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

Fri May 31 14:15:51 UTC 2024

Dear Colleagues

A couple of comments on Mark’s type one, the Expressive Binominal Constructions.

First, these induce Agreement Hierarchy effects, seen most easily when the two nouns have different gender values. For a peach of an example in Romanian (thanks to Alexandru Nicolae) see Corbett (2023: 19-20).

Second, they show what Olivier Bonami (2015: 86–90) terms ‘reverse selection’ since the (syntactic) dependent selects the head. (A peach of an example is fine, but not a water-melon of an example)

Bonami, Olivier. 2015. Periphrasis as collocation. Morphology 25.63–110. DOI: 10.1007/s11525-015-9254-3.

Corbett, Greville G. 2023. The Agreement Hierarchy and (generalized) semantic agreement. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 8(1). pp. 1–39. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.9164

Very best,
Grev

On 31 May 2024, at 11:46, Mark Van de Velde via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:

Dear colleagues:

I find it useful to distinguish between two types of constructions.

The one illustrated by Raffaele, Guillaume and Cat is what Foolen (2004) calls Expressive Binominal Constructions.  These are pragmatically marked, in being expressive and tend to have a normal/neutral alternative (a horrible talk, a darling boy, ...). They also normally have specific reference. The qualifying noun in the construction tends to be entity-denoting, rather than quality-denoting (but this seems not to be the case in the Japhug examples, and in the belleza example from Italian): trainwreck, whopper, crook, tesoro, schifo ...

On the other hand, there exist pragmatically neutral constructions for adnominal qualification in which the semantic qualifier is construed as the head of a genitive construction. This is what Malchukov calls Dependency Reversal in Noun-Attribute (DRNA) constructions and what Ross (1998) calls Possessive-Like Attribute Constructions. I prefer the term Possessee-like qualifier constructions for being more accurate (more precise than DRNA, and excluding constructions such as a thing of beauty, which are also possessive-like). In the Bantu language Eton [eto], which does not have adjectives, Possessee-like qualifiers are the only strategy available for adnominal qualification. Their head noun can be a regular noun or be dedicated to this construction, as the qualifying noun ɛ̀bə̀ŋ 'beautiful' in the following example.
ɛ̀bə̀ŋ ɛ́ lôŋ
ɛ̀-bɛ̀ŋ       ɛ́=lòŋ
5-beauty  5.gen=[5]hair
‘beautiful hair’
Best wishes,
Mark
references:
Foolen, Ad (2004). Expressive binominal NPs in Germanic and Romance. In: Radden, Gunther & Klaus-Uwe Panther (eds.) Studies in Linguistic Motivation. Berlin. Mouton de Gruyter.
Ross, Malcolm (1998). Possessive-like attribute constructions in the Oceanic languages of northwest Melanesia. In: Oceanic Linguistics 37–2: 234–276.
Van de Velde, Mark L.O. (2008). A Grammar of Eton. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Van de Velde, Mark L.O. (2012). The origin and spread of possessee-like qualifiers in Central Africa<https://mark.vandevelde.cnrs.fr/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Van_de_Velde_2012_Buea_handout_Possessee-like-qualifiers.pdf>. Buea. 7th World Congress of African Languages.

On 31/05/2024 11:48, Sergey Say via Lingtyp wrote:
Dear Rafaelle,

The following book is an excellent resource on the types of constructions you are interested in.

Malchukov, Andrej L. 2000. Dependency reversal in noun-attribute constructions: towards a typology. (Lincom studies in Language Typology, 3). München: LINCOM EUROPA.

Best,

Sergey Say

On Friday, May 31, 2024 at 10:39:32 AM GMT+2, Raffaele Simone via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org><mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:

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.

==============

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

_______________________________________________
Lingtyp mailing list
Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp

_______________________________________________
Lingtyp mailing list
Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp

--

[LLACAN]
Mark Van de Velde
Directeur du LLACAN (CNRS-INaLCO)
mark.vandevelde.cnrs.fr<https://mark.vandevelde.cnrs.fr/>
bantu.cnrs.fr<https://bantu.cnrs.fr/>

_______________________________________________
Lingtyp mailing list
Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20240531/8108115c/attachment-0001.htm>