'cross-country runner'corridore di resistenza 'resistance runner'footballista americano 'american football player'ginnasta acrobatico 'acrobatic gymnast'ginnasta aerobico 'aerobic gymnast'ginnasta artistico 'artistic gymnast'ginnasta attrezzista 'trampolining, tumbling gymnast'

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ginnasta ritmico 'rythmic gymnast'golfista su pista 'minigolf player'hockeista in-line 'in-line hockey player'hockeista su ghiaccio 'ice hockey player'hockeista su pista 'minihockey player'hockeista su prato 'field hockey player (grass)'lottatore greco-romano 'greco-roman wrestler'lottatore svizzero 'swiss wrestler'nuotatore pinnato 'finswimmer'nuotatore sincronizzato 'synchronized swimmer'pattinatore artistico 'artistic skater'pattinatore corsa 'speed skater'pattinatore di figura 'figure skater'pattinatore sincronizzato 'synchronized skater'pattinatore su ghiaccio 'ice skater'pattinatore su rotelle 'roller skater'pescatore a mosca 'fly fisherman'pescatore in apnea 'apnea fisherman'pescatore sportivo 'sport fisherman'saltatore a ostacoli 'obstacle jumper'saltatore in alto 'high jumper'saltatore in lungo 'long jumper'sciatore alpino 'alpine skier'sciatore di fondo 'cross-country skier'sciatore nautico 'nautic skier'sciatore nordico 'nordic skier'slittinista su pista artificiale 'sledder on artificial track'tiratore alla fune 'tug-of-war competitor'tiratore al piattello 'trap shooter'tiratore a volo 'clay shooter'tiratore con l'arco 'archer'

2.7.3 Music

Musical instrument players represent a productive domain with respect to phrasalBPs. In Italian, as well as in many other languages, a number of musical instruments

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(expecially subtypes) are named through NA or NPP constructions, resulting on theparadoxical forms made up of the agentive noun followed by the base modifiers.

bassista acustico 'acoustic bass player'bassista elettrico 'electric bass player'batterista acustico 'acoustic batterist'batterista elettrico 'electric batterist'batterista elettronico 'electronic batterist'chitarrista acustico 'acoustic guitarist'chitarrista a dodici corde 'twelve-string guitarist'chitarrista a sei corde 'six-string guitarist'chitarrista classico 'classic guitarist'chitarrista elettrico 'electric guitarist'contrabbassista elettrico 'electric double bass player'cornista inglese 'English horn player'flautista basso 'bass flutist'flautista di pan 'pan flutist'flautista diritto 'recorder player'flautista dolce 'recorder player'flautista traverso 'flutist'oboista d'amore 'oboist d'amour'organista elettrico 'electric organist'pianista elettrico 'electric pianist'pianista elettronico 'electronic pianist'sassofonista soprano 'soprano saxophonist'strumentista a corde 'string instrument player'strumentista a fiato 'wind instrument player'tastierista elettronico 'electronic keyboard player'violinista elettrico 'electric violinist'violoncellista barocco 'baroque cello player'violoncellista elettrico 'electric cello player'

2.7.4 Locative/collective nouns

Apart from the class of BPs which Spencer (1988) defines "personal nouns", thereseems to exist a productive class of nouns with locative/collective meanings connectedwith specific referents. In Italian the suffix -eria, deriving nouns from nouns, seems to

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be the most productive with respect to phrasal BPs. Web searches yielded examples likethe following:

birreria alla spina 'draft brewery'camiceria da donna 'woman shirt shop'chioderia da falegname 'carpenter nail shop'gioielleria da viaggio 'travel jewelry'occhialeria da vista 'glasses collection'orologeria da polso 'wristwatch collection'pescheria d'acqua dolce 'freshwater fish market'pizzeria al taglio 'sliced pizzeria'pizzeria da asporto 'takeaway pizzeria'segheria elettrica 'electric saw shop'utensileria da cucina 'cooking tools collection'valigeria da uomo 'man suitcase shop'verniceria a polvere 'powder paint shop'

