ITALIAN INTERNET TERMINOLOGY: A CORPUS-BASED APPROACH TO BANALISED LANGUAGE
by
Wendy Marie Schrobilgen
A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements
For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Italian Studies
University of Toronto
©Copyright by Wendy Marie Schrobilgen 2010 ITALIAN INTERNET TERMINOLOGY: A CORPUS-BASED APPROACH TO BANALISED LANGUAGE Abstract of Doctoral Thesis Wendy Marie Schrobilgen Department of Italian Studies, University of Toronto, 2010
The present study offers strong evidence that the World Wide Web is a unique domain of use that can be categorized as a banalised context based on certain defining criteria. Italian Internet
Terminology is worthy of investigation because of its unprecedented extent and rich context of use. The goal of chapter one is to make a case for the utility of a corpus-based study, explain the primary theoretical underpinnings of the study, which I base on the concept of central meaning linked to the compositionality of elements, and give important historical and sociological motivations for such a study . In chapter two, I explain how term are selected and discarded, how my corpus is created, and how it proves suitable and representative of this lexical domain. In the third chapter, I elucidate the classificatory system I employ which allows me to view the lexical items in grammatical context. To gain a better understanding of the conceptual system of the terms studied, I introduce another important analytical framework: qualia structures. In chapter four, the analysis of the morphosyntactic and semantic character of the terminology allows for greater insight into the processes and pattering of denomination of Internet terminology. To conclude this study, I show that Italian Internet terminology is a banalised language governed by a systematic set of morpho-syntactic rules in which Italian selects, uses, and lexicalizes terms based on core units of meaning.
ii Thesis Outline
Table of Contents
Glossary or Terms and Abbreviations
1. Introduction
2. Corpus and Tools
3. Neological Aspects of the Italian Lexicon
4. Presentation of Data and Analysis of Terms
5. Conclusions
Bibliography
Appendix: Corpus of Terms Online http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~schrobw/
Table of Contents
1 Introduction 0 Glossary, Symbols, Abbreviations and Conventions x
0.1 Glossary x
0.2 Conventions and Symbols xi
0.3 Abbreviations xi
0.3 Other Symbols xii
1.1 Area of Study 2
1.1.2 The Internet : A Unique Domain of Language Use 2
1.1.3 The Language of the Internet 3
iii 1.2 The Sociolinguistic Context 5
1.2.1 The Influence of English on Italian 5
1.2.2 Social Attitudes Towards the English Language in Italy 7
1.3 Literature Review 11
1.3.1 Examination of Previous Studies 11
1.3.2 Past Studies on Specialized Languages 14
1.3.2.1 Galisson 14
1.3.2.2 Wexler 15
1.3.3 Studies on Language Using Corpora 15
1.3.1a Summary of Previous Lexicological Studies 17
1.3.4 Recent Studies on English Borrowings on the Internet 18
1.3.5 Conclusion to Literature Review 20
1.4 Essential Notions 23
1.4.1 Banalisation 23
1.4.1.1 Diagram of Banalised Language 26
1.4.2 Mention vs. Use 26
1.4.2.1 Examples of Mention vs. Use: spam/spamming/spammare 27
1.4.3 Terms That Appear in Other Semiotic Systems 28
1.4.4 Areas of Use 29
