Zur Forschungsgeschichte der lateinischen Nominalkomposition Per una storia degli studi sulla composizione nominale latina

Abstract

In this paper, the history of the studies on Latin nominal compounding is outlined. In the first part, Th. L. gives an overview of the development from the ancient grammarians to the beginning of scientific research in 19 ,h century. In delineating the progress achieved by the mostly philological approaches, also the comparative and linguistic contributions are included in the discussion. It was particularly through the neogrammarian perspective that some aspects of Indo-European word formation became also an important factor for studies on Latin compounds. In the second part, R. O. discusses the main innovations that took place in 2(? h century. While the historical research in the traditional fields of typology and stylistics went on, two new paradigms of general lingusitics shed new light on the synchronic side of compounding. The first attempts to investigate the phenomenon of Latin composition as a system were elaborated by structural linguistics. This perspective was carried on by generative grammar, whose most important progress was the formulation of word formation rules and the discussion of their interaction with other components of grammar.