2.8 Adjectival phrasal BPs

Are phrasal bracketing paradoxes limited to the domain of derived nouns? The issueof bracketing paradoxes in phrasal adjectives has to my knowledge never been raised.Web data, however, attest many instances of relational adjectives derived from phrasallexemes, see e.g.

dall’aggressione ondosa marina fin dagli [http://www.autoritabacino.marche.it/]costituzione di un tribunale ecclesiastico romano [http://www.vatican.va/news_services/]Direttiva parlamentare europea [http://issuu.com/adpware/docs/mc108]frequentare gli istituti scolastici dell'obbligo ubicati [http://www.comune.lagnasco.cn.it/]

Similarly to nominal counterparts, phrase-based adjectives pose bracketing challengesbecause the adjectival suffix semantically scopes over the whole phrase although beingattached to the noun only, e.g. atmosferico terrestre lit. atmospheric terrestrial 'relatedto Earth's atmosphere', chirurgico estetico lit. surgical aesthetic 'related to aestheticsurgery', ciclistico su pista lit. cyclistic on track 'related to track cyclism'. An analysiswill be provided of Italian phrase-based adjectives with respect to their morphosyntacticand semantic properties, as well as their usage and coinage properties.

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2.8.1 Extension

The existence of adjectival phrasal BPs (of the A+A type) could be rejected on theassumption that the sequence of adjectives should be treated as coordinate, so that thetwo following NPs should receive the same semantic account:

i) dell'inquinamento atmosferico italiano proviene [http://www.rinnovabili.it/]La politica energetica italiana non può [La Repubblica corpus]

ii) contro l'inquinamento atmosferico terrestre [La Repubblica corpus]La crisi energetica solare fu risolta nel 1939 [La Repubblica corpus]

Similar arguments to those valid for phrasal nouns can be put forward with respectto semantic composition. The NPs in (i) can be defined through the intersection of theextensions of the two adjective and the noun, so that the three constituents are combinedin a [[α [β γ]]] = [[[α]] ∩ [[β] ∩ [[γ]]] way, and the following formalisms can beproposed:

T(atmosferico italiano) = λx [atmosferico(x) ∧ italiano(x)]T(energetica italiana) = λx [energetico(x) ∧ italiano(x)]

On the contrary, the semantics of (ii) constructions cannot be based on the extensionalintersection of its constituents:

T(atmosferico terrestre) ≠ λx [atmosferico(x) ∧ terrestre (x)]T(energetica solare) ≠ λx [energetico(x) ∧ solare(x)]

In this case too, Siegel (1976)'s predicate modifiers better suits the needs of oursemantic analysis. Adjectival phrasal BPs are rooted in phrasal lexemes (the samecan derive both nouns and adjectives, e.g. chitarra elettrica > chitarristaelettrico, chitarristico elettrico). The second adjective specifies information related tothe other (noun-based) adjective.

T(energetico solare) = λx[((energetico)solare)(x)]T(atmosferico terrestre) = λx[((atmosferico)terrestre)(x)]

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With phrase-based adjectives too, however, it is difficult to provide a semanticaccount based on individual constituents. Rather, the meaning of adjectival phrasal BPsis rooted in that of the phrasal lexeme which functioned as base for the derivation.

2.8.2 Hyphenation

During the perusal of web data, a number of instances of phrase-based adjectiveswere found which were hyphenated, i.e. an hyphen was introduced to mark that the twoadjectives are actually forming a complex unit with a unitary meaning.

Al via l'Itinerario turistico-religioso a cavallo Pietrelcina [http://www.sanniotradizioni.it/]proposta di Piano faunistico-venatorio regionale [http://www.regione.piemonte.it/]di stampo giornalistico-scandalistico, le prime [http://www.altremappe.org/]questione “chitarristica-elettrica” negli arrangiamenti [http://www.soundsblog.it/]Il percorso terapeutico-riabilitativo è sempre [http://www.ulss7.it/]in piena tempesta bellica-civile.[http://www.linamangionesavatteri.it/]

It seems reasonable to assume that language users occasionally mark graphicallythe link between the adjectival constituents because unlike other adjectival sequences,a unitary meaning is perceived in these constructions. This, however, holds also forNA phrasal BPs, but no instance of hyphenated forms was found in that domain.Hyphenated forms probably reflect a tendence towards univerbation: unlike NA phrasalBPs they display a formal structure in which both constituents share the same syntacticcategory. This may encourage univerbation, since syntactic marking could be perceivedas redundant: another related piece of evidence comes from another phenomenonencountered during the analysis of web data, i.e. factorization.