1.4.5 Regional vs. Standard Italian 30
1.4.6 Terms and Terminology 30
1.4.6.1 Diagram: The Linguistic Sign 33
1.5 Plan of Study 35
iv 2 Corpus and Tools 37 2.1 Introduction 37
2.2.1 How the Net Differs from World Wide Web 37
2.2.2 Internet Coverage and Use 38
Table 2.2.2.1 Table: Internet Usage in Europe by Comparison 39
2.3 The Media 41
2.3.1 Studying the media: Establishing a Community of Practice 41
2.3.2 Establishing Trust in the Community of Users 43
2.4 Materials 44
2.4.1 Media Sources: Italian Language Media Online 44
2.4.1.1 National News Websites in Italian Language 44
2.4.2 The Corpus 46
2.4.3 Source and Number of Terms Generated 48
2.4.4 Subcategories of Terms 51
2.4.5 Other Kinds of Terms Excluded from Corpus 52
2.4.6 Use of a Control Group to Test Terms 52
2.4.7 Attestations / Frequency of Terms 53
2.4.8 Establishing Central Terms 53
2.4.8.1 Table of Synonomous Terms 54
2.4.8.1. Results of Italian Language Sites Searched Through Google.it 61
2.4.8.1.1a Frequency of Synonomous Terms: ‘to click/ click!’ 62
2.4.8.1.1b Frequency of Synonomous Terms: ‘chat / chat!’ 63
2.4.8.1.2a: Frequency of Synonomous Terms: ‘streaming’ 64
v 2.4.8.1.3a Frequency of Synonomous Terms: ‘link’ 65
2.5 Tools 66
2.5.1 Google.it 66
2.5.1.1 Google Advanced Search Page 67
2.5.2 Concordance 68
2.6 Synchronic Approach 69 2.7 Conclusion 70 3 Neological Aspects of the Italian Lexicon 72
3.1 Introduction 72
3.2 Borrowing 73
3.2.1 Conditions of Borrowing 73
3.2.2 Integration of Loanwords: Phonological Considerations 75
3.2.3 Constraints on Borrowing 76
3.2.4 Derivation in English and Italian: A Comparison 77
3.2.5 Word Morphology and Borrowed Lexical Stock 79
Table 3.2.5.1 Noun Analysis 81
Table 3.2.5.2 Verb Analysis 82
3.3 Word Formation in Italian 83
3.3.1 How Words Are Formed 83
3.4 Categorization of New Words 85
3.4.1 Polysemy: metaphorical extension/semantic shift 87
3.4.2 Borrowings 88
3.4.3 Lexicalization of Borrowed Terms 89
vi 3.4.4 Derivation 89
3.4.5 Compounding 89
3.4.6 Synonymous Terms 92
3.5. Semantic Approaches to Terms 92
3.5.1 Frames and Profiles 92
3.5.2 Frames and Selection Restrictions 94
3.5.2.1 Pustejovsky’s Generative Lexicon Theory 94
3.6 Conclusion 95 4 Presentation of Data and Analysis of Terms 97
4.1 Introduction 97
4.2 Borrowing 98
4.2.1 Semantic Borrowing 98
4.2.2 Formal Borrowing 102
4.2.2.1 background...... 2 (0.042%) 102
4.2.2.2 streaming...... 32 (0.677%) 103
4.2.2.3 cam...... 8 (0.116%) 103
4.2.3 Lexicalization of Borrowed Terms 104
4.2.3.1 Most Frequent Lexicalized Borrowings as They Appear in the Corpus 107
4.2.3.1.1 Results from Search of Blog in the Corpus 107
4.2.3.1.2 Results from Search of Chat in the Corpus 111
4.2.3.1.3 Results from Search of Click/Clic in the Corpus 115
4.2.3.1.4 Results from Search of Log in the Corpus 118
4.2.3.1.5 Results from Search of Mail/Email in the Corpus 121
vii 4.2.3.1.6 Results from Search of Network in the Corpus 124
4.2.3.1.7 Results from Search of Scroll in the Corpus 127
4.2.3.1.8 Results from Search of Spam in the Corpus 128
4.2.3.1.9 Results from Search of Surf in the Corpus 130
4.2.3.1.10 Results from Search of Tag in the Corpus 131
4.2.3.1.11 Results from Search of User in the Corpus 134
4.2.3.11 Highly Lexicalized Terms-Semantic Lattices 135
4.2.4 Derivation 137
4.2.4.1 Subjective Nominalization (Nominative of Subject) 138
