A CONSTRUCTION MORPHOLOGY ACCOUNT OF SIMIL- COMPLEX WORDS IN ITALIAN

Francesca Masini (University of Bologna)Leuven, 16 March 2018

MAKING ONE’S WAY THROUGH THE LEXICON

Today’s workshop2

¨ French (construction) morphology meets medievalmedical vocabulary¤ Not an expert of French…¤ Not an expert of medical vocabulary (let alone medieval)…

BUT…J¤ My topic for today – Italian simil- words – has something to

do with both French and medical language…

Construction Morphology (Booij 2010)3

Basic tenets of ¨ CxM (as summarized in Masini & Audring in press)

Sign¤ -basedWord¤ -basedUsage¤ -based

Sign-based4

¨ CxM, like Construction Grammar (CxG), is based on the notion that constructions are signs, i.e. conventionalized pairings of form and meaning

¨ Constructions may have different degrees of complexity and schematicity

¨ Words are constructions

Word-based5

¨ ‘Word’ is the minimal construction¤ Schema for baker: < [[bake]Vj er ]Ni ↔ [PERSON who BAKEj]i >¤ Morphemes are secondarily derived units of analysis – abstractively

rather than constructively (in the sense of Blevins 2006)

¨ Hierarchical (and paradigmatic) relations in the lexicon

< [[X]Vj er ]Ni ↔ [PERSON who PREDj]i >

↓ (=INHERITANCE INSTANCE LINK)

< [[bake]Vj er ]Ni ↔ [PERSON who BAKEj]i >

Word-based6

¨ Consequences¤ More abstract schemas are declarative generalizations over sets

of fully specified words and at the same time express the generative power of the grammar, since they serve as templates for the creation of new complex words

¤ No principled distinction between lexicon and grammar: both complex words and schemas are stored in the same repository (the constructicon), where they are organized hierarchically

¨ A dynamic lexicon without “rules” (sensu strictu)

Usage-based7

Speakers are sensitive to ¨ usage/frequency in building their grammar(Bybee 2006, 2013, Tomasello 2003)

Exemplar¤ -based approach to language acquisitionMorphologyn is acquired inductively from complex words encountered in the input and retained in lexical memory

Hierarchies n are built bottom-upReady to deal with the gradualness of language change and ¤

emergent constructionsSee the CxM literature on the emergence of n affixoid constructions(e.g., a.m.o., Booij 2010, Booij & Hüning 2014, Van Goethem 2010)

Construction Morphology (Booij 2010)8

¨ Basic tenets of CxM (as summarized in Masini & Audring in press)

¤ Sign-based¤ Word-based¤ Usage-based

¨ Let's keep these principles in mind¤ Today's case study ⇢ simil- complex words in Italian

n Joint work (in progress!) with Silvia Micheli (University of Bergamo & University of Pavia)

Introducing simil-9

(1) […] una torta simil-tiramisù, deliziosa e fresca.[…] a cake similar-tiramisu delicious and fresh‘[…] a tiramisù-like cake, delicious and fresh’

(2) Oggi giornata fantastica, temperature simil-estive.today day great temperatures similar-summery‘A fantastic day, today, summer-like temperatures.’

¨ These words are formed by the string simil- plus a BASE¤ Simil- is clearly related to simile ‘similar, alike’ (which regularly occurs as simil

before nouns) and conveys a value of approximation (‘-like/-ish’)

Introducing simil-10

¨ This strategy is basically not described in reference works¤ simil- is not in the list of affixes and formatives in Grossmann &

Rainer (2004)n The only brief mention of simil- is in the chapter on medical language,

where Serianni notes that simil(e) ‘similar’ occurs in compound adjectives, both in rightmost and leftmost position

n farmaci aspirino-simili (drugs aspirin-similar) ‘aspirin-like drugs’n quadro simil-reumatico (picture similar-rheumatic) ‘rheumatic-like

(clinical) picture’¤ Dardano (1997) briefly notes the existence of some simil-

neologisms in the '90s

Introducing simil-11

GRADIT and the Treccani dictionary mention ¨ simil- as a formativeIn ¤ scientific language, used to create compound adjectives denoting states/substances similar to other states/substances, e.g. in medical language

stato n simil-tifoso (or similtifoso) (SIMIL+typhoid) ‘paratyphoid state’In ¤ non-scientific language, used to name imitation/surrogate/low quality products

similn oro (SIMIL+gold) ‘imitation gold’, similpelle (SIMIL+leather) ‘imitation leather’

