Some Remarks On Clipping Of Deverbal Nouns In French And Italian

This chapter deals with the restricted class of clipped deverbal nominals in French (e.g. in- troduction → intro) and especially in Italian (e.g. giustificazione → giustifica) and aims to show that subtle semantic restrictions seem to constrain such clipping, although there are some differences between the two languages. First, I introduce the well-known distinction between event (E) and result/referential (R) nouns that has been further elaborated by Mel- loni (2006, 2007, 2011). I then proceed to discuss a class of formations where clipping seems to be sensitive to a special result/object meaning which is very close to what Pustejovsky (1991: 174; see Melloni 2011: 109, 111, 142) calls information object. On the basis of a limited class of examples (both attested and hypothetical, e.g. quantificazione → quantifica), I ar- gue that where there is such an information object reading available to the relevant nominal, the clipping rule may apply. I take these phenomena to be relevant for Fradin & Kerleroux’s (2009: 84–86) Maximal Specification Hypothesis, according to which word-formation rules can apply, especially in the case of polysemous lexemes, to specific semantic features in- herent in the overall meaning of the base. I demonstrate that clipping can have access to precisely these semantic features.