2.8.3 Factorization

Two adjectives can be factorized in Italian if they are adiacent and share aninflectional mark, e.g.

un'analisi storico-filosofica degli approcci [http://www.lawrence.altervista.org/]

Storico-filosofica 'historico-philosophical' displays only one inflectional mark(feminine singular on filosofica) standing for both adjectival forms. The uninflectedword is in its unmarked form. Among phrase-based adjectives a large number ofencountered forms were factorized. See for instance

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la cultura pokeristico-sportiva e poi [http://forum.assopoker.com/]l'analisi energetico-solare diventa alla portata [http://spa.casaccia.enea.it/]Cresce l'offerta turistico-religiosa nella Capitale [http://www.newsfood.com/]La comunità terapeutico-riabilitativa di Olgiasca [http://www.gabbianoonlus.it/]pochi gruppi chitarristico elettrici che riesco [http://www.ilmucchio.net/]delle indagini archeologico-medievali territoriali su [http://prin2007.miur.it/]

Such forms display a different structure from the already mentioned storico-filosofica 'historico-philosophical', because the latter has a coordinative function,i.e. storico-filosofica means 'historical and philosophical'. We can conclude that bothhyphenation and factorization contribute to defining some properties of phrase-basedadjectives: first, they are likely to be tendentially perceived as regular as other sequencesof (coordinated) adjectives, as hyphenation shows. In some cases, however, hyphenationcould be regarded as a strategy for marking in the written form the clustering of units ina sequence of more than two adjectives, see e.g. the already reported

proposta di Piano faunistico-venatorio regionale [http://www.regione.piemonte.it/]delle indagini archeologico-medievali territoriali su [http://prin2007.miur.it/]

Factorization, on the other hand, may display a certain degree of lexicalization ofadjectival expressions, favoured by bases (phrasal lexemes) provided with a fixed,unitary meaning.

2.8.4 APP costructions

Adjectival phrasal BPs are not limited to AA constructions. As already mentioned,NPP phrasal lexemes can in fact derive adjectival expressions too. A significant sourceof these expressions seems the field of anthroponimic names, see e.g.

La coreana del nord Kye Sun Hui [http://www.fijlkam.toscana.it/]La bandiera cipriota del nord [http://www.agenziadogane.it/]la maggioranza del popolo osseto del sud [http://it.euronews.net/]

As already reported, nouns embedded in these PPs generally lose their referentialforce. This probably happens at various levels: let us consider the alternation betweenprepositions with/without embedded determiner, e.g. sul/su 'on.the:M:Sing/on'. Hockey

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su/sul ghiaccio lit. hockey on.the:M:Sing/on ice 'ice hockey', for instance, should inprinciple derive both a phrasal noun and a phrasal adjective with alternation,namely hockeista su/sul ghiaccio 'ice hockeist' and hockeistico su/sul ghiaccio 'relatedto ice hockey'. As a matter of fact, however, web searches for this case and a smallsample of similar constructions yielded limited occurrences of embedded determiners:although the form hockey sul ghiaccio has a significant presence in on-line texts, namely18,300 hits (846,000 for hockey su ghiaccio), determiners were present in less than0,01% of the corresponding agent nouns and in none among phrasal adjectives.

hockeista sul ghiaccio 19hockeista su ghiaccio 270,000

hockeistico/i/a/che sul ghiaccio 0hockeistico/i/a/che su ghiaccio 3

It is reasonable to assume that a progressive loss of referential force is at play,ranging from phrasal lexemes, where "N+PREP+DET+N constructions are [...] lesssystematic and frequent than the N+PREP+N" (Masini 2009:261), to phrasal nounsand phrasal adjectives. It could be hypothesized that in the adjectival forms the loss ofreferential force of the embedded constituents is even stronger because the link betweenthe adjective and the constituent (e.g. hockeistico with ghiaccio) is looser than that ofthe complex noun (e.g. hockeista with ghiaccio), in turn looser than that of the simplexnoun in the original phrasal lexeme (e.g. hockey with ghiaccio).

