A contrastive analysis of English deverbal -er synthetic compounds and their Italian equivalents

Abstract

Abstract This study deals with English synthetic compounds ending in -er, such as heartbreaker, time-killer, and bodybuilder, and their Italian equivalents. Synthetic compounds are very productive in Germanic languages (e.g. E. heartbreaker, G. Herzensbrecher, D. hartenbreker), but virtually absent in Romance languages, where various morphological forms and word-formation strategies are used to render the same concepts (cf. It. rubacuori, Sp. rompecorazones, Fr. tombeur). The analysis of English synthetic compounds still remains a controversial topic in morphological accounts, with a lively theoretical debate between two mutually exclusive hypotheses, i.e. whether synthetic compounds have to be analyzed as derivations (i.e. [[heart break] [-er]]) or as compounds (i.e. [[heart] [break-er]]). In word-formation, they are part of transitional morphology, i.e. they have an ambivalent status between derivation and compounding. This study explores a collection of about 100 English synthetic compounds drawn from the English Lexicon Project database and compares them with their possible Italian renditions. The contrastive analysis mainly aims at highlighting differences between the two morphological systems (cf. E. time-killer/It. passatempo). Moreover, the study examines the translation procedures used to render English synthetic compounds in OPUS2 Italian. Corpus-based results confirm that English and Italian display language-specific constructions which may result in mis- or under-translation.