4.2.4.2. Objective Nominalization 140
4.2.4.3 Lexicalization of Nouns > Verbs 142
4.3 Compounding, Syntagms and Ellipsis 143
4.3.1 Compounding 143
4.3.1.1 Compound Constructions in the Corpus 145
4.3.1.2 Results from Search of Web in Non Compound Constructions in the Corpus 148
4.3.2 Syntagms 149
4.3.3 Ellipsis 153
4.4 Synonymous Terms 154
4.4.1 Synonymous Terms in the Corpus 155
4.4.1.1 Comparison of Scaricare and Downlodare in the Corpus 161
4.5 Sigmatic Plurals 162
4.6 Gender Attribution 164
4.7 Conclusion 164
viii 5 Conclusions 166
5.1 Introduction 166
5.2 Morphosyntactic Aspects of Italian on the Internet 167
5.2.1 Compounds 167
5.2.2 Verb Phrases/Syntagms 169
5.2.3 General Patterns and Stages of Lexicalization 172
5.3 Semantic Aspects of Italian on the Internet 177
5.3.1 Competing Terms: Nouns and Noun Phrases 177
5.3.2 Competing Terms: Verbs and Verb Phrases 178
5.3.3 Distribution of Semantic Load 180
5.3.4 Paradigms: The Collocation of Terms 183
5.4 The Expression of Internet Italian on the Internet 184
5.4.1 Italian on the Internet as a Banalised Language 185
5.4.1.1 Comparison of Galisson’s Banalised Language and Italian on the Internet 186
5.5 Applications and Future Work 190
5.5.1 Phonological and Prosodic Aspects of Italian on the Internet and Constraints on Borrowings 190
5.5.2 English Suffixation in Italian 191
5.5.3 Diachronic Approach 191
5.5.4 Second Language Teaching and Learning 192
Bibliography 194
ix 0 Glossary, Symbols, Abbreviations and Conventions
0.1 Glossary
Context: Refers to the domain of use.
Co-text: Refers to the written context in which we find the term. The term, as it appears in the data, gives it its meaning.
Lexicalization: The process that a borrowed term undergoes when it takes on the word morphology of the recipient language. The end result of lexicalization is that the borrowed term becomes fully integrated into the recipient language (i.e. the term becomes part of discourse).
Qualia Structure: The Generative Lexicon theory proposed by Pustejovsky presents a set of resources conceived to semantically analyze natural language expressions (Pustejovsky, 1995). Qualia structure identifies the characteristics of the denotatum into four categories: i.) consitutive: material constitution, weight, parts, components; ii.) formal: orientation, magnitude, shape, dimension, colour, position; iii.) telic: function or goal; iv.) agentive: creator, artifact, natural kind, causal chain.
Standard Italian: The official language of Italy is Standard Italian. This is the language used in professional spheres and in many homes in modern day Italy. I use the term Standard Italian and Italian interchangeably. It is important to differentiate between the Standard language and the Italic dialects which, though spoken in many homes and often in public, are not official languages of the national media and are often avoided in casual written discourse between interlocutors who do not know each other (i.e. among bloggers, contributors to forums).
x Term: A term is any single unit of meaning made up of one or more parts (words).
Valence: Valency is a term used in chemistry to denote the reactivity or combining power of an element. Here the term is understood to have a certain combining power. Transitivity is one manifestation of valence as is argument (i.e. agents, patients etc.).