GRADIT and the Treccani dictionary (including the 2008 edition of ¨

neologisms) record 14 simil- wordssimilbronzo ¤ (SIMIL+bronze), similemofilico (SIMIL+hemophilic), similenzimatico(SIMIL+enzymatic), simil-giovane (SIMIL+young), simil-laburista (SIMIL+Labour), simillegno / simil-legno (SIMIL+wood), similmarmo (SIMIL+marble), simil-matrimonio (SIMIL+marriage), similormonale (SIMIL+hormonal), similoro (SIMIL+gold), similpelle (SIMIL+leather), similprato(SIMIL+lawn), similproteico (SIMIL+proteinic), simil-seta (SIMIL+silk)

Google Books Ngram Viewer 12

Introducing simil-13

¨ Two "leader" words¤ similoro (SIMIL+gold) ‘imitation gold (metal alloy composed of copper, zinc and tin)’

n Attested since 1745, calque from French similor¤ similpelle (SIMIL+leather) ‘imitation leather, leatherette’

n Attested since 1973 according to GRADIT

n But we found an earlier occurrence in a 1923 text (Archivio La Stampa)

IMITATION SEMANTICS

Hypothesis and method14

¨ Hypothesis¤ A new morphological construction is emerging that expresses not only

imitation/resemblance but 'approximation / non-prototypicality'n ⇢ Evaluative morphology (Grandi & Körtvélyessy 2015)

¨ Corpus-based method¤ CORIS (balanced corpus of written Italian, 150M words)

n All expressions beginning with simil- where automatically extracted (in all orthographic variants) and manually checked

n E.g. similtiramisù | simil tiramisù | simil-tiramisùn Total examples in our dataset: 219

Results: general properties*15

Orthography¨

Most examples are written as ¤ one word (38,8%), like similpelle, or hyphenated (46,1%):

similn -esotiche (SIMIL-exotic.F.PL) 'sort of exotic'Complexity of the bases¨

Most bases are ¤ simple (63,9%) or complex (31%) words, but we also find phrases (5%):

similn -filmino amatoriale (SIMIL-home movie) 'some home movie'personaggi similn -Humphrey Bogart in "Casablanca"characters SIMIL-Humphrey Bogart in "Casablanca"'characters like Humphrey Bogart in "Casablanca"'

*Countings in this slide are based on the single tokens in our dataset.

Results: general properties*16

Category of the bases¨

In most examples ¤ simil- attaches to a noun (73,5%) or adjective (25,6%)Nouns¤

Mostly n concrete nouns (83,8%), especially artifacts and human beingsWe find n proper nouns in almost 24% of cases (e.g. simil-Tarantino)

Adjectives¤

Mostly n relational adjectives (83,6%) Register/use¨

In 18,2% of the cases, the base is marked as “¤ TS” (special language) in GRADIT, and out of these, 65% come from medical language

*Countings in this slide are based on the single tokens in our dataset.

Results: bases17

36

97 5 4 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

PELLE

ORO

MESTRUAZIO

NE

VIGIL

E

CRAXI

INFLU

ENZALE

MATRIM

ONIO

ORM

ONALE

ECSTASY / ESTASI

GOM

MA

MARM

O

ORM

ONI

PAREO

REALITY

SCHIUM

A

SCHIZOFRENIC

O

TARANTINO

VINA

VIRALE

Freq

uenc

y

Bases

Bases occurring with simil- in CORIS (fq>1)

+ 127 hapaxes

'leather, gold, menstruation, local_policeman, Craxi, influenzal, marriage, hormonal, ecstasy, rubber, marble, hormones, beachrobe, reality_show, foam, schizophrenic, Tarantino, Vina, viral'

Results: microdiachrony18

150

69

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

CORIS_2001(120Mw) MONITORs_2001_2016(30Mw)

Diachronic distributionof simil- words in CORIS

What’s happening to simil-?19

¨ simil- is making its own way through the Italian lexicon¤ by virtue of the entrenchement of two exemplars – similoro and similpelle – that

became sufficiently frequent and established¨ Leading to the emergence of a semi-specified schema where simil- is

specified and the second slot is a variable that results from a process of abstraction from words such as oro 'gold' and pelle 'leather'¤ < [simil- [x]Nj ]Ni ↔ [imitation SEMj]i > where x = ARTIFACT/NATURAL OBJECTS

n This schema motivates the creation of simil- words with these kinds of nouns:n gomma 'rubber', lana 'wool', cristallo 'crystal', marmo 'marble', …

