[Lingtyp] agent nominalization

Wed Jan 6 14:58:24 UTC 2016

As a follow-up to professor Simone's message, I may add 
that the augmentative suffix -one is also used as an agent 
nominaliser:

mangiare 'to eat' > mangione 'hearty eater'
scroccare 'to scrounge' > scroccone 'scrounger, moocher'
bere 'to drink' > beone 'boozer'

The augmentative meaning is reflected in the fact that all 
of the above mean not only that an agent does something, 
but that it does so excessively. You find the same also in 
Spanish, Portuguese and Modern Greek. Incidentally, this 
use of an augmentative suffix has been claimed to be a 
feature of the languages of the Mediterranean (see N. 
Grandi, Development and Spread of Augmentative Suffixes in 
the Mediterranean Area, in P. Ramat / T. Stolz (eds.), 
Mediterranean Languages, Bochum, Dr. Brockmeyer University 
Press, 171-190).
The Romance forms come from Latin -(i)o (long 'o'). You 
can read the history of its grammaticalisation in the 
above mentioned paper.

Best,

Giorgio F. A.

-- 
Dr. Giorgio Francesco Arcodia
Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca
Dipartimento di Scienze Umane per la Formazione
Edificio U6 - stanza 4101
Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo, 1
20126 Milano

Tel.: (+39) 02 6448 4946
Fax: (+39) 02 6448 4863
E-mail: giorgio.arcodia at unimib.it
On Wed, 6 Jan 2016 13:30:32 +0100
 "Raffaele Simone" <rsimone at os.uniroma3.it> wrote:
> Dear Eitan,
> 
> in addition to the ones mentioned by Giorgio Arcodia, 
>Italian has a typical suffix indicating not only an 
>agent, but particularly an agent specializing in poor or 
>mean activities. 
> It is the suffix –ino, with a verb-basis.
> Examples:
>  1.. spazz-ino “street-sweeper” (spazzare ‘sweep’) 
>  2.. imbianch-ino “wall painter” (imbiancare ‘paint [a 
>wall] in white’) 
>  3.. portant-ino “stretcher porter” (portare ‘take, 
>bring’) 
>  4.. traffich-ino “shady dealer” (trafficare ‘deal’ 
>[here, in a derogatory sense]).
> etc. 
> The suffix is not exclusive for agents, but also works 
>as a general purpose diminutive. One may suppose that the 
>relative “insignificance” of the job justifies a 
>diminutive to express it. If agentive, –ino is not 
>productive in current Italian.
>    Best,
> 
>    Raffaele
> 
> =================
> Università Roma Tre
> via Ostiense 236
> I-00146 Roma
> =================
> Attività e pubblicazioni // Activity and publications
> http://uniroma3.academia.edu/RaffaeleSimone
> @raffaelesimone
> Volumi recenti//Recent books: a. Nuovi fondamenti di 
>linguistica, McGraw-Hill Italia, Milano 2014
> b. (con//with Francesca Masini, eds.) Word Classes. John 
>Benjamins, Amsterdam & Philadelphia 2014
> hn Benjamins, Amsterdam & Philadelphia 2014
> c. Come la democrazia fallisce, Garzanti, Milano 2015.
> 
>From: Eitan Grossman 
> Sent: Wednesday, January 6, 2016 11:07 AM
> To: LINGTYP 
> Subject: [Lingtyp] agent nominalization
> 
> Dear all,
> 
> 
> I am writing to ask a question about 'agent'* 
>nominalizations across languages. I am interested in 
>agent nominalizers that do or don't have known diachronic 
>sources, in the attempt to understand which diachronic 
>pathways are attested (and hopefully, their relative 
>frequency/rarity). For example, some languages have:
> 
> (a) bound morphemes whose diachronic source is clearly 
>identifiable, whether lexical (Japanese -nin or -sya 
>'person; Khwe and Meskwaki are similar, or Japanese -te 
>'hand') or grammatical (Serbo-Croatian -l(o) from an 
>original instrumental meaning, perhaps similarly for 
>Afroasiatic m-).
> 
> (b) bound morphemes whose diachronic source may be 
>mysterious or reconstructible as such to the 
>proto-language (Quechuan -q?, Malay-Indonesian 
>peng-/pe-?).
> 
> (c) free morphemes whose diachronic source is clearly 
>identifiable (Ponoapean olen ''man of')
> 
> (d) more complex constructions involving the reduction 
>of modifier clauses of some sort (Coptic ref- < 
>ultimately from 'person who verbs')
> 
> (e) rarer morphosyntactic alternations, like 
>reduplication of the initial syllable (Hadze, Serer), 
>vowel length (Akan), vowel raising (+breathiness) (Nuer) 
> 
> (f) no such nominalizer mentioned, or explicitly 
>mentioned that there is no dedicated agent noun 
>construction. In some languages, ad hoc formation via 
>relatives is the only (Tlapanec), main, or a 
>supplementary strategy (e.g., Indonesian relativizer 
>yang).
> 
> (g) zero conversion
> 
> 
> There is nice paper by Luschuetzky & Rainer in STUF 
>2011, but it deals almost exclusively with affixes and 
>only rarely mentions diachronic information.
> 
> 
>>From a very preliminary survey of grammars, it looks like 
>>the origin of agent nominalizers is often pretty obscure, 
>>and the shortest and most bound morphemes look to be very 
>>old, quite expectedly. Identifiable lexical sources seem 
>>to converge around 'person, thing' or body parts. 
>>Reduction of complex constructions to an affix seems to 
>>be rare but attested. 
> 
> 
> So, here's the question: in your languages, is the 
>diachronic source of agent nominalizers identifiable? I'd 
>be grateful for any information you might be willing to 
>share!
> 
> 
> Best,
> 
> Eitan
> 
> 
> *Disclaimer: even though this is a common term, most 
>languages I've seen don't single out the semantic role of 
>agent, and this is often noted in theoretical 
>discussions. Also, such nominalizations don't have to be 
>derivational or even 'morphological.'
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Eitan Grossman 
> Lecturer, Department of Linguistics/School of Language 
>Sciences
> 
> Hebrew University of Jerusalem
> Tel: +972 2 588 3809
>Fax: +972 2 588 1224
> 
> 
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