0.2 Conventions and Symbols1
1. /front slashes/ -referent
2. {curly brackets} - sets
3. CAPITAL letters –the concepts (semantic features) underlying the meaning of the term(s)
4. italics- attested term or written word (signifier)
5. [square brackets] – longer terminological syntagms / constructions
6. * asterisk - hypothetical form
0.3 Abbreviations
With reference to the entries themselves, the following abbreviations are used:
Abbreviation Meaning Adj adjective Adv adverb AP adjective Phrase Art article Aux auxiliary Borr borrowed Cn connotatum Der derivational
1 I follow the practice of Fillmore (1982) and Langacker (1987) in using lower-case italics to represent the word form, and capitals to represent the concept underlying the term.
xi Abbreviation Meaning Dn denotatum Ds designatum Fem feminine Intr Intransitive Masc masculine Mod modifier N noun PP past participle Prep preposition Tm term Tr transitive Com complement VCop copulative verb
0.3 Other Symbols
A English borrowed terms B Italian synonyms of English borrowed terms a,b,c refer to referents α,β,γ refer to referents x,y, z refer to variables X,Y refer to interlocutors
xii xiii 1 Introduction
The scope of chapter one is to explain why I have chosen study the expression of Internet Italian on the Web, why I think it is justifiable, what others have or have not written about it, and what my theoretical approach to this lexical study will be. This chapter begins with a discussion on the unprecedented extent and context of usage of Italian Internet terminology. I attempt to show that there is strong evidence that the World Wide Web is a unique domain of usage that can be categorized as a banalised context based on certain proven criteria. The unusual nature of computer mediated language is also discussed to illustrate how the phenomenon of banalisation applies so well to Italian Internet terminology: One is no longer aware of the tool yet uses the
Web and, consequently, the banalised language defined by Galisson, the 'langue seconde, greffée sur un langage ‘technique’' to wend his way through this domain. Though there may be no physical contact between speakers, strong cultural pressure exerts itself beyond geographical boundaries within the user-to-Web-interface (Crystal 2001, 28).
The Italian language is replete with English borrowings in the lexicon of Web Language and in the Italian language of general, everyday use. To understand why this is so, I give some background on how the sociolinguistic situation in Italy over the last sixty years has not only allowed, but in many cases, welcomed English borrowings. In the literature review, I give a detailed explanation on how some exemplary models of lexical studies from the French tradition using corpora have shaped my own work and I explain how some recent studies have offered me insights on how to deal with the integration of syntax and phonology with theories of pragmatics which seek to explain meaning in social and cultural contexts. With regard to context, I elucidate
1 the concept of banalisation and explain that it is an area of language use which lies outside of technical and specialised language use. Finally, I outline the theoretical framework of my research to show that I have based my research on the concept of central meaning linked to the compositionality of elements. Compositionality is an essential feature in linguistic theory since it gives an explanation for the understandability, learnability, and creativity of a language (Grandy
1990). It is my hope that this framework will allow me to understand how terms are formed and where meaning arises.
1.1 Area of Study
1.1.2 The Internet : A Unique Domain of Language Use
In this thesis, I wish to explore the linguistic outcomes of a domain of experience which enjoys privileged, albeit widespread, status in Italy: the Internet 2. As such, I make a special case for the notion of banalisation (discussed below) by looking at an area of high intensity contact between
Standard Italian and English on the Internet . The two languages in question are not in a traditional contact situation of geographic proximity nor are English and Italian, in the domain of general use, in a relationship of intense contact. However, English exerts strong influence on
Internet Italian in a specific area of language use: the Internet . Given the high frequency of borrowing from English, it is fair to say that the boundaries of superficial contact have been crossed. I argue that, in this particular domain of use, the contact between the two languages on the Internet should be characterized as “slightly more intense”, which parallels Stage 2 of
2 The source of the corpus is gathered from the World Wide Web whereas the Internet is relevant to the field of study as it is on and through the speaker’s use of the the Internet that terminology is learned and subsequently used.
2 Thomas and Kaufman’s borrowing scale (Thomason & Kaufman 1988, 120)3.
This dissertation concentrates on performance or parole (speech in context ) or what Martelli calls “the actual manifestation of language” and follows the view of M.A.K Halliday, who, as
Martelli explains, “sees language as a social semiotic system and emphasizes the importance of the socio-cultural context for the description of the linguistic system and of the grammatical devices that language makes available to its speakers” (Martelli 2003: 12). Therefore, the goal of this lexical study is not purely descriptive, providing only a list of terms relating to the Web or merely describing the peculiarities of such, but rather it is to consider the central vocabulary of
Italian on the Web as a system, treating every entry as an individual problem and individual part of that system. It is for this reason that ‘use’ is defined as a parameter. The terms most frequently used are those that are central to the linguistics domain explored here. I explain the processes used to arrive at the central terms studied for this dissertation in greater detail in chapter two.