2.9 Pragmatic constraints

Some remarks are needed with respect to the potential constraints on the formation ofphrasal BPs. It was apparent from the data collected that no proper semantic constraintcould be found: there does not seem to be any kind of restriction either on the base or onthe output regarding meaning. Some forms generating potential ambiguity (e.g. phrasallexemes containing an adjective combinable with [+human] bases) are nonethelessattested, e.g. lottatore svizzero 'swiss wrestler', cornista inglese 'English horn player'etc.

Although not every phrasal lexeme can derive phrasal BPs, this seems rather tobe ascribed to pragmatic factors rather than semantic. The coinage of phrasal BPs issubject to pragmatic word formation constraints in the sense that there must be a need(a "pragmatic pressure" or "real-world need", Lieber 2004:96) for a lexical item that

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would otherwise be redundant for language use. According to Plag (1999:39) this needis "a reflection of their capacity of labeling a new concept or referent". Lipka (1977)introduces the concept of Hypostasierung ('hypostatization'), stating that the existence ofa certain word suggests the existence of the denoted entity: "the object of the label needsto exist, so only existing things can be named" (Lipka 1977:161).

No attestations of phrasal BP was encountered with phrasal lexemes denotingreferents with limited extension: birra al malto 'ale beer' denotes a kind of beer as birraalla spina 'draft beer' does; although the noun birra 'beer' present in both phrasallexemes has a paradigmatic relation with the complex noun birreria 'beer-house', birreria alla spina 'draft beer-house' is attested whereas birreria al malto 'alebeer-house' is not. This is motivated by the non-existence of a commercial activityexclusively devoted to ale beer and its scarce pragmatic plausibility. As (Plag 1999:40)puts it, "one can only label something that does exist". If there does not exist a significantnumber of entities to refer to no coinage occurs. This is why, on the same line, a rangeof potential constructions can (at the present state of affairs) be discarded, see e.g.

?pizzeria ai funghi 'mushroom pizzeria'?morfologo compositivo 'compounding morphologist'?analista delle urine 'urine analyst'?calciatore a otto 'eight-soccer player'

All the meanings expressed above would probably be realised through the just made-up forms if significant reasons existed for their coinage (and maybe will: let us imaginethat calcio a otto 'eight-soccer' catches on and a larger and larger set of individualsplaying that sport needs to be referred to).

2.10 A constructionist account

The kind of paradoxes illustrated above can be accounted for by assuming aConstruction Grammar approach to word formation. Goldberg (1995:4) asserts that

phrasal patterns are considered constructions if something about their form ormeaning is not strictly predictable from the properties of their component partsor from other constructions.

This definition captures the main property of phrasal BPs: their meaning cannotbe directly derived from their component parts. If we consider the NA pattern only,

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the standard construction combining a noun and an adjective cannot itself adequatelyrepresent the meaning of the output:

[[N]N [A]A]cN

<N with a relation S to A>

The pattern above can be employed to represent combinations like chitarristaesperto 'expert guitarist', but fails to predict the meaning of chitarrista elettrico. Bisetto& Moschin (forthcoming)'s costructionist account of phrasal nouns assume that thesuffix is attached to the nominal constituent of the complex NA base constructionbecause it selects nouns, and that this selection is justified by the consistency of thesemantics of both the N and the suffix. Let us consider their proposal for theexample flautista barocco 'baroque flutist':

