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This paper deals with, in a diachronic perspective, the Italian verb-noun compounds of the type portalettere and covers the time span that goes from the Origins well into the beginnings of the Twentieth century. On the basis of a rich dataset drawn from diachronic corpora and lexicographic sources, the article presents the history of this word-formation process, emphasizing the semantic and categorial nature of these compounds. The main claim is that the current semantic variability (person, instrument, event, period of time etc.) has always been available in the linguistic history of Italian as well as, to a minor extent, the categorial ambiguity by which VN compounds also function as adjectival modifiers. It is shown that this last function is much of a diachronic innovation. This paper, which stems from the theoretical premises of Construction Morphology, reveals that the productivity of the Construction [V-N]A|N is due to both the semantic and formal flexibility shown from the earliest attestations of the language, and to the productivity of some semi-specified subschemas, which have served as models for the creation of new VN compounds, especially over the past few decades.

WFL is a word formation based resource for Latin where words are analysed in their formative components and connected to each other on the basis of word formation rules. It represents a wide lexical resource for the study of Latin word formation. This paper describes how compounding is treated in the Word Formation Latin lexicon: the methodology and workflow employed to insert compound lemmas into the resource are described, as well as the reasons behind some methodological choices that have been taken during the process. Through the analysis of some types of Latin compounds, the theoretical contribution of this resource is highlighted and outlined.