Do Romance languages have phrasal compounds

Do Romance languages have phrasal compounds? A look at Italian
Antonietta Bisetto - University of Bologna
The label 'phrasal compound' has often been applied to Romance constructions such as:
1)
It.
Fr.
Port.
Sp.
Cat.
Rom.
carta da musica
verre à vin
caminho de ferro
libro de cocina
calaix de sastre
lapte-de-pasăre
'music paper';
'wine glass';
'railway';
'cookbook’;
'hotchpotch';
'snow eggs';
porta a vetri
fil de fer
travão de mão
trabajo a domicilio
mal de cap
porc-de-mare
'French window'
'wire'
'hand brake'
'teleworking'
'headache'
'scorpion fish'1
whose structure is characterised by the presence of a preposition in between the two nouns 2. This
property led up to analyse them as having a [N + PP] structure and, consequently, to assimilate them
to the phrasal compounds present in English (or better, Germanic languages, order of constituents
aside, of course).
Italian formations of this type have been recently investigated by Masini (2007, 2009, 2012) who
proposed that these (and other) constructions (like, for example, irreversible binomials (sale e pepe
‘salt and pepper’) and sayings (mai dire mai ‘never say die’) etc.) should be better defined as
phrasal lexemes. She maintained, in fact, that they are "constructions that are formally akin to
phrases, but lexical in nature [...]" (Cf. Masini & Scalise 2012:71) and that, though less easily than
in languages likr Dutch or Russian, for example, they can be distinguished from compounds on the
basis of two criteria. The first criterion has to do with the presence of an explicit relational marker
(namely the preposition) in between the two Ns; this marker is used in the syntax but cannot be
present in compounds, at least according to the definition of compound in Guevara & Scalise
(2009:108)3. The second criterion refers to the occasional occurrence of the definite determiner that
forms a complex preposition, as in It. seno al silicone 'breast a+il (prep+article) silicon = silicon
breast'.
I agree with Masini's opinion on the non-compoundhood of [N Prep (Det) N] constructions,
especially since, contrarily to what Masini herself asserted (cf. Masini 2009:260), an adjective
modifying the first noun (hence internal modification) is sometimes allowed 4:
1
Data are from the papers on Romance compounds in Probus 24 (1). Examples are: from French: Villoing's, from
Portuguese: Rio Torto & Ribeiro's, from Spanish: Guevara's, from Catalan: Bernal's, from Romanian: Grossmann's.
Italian ones are mine.
2
The constituent following the preposition can also be a verb, as in the It. 'macchina da scrivere/cucire'
'typewrite/sewing machine' respectively.
3
Guevara & Scalise (2009) offer the following representation/definition of compound:
[X RY]Z
“where X, Y and Z represent major lexical categories, and ℜ represents an implicit relationship between the
constituents (a relationship not spelled out by any lexical item)”.
4
Data are (among those I collected) from the ItTenTen corpus (a corpus of 2,588,873,046 words) searchable through the
SketchEngine.
2)
... un disegno stratificato a
grappoli, in cui ciascun grappolo...
'drawing platy
PREP cluster = a platy cluster drawing'
... per ricercare un' opera antica a
stampa...
'book old PREP press = old press book'
... e per la partita storica
a scacchi che si svolge nella piazza principale...
'match historical PREP chess = historical chess match'
If the constructions discussed so far are not compounds, does Italian have phrasal compounds?
Consider the following examples found on the ItTenTen corpus:
3)
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
conquista palmo a palmo
gestione servizi a pagamento
piano cottura a gas
predisposizione impianto di climatizzazione
predisposizione caldaia a gas
All these complexes can be analysed as consisting of a noun (conquista 'conquest', gestione
'management', piano 'countertop', predisposizione 'set up') followed by a [N Prep N] phrasal
lexeme: palmo a palmo 'inch by inch' (3a), servizi a pagamento 'lit. services for a fee' (3b), cottura
a gas 'gas cooking' (3c), impianto di climatizzazione 'air conditioning system' (3d), caldaia a gas
'gas boiler' (3e). Do the whole expressions in (3) amount to phrasal compounds?
In my presentation I will discuss the issues presented above together with another interesting
phenomenon concerning some Italian VN compounds, viz. formations like those in (4) (from Ricca
(2005)):
4) a.
b.
canaletta [raccogli [acque meteoriche]]
cofanetto [porta [fili e spilli]]
'rain-water collecting pipe'
'threads and pins containing little box'
and the more 'extreme' one:
c.
nel piccolo vano....dove si trova il [porta [rotolo delle strisce di carta che si usano per
coprire la tavoletta del wc]]
'in the little space where the [roll of paper strips that are used to cover the wc board] -holder
is located'
with the purpose of ascertaining whether Italian has phrasal compounds.
References
Guevara, E. & Scalise, S. (2009). "Searching for universals in compounding." In S. Scalise, E. Magni & A. Bisetto
(eds.), Universals of language today, 101–128. Berlin: Springer.
Masini, F. (2007). Parole sintagmatiche in italiano. PhD Dissertation, Università Roma Tre.
Masini, F. (2009). "Phrasal lexemes, compounds and phrases: a constructionist perspective. Word Structure 2(2). 254 –
271.
Masini, F. (2012). Parole sintagmatiche in italiano. Roma/Cesena: Caissa Italia.
Masini, F. & Scalise, S. (2012). "Italian compounds". Probus 24 (1) 61-91.
Ricca, D. (2005). "Al limite tra sintassi e morfologia: i composti aggettivali V-N nell’italiano contemporaneo". In M.
Grossmann & A.M. Thornton (eds.), La formazione delle parole, Roma: Bulzoni, 465– 486.