[[[flauto]N [barocco]A]cN [-ista]]dcN

Formal constraint: the suffix attaches to the first constituent

Semantic constraint: the suffix has semantic scope over the cN0

Can such forms be accounted in terms of pure suffixation? Some remarks are neededon this issue. The paradox itself is caused by the position of the suffix, mismatching withits semantic scope. Assuming that suffixation can occur on phrasal lexemes, generatingphrasal BPs, can however lead to overgeneralize that this derivational process can occurregardless of any paradigmatic constraint. It is apparent from a number of phrasalBP forms pertaining to both nominal and adjectival domains that no phrasal BP isgenerated in the absence of an already existing derived complex word. Let us considerthe following examples:

(i) sci nautico 'nautic sky'pizza al taglio 'sliced pizza'

(ii) pianta grassa 'succulent plant'carne alla brace 'grilled meat'

The heads of the forms in (i) have already established paradigmatic relations with aderived noun, e.g. sciatore and pizzeria, whereas those in (ii) do not. The phrasal BPsbuilt on the latter sound unacceptable.

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sciatore nautico 'nautic skier'pizzeria al taglio 'sliced pizzeria'*piantista grasso*carnista alla brace

Bisetto & Moschin (forthcoming)'s representation makes no claim about theparadigmatic dimension of the process. It seems useful to recall Spencer (1988)'sremarks on personal nouns. He points out that the availability of the complex lexical unitis crucial for the proper functioning of the fourth-proportional schema which licensesphrasal BPs. As we have pointed out earlier, the major weakness of the analogicalpattern lies in the morphological properties of the derivational output (namely numberand gender agreement in case of NA constructions), not considered even by Bisetto &Moschin (forthcoming).

The construction addressed here displays features belonging to two differentconstructions:

[[N]N[A]A]NP : phrasal BPs have their constituents agreeing in gender andnumber if the second constituent is an adjective;

[[N]N suff]X : the derivation operates on a unitary concept;

In order to deal with these aspects, I will illustrate a proposal of constructionistschema aiming at representing both nominal and adjectical instances of phrasal BPs,assuming as a prototype those with an NA base. The pattern specifies some conditionson the derivation of phrasal BPs: the derived form in the output (i.e.[[N]suff]X e.g. chitarristaN, energeticoA must be already present in the lexicon) andthe complex form derived from the noun must agree with the adjective. The constructionis partially underspecified with respect to lexical category (X), since according to theavailability of forms we can have from the same NA base nouns only, adjectives only,or both:

N,*A pattinaggio artistico > pattinatore artistico, *pattinaggistico artistico*N, A energia solare > *energista solare, energetico solareN, A chitarra elettrica > chitarrista elettrico, chitarristico elettrico

Here the construction for XA BPs (e.g. chitarrista elettricoN, energetico solareA):

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[[N{AGR}]N [A{AGR}]A]N > [[N]suff{AGR}]X [A{AGR}]A]X

<naming a concept β> <β+suff>

|[[N]suff]X

A less complicated construction can be assumed for XPP bracketing paradoxes(e.g. calciatore a cinqueN, scolastico dell'obbligoA):

[[N]N [PP]]N > [[N]suff]X [PP]]X

<naming a concept β> <β+suff>

|[[N]suff]X

2.11 Processing Issues

The formal properties of phrasal BPs raise interesting questions concerning bothlanguage production and comprehension. The mismatch between formal and semanticstructure is not only a matter of linguistic representation, and arguably reflects itselfon the strategies employed by language users in order to correctly interpret the input.A range of theoretical assumptions concerning language processing can be called intoquestion if we focus on the way phrasal BPs are interpreted in everyday language. Itshould be clear from the above discussion that they represent a productive class and thuscannot be conceived as special status items: rather, their interpretation could in no waydiffer from standard lexical and/or phrasal units.

The first issue to consider is related to their hybrid status between lexemes (froma semantic viewpoint) and phrases (from a formal viewpoint). Speakers must be ableto access a unitary meaning instantiated in a phrasal structure. With respect to this,phrasal BPs conceivably pose a number of challenges to many models of languagecomprehension: first, the mentioned dissociation between unitarity in meaning andseparation in form; second, the anomalies this can cause at the level of part-of-speechsequences in utterances containing phrasal BPs: head nouns in NA phrasal BPs, followedby two adjectives, must be matched with the actual modifier; phrasal adjectives, onthe other hand, can produce sequences of three or more adjectives (e.g. un futuroenergeticoA1 solareA2 brillanteA3 'a brilliant solar energetic future'), normally ruled out.

