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date: 25 January 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter suggests that all the existing proposals for classifying the huge variety of compounds of natural languages are – for one reason or another – unsatisfactory, and proposes a classification of compounds based on criteria which are as consistent as possible and, hopefully, universally valid. It is organized as follows. Section 3.2 discusses the major problems arising from previous attempts at classifying compounds. Section 3.3 analyses the classification proposed in Bisetto and Scalise (2005). Section 3.4 proposes amendments to the previous classification and discusses the basis for the amendments. Finally, Section 3.5 touches on a number of residual problems and presents some conclusions.

Keywords: compounding, classification, natural language

Sergio Scalise

Sergio Scalise teaches General Linguistics at the University of Bologna. His main interest today is morphology and he has contributed to the development of the so-called ‘Lexical Morphology’ with several papers and books. He is the director of ‘Lingue e Linguaggio’, consulting editor of several international journals (such as Morphology, Probus), co-organizer of the Mediterranean Morphology Meetings. He is director of several national and international projects all related to morphology and linguistic theory. Among his books are Generative Morphology (Dordrecht: Foris, 1984), Morfologia Lessicale (Padua: Clesp, 1983), Morfologia (Bologna: il Mulino, 1994), and Le lingue e il linguaggio (Bologna: il Mulino, 2003, with G. Graffi).

Antonietta Bisetto

Antonietta Bisetto is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Bologna. She has worked on issues regarding Italian word formation (derivation and compounding) and the semantics—morphology interface on which she has published several articles.

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