English and German suffixoids and their Italian equivalents

Abstract This contribution investigates English and German affixoids and their Italian equivalents from a morphotactic, morphosemantic, and morphopragmatic perspective, particularly in the context of verbal aggression. The suffixoid in the pattern bomb+proof , and the German prefixoid in intensifying expressive adjective compounds of the type blut+arm (with two main accents) ‘intensely poor, lit. blood+poor’ or sau+dumm ‘intensely dumb, lit. sow+dumb’, are examined. Affixoids (both suffixoids, such as + proof , and prefixoids, such as G. blut +) are transitional between compound constituents and derivational affixes (prefixes or suffixes), and thus part of transitional morphology, i.e. they are intermediate between different sub-components of word-formation. The issues investigated include the productivity and profitability of the units studied (cf. Bauer, 2001 ), their relative degree of morphosemantic transparency/opacity, their positive or negative connotations, the degrees of morphological richness of the different patterns, and whether the affixoid constructions refer to humans, animates, or inanimates. A combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses of data drawn from the literature and from large electronic corpora will demonstrate the pragmatic effects of these morphological processes and their preferred co-texts. A contrastive analysis with Italian morphosemantic equivalents will reveal how the three languages differ due to typological factors.