According to a leading school of thought in psycholinguistics, parsing (i.e. theanalysis of syntactic structures) precedes lexical access. Frazier & Clifton (1996) assumethat the syntactic structure of an utterance is computed on the basis of part-of-speech

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recognition, maintaining all the structural alternatives in parallel, before the meaningsof the individual lexical items are accessed. Future research could evaluate (for instancethrough eye-tracking studies on self-paced reading) whether phrasal BPs causeprocessing delays. Their natural occurrence in everyday spoken and written language,however, suggests that they are processed in a normal fashion and encourages thosetheoretical approaches claiming that parsing is lexically-driven (see e.g. MacDonald1993), i.e. it is based on the access to lexical information, which progressively constrainsthe syntactic analysis which the same sequence items can produce according totheir parts-of-speech.

With respect to the comprehension level, i.e. the level at which speakers integrate themeaning of words/utterances into the broader discourse context, two major theoreticaltrends can be evaluated. The modular approach to language comprehension (see e.g.Fodor 1983) assumes that it is the outcome of the functioning of different cognitivemodules, each devoted to a specific aspect of comprehension. On the contrary, Marslen-Wilson & Tyler (1987:51) defend the view that our processing system is

highly flexible, even opportunistic, in its use of different types of processinginformation to achieve the perceptual goal of relating an utterance to itsdiscourse context. [...] The flexibility in using different sources of constraints,as and when they are available, means that the process of discourse linkage isnot dependent on information being made available to it in a fixed order or in afixed format.

If we look at the comprehension of phrasal BPs, challenges are posed apart fromsyntactic parsing, i.e. speakers must be able to on-line discern between a standardcompositional N+A/PP combination and a phrasal BP. In order to achieve this, speakershave to access the meaning of the phrasal lexemes functioning as bases: unlike standardderived words in which a stepwise affixation can be stipulated, phrasal BPs do notdisplay the morphological cues necessary to infer the hierarchical relationships to derivethe final meaning. This supports the hypothesis that language comprehension draws ona wide number of sources in order to be able to establish links between linguistic itemsand discourse referents.

2.12 Novel phrasal BPs

Do phrasal BPs belong to a productive pattern in Italian? Does comprehension relyon already established phrasal lexemes? Are speakers able to map novel phrasal BP

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expressions onto their correct semantic representation? In order to ascertain this, atest was performed aiming at evaluating whether and to what extent Italian speakersare able to understand novel phrasal BPs (nouns). A set of 5 novel phrasal BPs wascreated to be tested for comprehension among 20 native speakers (mean age: 31,ranging from secondary school to postgraduate education). The expressions createdhad to meet the following requirements: (i) be unattested in the web; (ii) conformto either the NA or the NPP "paradoxical" pattern; (iii) be plausible, both from apragmatic and a semantic viewpoint. Adjectival expressions were put into sentences.Participants were asked to paraphrase the meaning of the phrasal BP. One wouldpredict that, if the template can be retrieved by speakers, both phrasal BPs built onattested phrasal lexemes (terapeuta aerobico 'aerobic therapist') and on unattested ones(hockeista sull'acqua 'water hockeist') should be comprehended. Below the results:

Novel phrasal BPs Paraphrase

terapeuta aerobico "che pratica/ esperto in/ terapia aerobica" (75%)

medico agopunturale "specializzato in/dottore in/ medicina agopunturale" (60%)

hockeista sull'acqua "giocatore di/che gioca a/pratica hockey sull'acqua" (85%)

orologiaio a cucù "che vende/venditore di/ esperto in/ orologi(o) a cucù" (85%)

calciatore a tre "giocatore di calcio a tre" (80%)

flautista a tasti "suonatore di/ esperto in/ flauto a tasti" (75%)

sociolinguista cognitivo "esperto di/ professore di/ studioso di/ sociolinguistica cognitiva" (60%)

astrologo lineare "esperto in/praticante dell'/ astrologia lineare" (70%)

tuffatore sincronizzato "che pratica (come sport) i(l) tuffo/i sincronizzato/i" (80%)

strumentista ad acqua "suonatore di (uno) strumento/i ad acqua" (70%)

