[Lingtyp] The type "la bellezza di cento euro"

[Raffaele Simone]

Dear colleagues and friends,

in Italian and other Romance languages there is a binominal NP structure as in the following examples:

italian

  1.  Ho speso la bellezza di cento euro
I have spent the beauty of one hundred euros
"I spent a good one hundred euros"

  1.  Ho pagato questa casa la miseria di centomila euro

I have paid this house the misery of one hundred thousand euros.

"I paid a paltry one hundred thousand euros for this house"

  1.  Ha sposato un tesoro di ragazzo

She has married a treasure of boy

"She married a darling boy"

  1.  Faccio uno schifo di lavoro
I do a crap of job
"I have a crap job"

            The NP is structured as follows:

A specifier + N1, a sort of "Light Noun" indicating a positive or negative property (bellezza, tesoro, schifo ecc.) of N2 + di + N2, a noun representing the "semantic phrase head", which the property indicated by N1 refers to.

>From the predicative point of view, the quality attributed to N2 is not encoded by an adjective or sim. but is transferred to N1.
Other constraints:
a. the list of the possible N1 is very limited;
b. some N1 (as bellezza in 1, miseria in 2) don't indicate a property but refer to an amount, so working as indefinite quantifiers.

Could you indicate to me similar NP structures in other languages?
Thanks.

Raffaele (Simone)

PS For Light Words, See Simone, R. & F. Masini. 2014. "On Light Nouns". In Simone, R. & F. Masini (eds). Word Classes. 51-74. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

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Emeritus Professor, Università Roma Tre
Hon C Lund University
Membre de l'Académie Royale de Belgique
Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de France
Accademico (corrispondente) della Crusca
Prix de l'Institut de France-Fondation Bonnefous 2022
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Attività e pubblicazioni // Activity and publications http://uniroma3.academia.edu/RaffaeleSimone

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