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

[Cat Butz]

Hi Raffaele,

(Scottish) English 1: "a bastard of a boy", i.e. a very bad boy: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1ALzsH-yRs
English 2: "a beast of a linguist", i.e. a very strong linguist
English 3: "a trainwreck of a talk", i.e. a very bad/chaotic talk
German: "eine Seele von Mensch ('a soul of [a] person')", i.e. a 
wonderful / very good-hearted person

English might be too productive to meet the "limited N1s" constraint. 
German N1s might be more limited, at least I can't think of more 
examples off of the top of my head. The example I provided is also 
limited to this exact collocation of N1 and N2.

As for coding amounts, obviously English "a lot/truckload/etc. of money" 
comes to mind, but might be too grammaticized to count as an example. 
Same with German "ein:e Menge/Berg/etc.".

Warm regards,
---
Cat Butz (she)
HHU Düsseldorf
General Linguistics


Am 31/05/2024 10:39, schrieb Raffaele Simone via Lingtyp:
> Dear colleagues and friends,
> 
> in Italian and other Romance languages there is a binominal NP
> structure as in the following examples:
> 
> italian
> 
>  	* Ho speso la bellezza di cento euro
> 
> I have spent the beauty of one hundred euros
> 
> "I spent a good one hundred euros"
> 
>  	* 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"
> 
>  	* Ha sposato un tesoro di ragazzo
> 
> She has married a treasure of boy
> 
> "She married a darling boy"
> 
>  	* 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.
> 
> ==============
> 
> 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
> 
> ===============
> 
> Attività e pubblicazioni // Activity and publications
> http://uniroma3.academia.edu/RaffaeleSimone [1]
> 
> 
> 
> Links:
> ------
> [1] http://uniroma3.academia.edu/RaffaeleSimone
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