1.1.3 The Language of the Internet
“Language is a social phenomenon. The study of language cannot be divorced from the study of a social system and the development of society. The development and progress in the social, political and technological system is manifest in the vocabulary of a language” (Lexicology and
Lexicography, http://www.ciil-ebooks.net/html/lexico/link4.htm accessed: March 22nd 2007).
This thesis examines different aspects of lexical as well as structural borrowing from English to
3 The scale of borrowing proposed by Thomason and Kaufman is as follows: Stage 1: Casual contact (lexical borrowings only); Stage 2: Slightly more intense contact (function words and slight structural borrowing); Stage 3: More intense contact (basic and non- basic vocabulary, moderate structural borrowing); Stage 4: Intense contact (heavy lexical and structural borrowing) (Adapted from Thomason and Kaufman [1988])
3 Italian and explores the extent and productivity of basic Internet terminology influenced by the
English language. The unique aspect of this study lies in the unprecedented extent and rapidity of the phenomenon. As one of the most wide-spread technological developments in today’s society, the World Wide Web comprises millions of users across the planet. English, as the primary lingua franca of the medium, exerts pressure on many recipient languages especially with regard to the terminology of the Web itself where most terms were contrived first in English and then borrowed into a recipient language. The nature of cyber language is also a factor in its rapid diffusion on the Web. According to David Crystal, “netspeak [the language used in
Internet in chat rooms, through casual emails etc.] is better seen as a written language which has been pulled some way in the direction of speech than as spoken language which has been written down [. . .].” He notes that “computer-mediated communication is not identical to either speech or writing, but selectively and adaptively displays properties of both” (79). He claims that
English language Netspeak is decidedly different because it is “more than an aggregate of spoken and written features [… and thus must] be seen as a new species of communication”. Cyber language or Netspeak are more than mere hybrids of speech and writing, or the results of contact between two long-standing mediums. Instead, electronic texts display fluidity, simultaneity
(being available on an indefinite number of machines) and non-degradability in copying; they transcend the traditional limitations on textual dissemination; and have permeable boundaries
(because of the way in which one text may be integrated within others or displays links to others). With regard to the linguistic effects of the new medium, Crystal believes they are twofold: “[Cyber language] initiates change in the formal character of the languages which use it; and it offers new opportunities for languages to use it” (81). From a lexico-morphological
4 standpoint, the ‘permeable boundaries’ that Crystal mentions are evident in the multitude of
English words and derivative words found on Italian language pages of the Internet . These may include morphological boundaries such as English borrowings that undergo morphological assimilation, first conjugation verbs, the assimilation and creation of present and past participles
(dopare, dopante, dopato), derivation and composition with Italian suffixes and lexemes
(webgiornale, cyberspazzatura). Moreover, it is the consistent visualization of the language and the need of the user to communicate in it (to use the tool) that further entrench the user's fluency in it. Web users need not venture out of their home in order to come in physical contact with a speaker of English to understand what bloggare means (blog + first conjugation infinitive ending
-are with subsequent syntactic doubling of intervocalic g). To further compound the rapidity of loanword acceptance from the donor to the recipient language on the Web, we may also mention the social prestige and popularity of English in Italy.
