The morphological expression of approximation: the emergingsimil- construction in Italian

Abstract

This paper contributes to the study of evaluative morphology by investigating an emerging morphological construction in Italian within the framework of Construction Morphology. The schema in question, which contains the string simil- (related to the adjective simile ‘similar’) plus a nominal or adjectival base, is analyzed as a newly-created construction that conveys a number of closely-related senses (i.e., fakeness, imitation, resemblance, vagueness, and kin-categorization) revolving around the functional domain of approximation, which has received much less attention than other domains within evaluative morphology. Beside discussing the formal, semantic and usage properties of simil- expressions on the basis of corpus data, we propose a constructional network that accounts for their behavior. Finally, we discuss the nature of simil- as an affixoid and explore its relationship with other competing (morphological and, more marginally, analytic) strategies in Italian.

CODIT. A new resource for the study of Italian from a diachronic perspective: Design and applications in the morphological field

“…The usage of -oide in the first part of the 20 th century is crucial to understand the current behaviour of -oide in ordinary language, characterized by a loosening of the semantic and morphological constraints on the selection of the base. As already mentioned, the emergence of an evaluative meaning in affixes initially used in scientific terminologies has been already noted by Masini & Micheli (2020) for Italian. This analysis confirms that affixes initially used with a categorizing function can develop an evaluative value and that the emergence of the approximating function represents a recent change.…”

“…Although in the last decades evaluative morphology has been extensively investigated (see Grandi & Körtvélyessy 2015), not all semantic functions performed by evaluative morphemes have been equally addressed, especially within the field of qualitative evaluation. Focusing on Italian, while intensification has been recently investigated (see Grandi 2017, for an overview), less attention has been paid to approximation (see Masini & Micheli 2020). Except for Napoli's (2012Napoli's ( , 2017 studies on the intensive prefix stra-(e.g., strapieno 'chock-full'), intensification and approximation have so far only been investigated from the synchronic perspective.…”

“…The spread in ordinary language is more recent and entails the emergence of a pejorative value since what is imperfect (i.e., not precisely coincident with X) is considered as worse than X. The expression of evaluative meanings by affixes originally occurring in scientific terminology has been already observed in Italian by Masini & Micheli (2020) in the cases of simil-(e.g., temperature simil-estive 'summery-like temperatures') but also of para-'id.' , quasi-'almost', and semi-'half', all expressing a set of values related to approximation.…”

Advances in Morphological Theory: Construction Morphology and Relational Morphology

“…Construction-based accounts of affixoids have appeared for, among other languages, German and Dutch (e.g., Michel 2013, Hüning & Booij 2014, Hartmann 2019, Italian (e.g., Masini & Micheli 2020), Hungarian (Kenesei 2007), Chinese (Arcodia 2011, Arcodia & Basciano 2018, and Aivaliot Greek (Ralli 2019). The particular challenge posed by such formations is their inbetween status: They resemble compounds on the one hand and affixations on the other.…”

Morfología derivativa y expresión de la aproximación en español

“…En este sentido, cabe señalar que la expresión de la aproximación mediante mecanismos de formación de palabras ha despertado recientemente la atención de los investigadores en morfología de distintas lenguas 1 desde una perspectiva semántico-tipológica. En estos trabajos, se considera, en la línea de Grandi y Körtvélyessy (2015), que la aproximación es una de las funciones semánticas expresada por la morfología evaluativa, aunque ha sido menos estudiada que otras como la disminución o la intensificación, tal como indican Masini y Micheli (2020). Grandi y Körtvélyessy (2015, p. 9, 11) emplean los términos "aproximación/reducción/atenuación" para referirse, por ejemplo, al verbo del italiano fischiare 'silbar' > fischiettare 'silbar sin pensar', similar a correr > corretear en español.…”