Phrasal lexemes

The paper addresses the issue of the syntax-lexicon distinction from a Construction Grammar perspective. In the constructionist framework, the CONSTRUCTION is the basic unit of linguistic analysis and there is no clear-cut division between lexical items and syntactic structures. Under this view, phenomena which are intermediate between syntax and the lexicon are expected. Apart from well-known cases such as idioms and compounds, there can be found in various languages a number of multi-word expressions that are not fully syntactic objects. I refer to these units as PHRASAL LEXEMES. The paper shows that, although phrasal lexemes follow the syntactic patterns of the language, they clearly have a lexical, naming function and, furthermore, they are more restricted compared to canonical phrases. This is exemplified by two case studies from Italian, namely noun-preposition-noun combinations and verb-conjunction-verb combinations. Construction Grammar not only offers efficient tools for describing these expressions, but also allows to treat phrasal lexemes as distinct with respect to both words and canonical phrases, without abandoning any of these notions.

Questo articolo è una rielaborazione di alcune parti della mia tesi dottorale (Masini 2007), diretta da Raffaele Simone. Mi è sembrato doveroso contribuire al volume in suo onore con uno scritto che riguardasse i temi che a suo tempo ci hanno avvicinato e che continuiamo tuttora a condividere attraverso le attività del laboratorio TRIPLE (Tavolo di ricerca sulla parola e il lessico, Dipartimento di Linguistica, Università Roma Tre). Ringrazio Antonietta Bisetto per aver discusso con me alcuni punti, Valentina Efrati e Valentina Piunno per aver letto il manoscritto e Lunella Mereu per la sua revisione. 1 Tra i tanti contributi significativi ricordiamo almeno Gross

If we accept that the concept of "meaning" is broader than usually thought and that, as a result, full and shortened forms might not be total synonyms, then we can easily account for these reduction mechanisms in terms of Construction Grammar (cf., a.m.o., Fillmore et al. 1988; Goldberg 1995) and/or Construction Morphology (Booij 2005(Booij , 2009a. Here follow the advantages of a constructionist approach: the constructionist framework does not posit a strict division between syntax and the • lexicon/morphology, therefore intermediate phenomena such as phrasal lexemes are expected to occur and can be accounted for (cf. Booij 2009b, Masini 2009); constructionist models use a very • broad definition of "meaning", which comprises semantic, pragmatic and usage features, including information about style/register, genre, etc. This model is therefore suitable in principle to account for full vs. reduced forms that differ solely in this kind of information.

This study aims to provide a thorough empirical examination of the hypothesis that French subordinate Noun-Noun compounds (stylo-bille-'ballpoint pen') are mere variants of corresponding phrasal lexemes or syntactic phrases with the structure Noun-Prep-(Det)-Noun (stylo à bille). On the basis of extensive corpus data from FrWac, it will be argued that the relationship and the competition between French NNs and NPNs differ with respect to different subtypes of NNs. On the one hand, attributive NNs cannot have NPN variants, and appositive NNs as well as NNs in which the N2 has a bound meaning have synonymous NPN variants only occasionally. On the other hand, for subordinate verbal-nexus NNs the NPNs represent stylistic variants which seem to be always available. The case of subordinate ground NNs proves to be more complex since, in this case, both patterns are in competition (Aronoff 2016); data discussed in this paper indicate that this competition is steered by phenomena of constructionalization. Since French NNs tend to be organized around paradigmatic families with repeated components, we have put forward the hypothesis that such paradigmatic regularity underpins a progressive formation of 'niches' in which new subordinate ground NNs win the competition with NPNs. Moreover, mechanisms of constructionalization even give rise to new subpatterns of subordinate ground NNs whose NPN variants are ungrammatical. The competition between French NNs and NPNs, also documented on diachronic data from Google n-grams, reflects a change in naming strategies in French, especially from the 1960s onwards.

RÉSUMÉ (FR): Les NN français sont-ils des variantes des constructions N-PREP-N ? Étude de deux modèles concurrents basée sur corpus
Cet article vise à examiner empiriquement l'hypothèse selon laquelle les composés français de subor-dination du type Nom-Nom (stylo-bille) sont de simples variantes des synapsies ou des syntagmes no-minaux correspondants avec la structure Nom-Prép-(Dét)-Nom (stylo à bille). En nous appuyant sur de nombreuses données extraites du corpus FrWac, nous défendons l'hypothèse selon laquelle la relation et la concurrence entre les NN et les NPN français diffèrent en fonction des sous-types de NN. D'une part, les NN attributifs ne peuvent pas avoir de variantes NPN, et les NN appositifs ainsi que les NN dans lesquels le N2 a un sens lié n'ont des variantes NPN synonymes qu'occasionnellement. En re-vanche, pour les NN subordonnés « verbal-nexus » les NPN représentent des variantes stylistiques qui semblent toujours disponibles. Le cas des NN subordonnés « ground » se révèle plus complexe puisque dans ce cas, les deux schémas sont en compétition (Aronoff 2016); les données discutées dans cet article indiquent que cette compétition est conditionnée par des phénomènes de constructionalisation. Étant donné que les NN français tendent à s'organiser autour de familles paradigmatiques à composantes ré-pétées, nous avons avancé l'hypothèse qu'une telle régularité paradigmatique sous-tend une formation progressive de « niches » dans lesquelles de nouveaux NNs de subordination « ground » gagnent sur les NPN. De plus, les mécanismes de constructionalisation donnent même naissance à de nouveaux sous-JAN RADIMSKý 157 patrons des NN pour lesquels les variantes NPN sont agrammaticales. Enfin, grâce aux données dia-chroniques de Google n-grams, il apparaît que la concurrence entre les NNs et les NPNs reflète un certain changement dans les stratégies de dénomination en français, notamment à partir des années 1960.