1.2 The Sociolinguistic Context
1.2.1 The Influence of English on Italian
The influence of the English language on the Italian language has intensified greatly since the last postwar period. Maurizio Dardano cites the following factors as those which have led to this intensification: “the economic supremacy of the United States; the Atlantic Alliance; the diffusion of culture, life styles and behaviors of the Anglo-Saxon world via a multiplicity of channels which reach all social classes, from literature to the press, from television programmes to light music, from advertising to fashions in young people’s attire, from leisure time activities to so many other aspects of custom which are still exposed today” (1986, 231). However, it is most probably the more recent technological advances that have had the most profound and far-
5 reaching influences on the development of the Italian language. The first major influence arrived in the 1950s, with the dawn of the television age, where the diffusion of standard language, broadcast at a national level for the first time, had an incredibly quick and far-reaching effect on the way Italians heard and viewed standard Italian. According to Danesi and Clivio (2000), the beginning of the television era signaled the first wave of linguistic leveling in Italy by bringing the standard language to even the most remote villages. Television technology also promoted the use of American English in what we may term a ‘cultural invasion’ whose reception by the
Italian public was facilitated by feelings of goodwill toward the Americans for the positive role they played in the liberation of Italy from fascism.
The continuing popularity of American culture in Italy is evidenced by the millions of viewers who tune in each day to the American soap opera Beautiful, to reruns of the American television program Beverly Hills 90210 and where the film Gone with the Wind runs at least once a year.
Although many of these programs air in dubbed Italian, the acceptance of American culture is significant in the public’s acceptance of America and its people. Although many Italians have never formally studied English, one tuning into Italian television today will be surprised not only by the use of words such as la showgirl (stress falls on girl) but by the use of entire catch phrases used in commercials such as “Life is now!” which follows a series of advertisements featuring the Italian national soccer team for the cellular telephone company Vodafone. It is impossible to turn on a television set or computer in Italy without being inundated with English words which are considered ‘molto cool’ by many young Italians today. Virginia Pulcini, whose research predominately deals with the influence of English on the Italian language, states that “L’inglese è la lingua che ha maggiormente influenzato l’italiano nella seconda metà del XX secolo, ma il suo
6 impatto non è stato omogeneo [e] gli anglicismi sono molto più numerosi in alcuni settori del lessico (informatica, economia, pubblicità, ecc.) che nella lingua comune” (par.1). Accordingly, this topic is relevant to both Italian’s varied linguistic history and the globalization and dominance of world English on the Web.
1.2.2 Social Attitudes Towards the English Language in Italy
Differential borrowing behaviour may be attributed to the different attitudes that some cultures have toward borrowing (e.g. one may deem Icelanders purists since their language has very few loanwords, cf. tölva 'computer', útvarp 'radio', etc.) (Haspelmath 2008). Unless there is legislation or language academies with a high degree of social acceptance, it seems to be difficult to find evidence for the exact role of speaker attitudes, and we must be careful to avoid generalizations. Canadians are often very aware of Francophone Canada’s constant efforts to keep French as free from English borrowings as possible. Italy’s present-day stance on borrowing is not as strict. Today, Italy demonstrates a great deal of linguistic liberalism compared to what may be called a hostile attitude toward foreign loan words during the twenty- year fascist period. So strict were the laws against the use of foreign words that in 1940 anyone making use of foreignisms in commercial signage, advertising or stationary would have been subject to a prison sentence of up to six months and a fine for up to five thousand liras (Raffaelli
1983). Alfredo Luzi, professor of Humanities at the University of Macerata, Italy, believes strongly in the preservation of the Italian language and has expressed the opinion that legislative intervention (against English borrowings) “would be useless” and states that “the current controversy on the defence of the Italian language is meaningless. Imposing a language by decree, as fascism tried to do, is simply unthinkable” (http://www.tandemnews.com/
