Tracing back the history of Italian Attributive-Appositive Noun+Noun compounds: First outcomes

Abstract

The paper presents the initial findings of a research project that investigates the origins of Italian ATAP NNs, such as parola N chiave N (keyword) or luogo N simbolo N (place.symbol — symbolic place). This study is based on a meticulously chosen sample of 1,924 NN types that include 47 different modifiers as their rightmost constituent, sourced from Google n-grams frequency lists (2020), which represent the most extensive diachronic linguistic data currently available. While recent literature suggests that Italian ATAP NNs emerged in the latter half of the 20 th century and gained significant productivity only after 2000, our data indicate that this process occurred approximately 50 years earlier, particularly for a notable subset of N2-based semi-schematic constructions. With respect to the theoretical frameworks of Construction Morphology, Relational Morphology, and Diachronic Construction Grammar, the analysis of the data provides an insight into the interaction between the fully schematic ATAP NN construction and various semi-schematic constructions (N2-based families). Moreover, the study attempts to identify key diachronic stages in the development of the pattern.