Semantica tipologico-comparativa: Endocentria ed esocentria

This paper, held at a ph.d. course at the University of Florence and therefore in Italian, presents the so-called ENDO- and EXOCENTRIC TYPOLOGY advanced by the CBS based research group TYPOlex. The typology is partly based on Talmy’s lexicalisation patterns for motion verbs (with some elaboration and refinement of the MANNER – PATH distinction), and on Pustejovsky’s Qualia Structure for lexical items, and it is generalised to comprise Germanic and Romance verbs and nouns as a whole. The Danish research points to a relatively high lexical precision and concreteness in Germanic verbs and Romance nouns and a relatively high lexical abstractness and genericity in Romance verbs and Germanic nouns. Furthermore, the paper investigates Talmy’s two semantic components GROUND and FIGURE and argues that they are far more generalised in Romance (secondary) lexicalisation patterns – parasynthetic derivation – than normally assumed.