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The paper is devoted to the analysis of partially lexically specified constructions in different diatopic varieties of Italian. These word combinations can be defined as constructions since they are pairings of form and meaning characterized by the presence of fixed and empty positions. The investigation examines examples of partially lexically specified (phrasal and sentence) constructions in Sardinian and in the regional Italian of Rome. The analysis shows that this combinatorial type is widespread within the national language as well as in local varieties. The phenomena which have been considered mainly concern: i) the presence of indigenous constructions in the local variety; ii) the presence of constructions modelled on the roof language; iii) the lexicalisation of forms in the local variety from roof language constructions, which radiate back as fixed sequences into the national language. The analysis also considers the lexicographic perspective and shows that these constructions are generally underrepresented in lexicographic tools, even though their single instantiations are often recorded in the corresponding entries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses the employment of body part nouns in the creation of phraseological expressions of some European languages, a topic at the crossroads of language, cognition and culture. In particular, the contrastive analysis explores the common linguistic representation of meanings through body part metaphorical expressions in Italian, French, Spanish and English. While several efforts to gauge the existence of a "European linguistic type" (cf. Haspelmath, 2001) have been largely devoted to the study of grammatical structures, a systematic account of the lexical component of the major European languages has not been attempted yet. Among the lexical units, phraseological expressions (e.g. compounds, multiword units, idiomatic expressions, as well as light verb and light noun constructions) represent a relevant ground to inquire into, since they are the most transparent and authentic vehicle of common ideas and experiences gradually rooted in European communicative realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes into account a particular set of Italian Complex Prepositions signaling the agent of an action (e.g. da parte di 'by' , a nome di 'by'). Italian exhibits several types of complex prepositions revealing a different involvement of the Agent: in particular, these complex lexemes can introduce and distinguish the participants who (i) plan and intentionally conceive an action, (ii) perform it and/or (iii) have a coercive power over its performing. The contribution aims to: (i) distinguish these Italian complex prepositions according to their functions, meanings, and the degree of involvement of the participant they introduce; (ii) analyze the collocational features and the syntactic environments where these lexemes occur; (iii) individuate possible correlations between their frequency of occurrence and the grammatical value; (iv) analyze their diachronic evolution across different historical phases; (v) put into relation the synchronic restrictions with the original syntactic environment within which the complex prepositions have been reanalyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]