(Pseudo-)Anglicisms and Nominal Compounds in Italian

Over the last decades, a growing number of foreign neologisms, also Anglicisms and false Anglicisms, have been recorded in Italian institutional dictionaries and scholarly works, let alone popularizing publications and online features such as word lover’s A-Z lists of new words in authoritative websites of major dictionary publishers. Examples here are Adamo and Della Valle’s (2003b) Neologismi quotidiani [New Everyday Words] and De Mauro’s (ed.) (2003, 2008) supplements to the Grande Dizionario Italiano dell’Uso, published as Nuove Parole Italiane dell’Uso I and Nuove Parole Italiane dell’Uso II [New Italian words]); Furiassi (2010), especially devoted to False Anglicisms in Italian; De Mauro’s (2006) Dizionarietto di Parole del Futuro [A small dictionary of future words] and the the Neologismi pages of Treccani.it ‒ Lingua Italiana Magazine (NT), a free online feature maintained by the Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani. Turning from lexis to word-formation, recent investigations into Italian word-formation also argue for the growing influence of English compounding onto Italian (e.g. Adamo and Della Valle 2003a; Dardano, Frenguelli, and Puoti 2005). Different combinations of foreign and native words are possible, as as well as shifts from left- to right-headedness: En + En: baby killer ‘young killer’ (right-headed); En + It: baby pensione ‘pension taken before the minimum pension age’ (right-headed); It + En: afa record ‘extreme heat and humidity’(left headed); It + It: D’alema-pensiero ‘D’alema’s political vision’ (right-headed). Overall, rather than acquiring entirely new constructions, Italian appears to make recourse to marginal formative patterns like right-headed compounds following the support effect of foreign patterns (Iacobini 2015). For instance, Lombardi Vallauri (2006) specifies that N-N (and N-Name) compounds with a naming/classificatory function (e.g. effetto serra ‘greenhouse effect’ but also effetto-Berlusconi ‘effect named after the consequences of Berlusconi’s behaviour’), are not new to Italian but productivity might have been boosted by English models. In this context, this paper discusses compounding in the latest reference works and essays on neologisms (e.g. Adamo and Della Valle 2003b; Palmisano 2004; Bencini and Manetti 2006; De Mauro (ed.) 2007, 2008; Furiassi 2010). We then move on to new words that can stand a good chance to be established in the dictionary (Migliorini 1968: termini d’uso incipiente), words of the year and occasionalisms (e.g. Treccani. Neologismi: http://www.treccani.it/magazine/lingua_italiana/neologismi/searchNeologismi.jsp; Parole Nuove. Accademia della Crusca: http://www.accademiadellacrusca.it/it/lingua-italiana/parole-nuove; Adamo and Della Valle’s 2010 ff). Bringing together insights from recent work on compounds from English patterns (Vogel 1990; Adamo and Della Valle 2003a; Dardano, Frenguelli, Puoti 2005; Grasso 2007; Iacobini 2005) shall enable us to classify data along parameters such as headedness, semantic relation R, and phonotactics of the calque, mixed compound, or false Anglicism.