What’s happening to simil-?20

¨ However, we are also witnessing a host-class expansion (Himmelmann

2004) for the variable

¤ From inanimate nouns to human nouns (even proper nouns) (following the

animacy hierarchy) and adjectives

¨ This class expansion goes along with a broadening of meaning¤ From 'imitation' to 'approximate/non-prototypical' (in short APPROX), which

encompasses the original 'imitation' meaning

n Possible influence of simil(e)'s lexical semantics ('similar') and of medical

special language, where simil(e) is commonly used in compound formation

¨ ☞ Constructionalization (Traugott & Trousdale 2014) as "the creation of

formnew-meaningnew […] signs", of "new type nodes"

< [simil- [x]N/Aj ]N/Ai ↔ [APPROX SEMj]i >

What’s happening to simil-?21

¨ According to our data, the exact meaning of simil- words largely depends on the type of base it attaches to¤ simil- words with concrete nouns denoting humans, with abstract

nouns and with adjectives are typically associated with an APPROX reading

¤ simil- words with concrete nouns denoting artifacts / natural objects are typically associated with the 'imitation' readingn But not necessarily!

n simil cemento (SIMIL cement) 'cement-like (said of a grass tennis court)'¨ The imitation schema survives, possibly as a subschema of the more

general APPROX schema

A possible hierarchy22

< [simil- [x]N/Aj ]N/Ai ↔ [APPROX SEMj]i >

simildocumentario'pseudo-docu'

simil-playboy'pseudo-playboy'

simil-coraggioso'sort of brave, bravish'

similcemento'cement-like'

< [simil- [x]Nj ]Ni ↔ [imitation SEMj]i >

similpelle'imitation leather'

similmarmo'imitation marble'

Further expansion?23

¨ Our dataset contains two examples of simil- plus a verb and a preposition¨ similsorrideva (SIMIL+smiled)

¤ l’aveva capito da come gli similsorrideva l’impiegata in camicia color crema.‘he understood it from the way in which the employee with a creamy blouse was sort of smiling to him’

¨ similcontro (SIMIL+against)¤ Bruno Trentin ne sa molto di proteste contro, mezzo-contro, simil-contro al governo

‘Bruno Trentin knows a lot about protests against, half-against, sort of-against the

government’

Summing up24

Leader words similoro / similpelle become entrenched

< [simil- [x]Nj ]Ni ↔ [imitation SEMj]i >Abstraction process leads to the creation of a semi-specified IMITATION schema

< [simil- [x]N/Aj ]N/Ai ↔ [APPROX SEMj]i >Host-class expansion and meaning broadening (influenced by medical language?)

The imitation schema survives and becomes a subschema of the more general APPROX schema

< [simil- [x]Xj ]Xi ↔ [APPROX SEMj]i > ???Further host-class expansion???

What is simil-?25

¨ Let's have a look at the criteria used in the literature to identify affixoids

(Van Goethem 2010)

¨ Semantic specialization or resemanticization¤ simil- has developed a meaning of APPROX, alongside the 'imitation' meaning

¨ Decategorialization (and loss of autonomy)¤ simil- is invariable and cannot be inflected (the final vowel -e never shows)

¤ simil- words are often univerbated orthographically (either with or without hyphen)

¨ Paradigmaticization¤ simil- is indeed in competition with "true affixes"

n [...] chiedersi se non siamo in presenza di simil-estasi o di pseudo-estasi o di super-estasi n 'wondering if we are rather in the presence of para-ecstasy or pseudo-ecstasy or super-ecstasy'

¨ Productivity¤ We found a rather high number of hapaxes in the CORIS corpus

Conclusions26

¨ More research is needed to fully characterize its behavior¤ Test these preliminary observations against more data¤ Elaborate a more fine-grained semantic analysis¤ Compare simil- with other competing markers (e.g. pseudo-)

n ➠ Masini & Micheli @ IMM18-Budapest¨ Another interesting line of research

¤ Interlinguistic comparison! ☞ simili- in French (cf. TLF; Höfler 1981)

+ 127 hapaxes

simil- is an emerging and rapidly spreading prefixoid in contemporary Italianthat conveys APPROX values (approximation, non-prototypicality, ecc.)

Merci beaucoup pour votre attention!Comments welcome!francesca.masini@unibo.it

References28

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IMM18, Budapest, 10-13 May 2018.Serianni, L. 2006. Un treno di sintomi. I medici e le parole: percorsi linguistici nel passato e nel presente. Torino: Garzanti.Tomasello, M. 2003. Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Van Goethem, K. 2010. The French construction 'nouveau + past participle' revisited. Arguments in favour of a prefixoid analysis of nouveau.

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