2.13 Conclusions

The previous sections have outlined an analysis of the phenomenon of bracketingparadoxes in the domain of phrasal constructions. The focus on Italian, at my knowledgeunprecedented, has allowed to disentangle the complex interplay of formal and semanticproperties resulting in phrasal BPs, unlike the long-standing English-based generative-transformational tradition which has both underestimated the complexity of thephenomenon ignoring its cross-linguistic manifestations, and exclusively focussed on

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the attempt to "repair" a malfunctioning morphosyntactic representation without insightsinto its possible explanations from a linguistic viewpoint.

The present chapter has collocated phrasal BPs at the heart of the boundary betweensyntax and the lexicon: the functional equivalence between phrasal lexemes and"standard" words leads to a situation in which a formally syntactic object is derived dueto its word-like meaning: both for XA and XPP constructions, the result in languageswith NA basic order is impossible to be brought back to a proper bracketing. A semanticanalysis of phrasal BPs revealed their divergence with formally parallel syntacticphrases, and it was apparent from different perspectives that the central meaning tobe considered is that provided by the derivational root of the construction, namely thephrasal lexeme functioning as base of the complex BP.

No space to my knowledge ever had ever been devoted to adjectival bracketingparadoxes. The chapter documented the attestation of adjectival phrasal BPs and theirfunctional similarity with nominal constructions, so that it was possible to describe aconstructionist pattern on which both are based. Their morphosyntactic properties haveshown how such forms trigger phenomena like hyphenation and factorization, whichreflects the fact speakers tend to mark graphically their being unitary from a semanticviewpoint and start a process of univerbation.

Phrasal BPs do not seem to pose particular challenges related to productivity:ambiguity in adjective-noun matching does not prevent many expressions from beingcoined, and the only criterion valid to discard potential constructions is pragmaticplausibility. Comprehension data elicited from native speakers allowed to establish thatnovel instantiations of the described constructionist template were easily integrated.

In addition to this, phrasal BPs encourage the view that speakers normally followflexible cognitive paths in order to be able to map such unconventional morphosyntacticstructures in which no stepwise derivation and standard bracketing can be assumed, andrelate them to the right discourse referent.

Bracketing paradoxes in the domain of phrase-like constructions can thus beconceived as a natural state of affairs in Italian. They represent a productive wordformation pattern, rooted in the functional equivalence between morphological andphrasal lexemes.

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Final remarks

The present work has contributed to the analysis of the bracketing paradoxphenomenon. It has provided evidence on their motivation rather than trying to solve atheoretical puzzle. BPs are paradoxical only if a rigid theoretical and notational approachis applied: they represent a class (variegated inside) of word formation patterns in whicha standard bracketing cannot be assigned for a range of functional reasons.

We can conclude that bracketing paradoxes are not paradoxes (in the sense ofsomething exhibiting inexplicable or contradictory aspects) at all. They rather representinstances of incompatibility between theoretical descriptive assumptions and languageform. In addition to this, they speak in favour of a meaning-centered languagecomprehension model in which speakers are able to integrate expressions although theirimperfect match between meaning and structure.

In order to ascertain this empirically, future research in psycho-/neurolinguistics couldevaluate whether different indexes of cognitive processes are elicited -for instance- byphrasal BPs vs standard phrases in comprehension tasks.

A quote attributed to the physicist Niels Bohr says "How wonderful that we have metwith a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress" (quoted in Moore 1967).The problems posed by bracketing paradoxes were thus useful to highlight generaland language-specific properties and be more aware about the complex interplay oftraditionally separated theoretical domains which produced this result.

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