7 viewstory.php?storyid=5012 accessed: May 28th 2007]). Luzi’s comment was a response to the age-old polemic of the Questione della lingua, a centuries-long debate on what the true Italian language should be, which was made official at the time of Italian Unification in 1861. One may find it interesting that his fear of ‘imposition’ is coloured by the negative Italian experience of dictatorship during the Mussolini years when many of Italy’s non-Italian speaking peoples (the
Tirolesi for example) were forced to forsake their native languages to speak Italian for the sake of unity. Despite Luzi’s apparent sensitivity to this darker part of Italian history, it seems that others are not afraid to rise up against foreign tongues, at least as far as syntax is concerned. In the year 2000, members of the Italian parliament (each belonging to different political parties) launched a campaign against English phrases entering into the Italian language, available on the
Internet under the title “Un Manifesto in difesa della lingua italiana” (Mantovani nel mondo
2006 www.mantovaninelmondo.com/.../notizie/.../linguaitaliana.htm accessed September 1st,
2007). Saverio Vertone, of the political party Forza Italia, one of the signatories of the
‘Manifesto’, explains that the real danger is not so much the lexical borrowings but rather the
‘colonization of syntax’. To illustrate where English has already left its syntactic mark in Italy, he points to the ‘frasario inglese’ used in Italian airports: “Grazie di non fumare” (Thank you for not smoking) which should read: “Grazie di non aver fumato” (literally, ‘Thank you for not having smoked’). However, the Manifesto admits that Italian is not ‘lexically rich’ and therefore lexical purism is not as important as is syntactic purism:
L’italiano non è una lingua lessicalmente ricca. Ma compensa la sua relativa povertà di
parole con una straordinaria ricchezza di costruzioni e movenze sintattiche […] il
purismo lessicale non è importante; sono utili i prestiti linguistici, possibili le
8 contaminazioni efficaci, benvenute le innovazioni intelligenti: ma è vitale la difesa della
sintassi, che è la struttura ossea di qualsiasi linguaggio4. (Un Manifesto in difesa della
lingua italiana, 2006, Online, accessed September 1st, 2007 www.mantovaninelmondo.com/Associazione/notizie/2006/liguaitaliana.htm>.) From reading the “Manifesto”, it would appear that Italy is lenient towards lexical borrowings. However, upon further investigation of the official website of Italy’s Accademia della Crusca (www.accademiadellacrusca.it), Italy’s authority on the standard language since the 1500s, one can see that it appears to have no outward ‘manifesto’ with regard to its position on lexical borrowings. The website offers linguistic advice and answers to lexical or grammatical queries through its ‘consulenza linguistica’, lists ‘parole nuove’ (new words) and, in the section ‘lingue speciali’ (special languages), deals with specialized or domain-specific language use. Within the latter section, ‘Linguaggi tecnico-scientifici e settoriali’ (technical, scientific and/or specialized/sector specific language)5 the Accademia defines its criteria as follows: […]chiamiamo tecnico-scientifici quegli usi linguistici che tendono al massimo grado di univocità, realizzato sia da una nomenclatura rigida e chiusa, sia da una tessitura sintattica 4 “Italian is not a lexically rich language. It compensates however for its relative lexical shortcomings through its extraordinarily rich morphology and syntax [...] lexical purism is not important; linguistic borrowings are useful and so contamination is quite likely if the borrowing proves effective. Intelligent innovations are welcome but syntax must be preserved at all costs since it is the backbone of all language.” [my translation] 5 “La presente sezione accoglie materiali che provengono dai gruppi di lavoro e da ricercatori singoli che fanno capo all'Accademia: materiali anche di pura documentazione di dibattiti in corso che vengono resi noti al pubblico” / “This section contains material gathered from teams of researchers and individual scholars who head up the Academy of the Crusca. This material includes actual ongoing debates that are made available regularly to the public.” ( 9 che esplicita chiaramente i nessi e passaggi logici; chiamiamo più genericamente settoriali quegli usi linguistici che appartengono a gruppi sociali e cerchie professionali riconoscibili, usi caratterizzati anche da termini ricorrenti, ma facilmente esportabili nell'uso comune, e comunque inseriti in una struttura testuale più libera.6 The technical and scientific spheres encompass highly formalized language, made up of sector- specific nomenclature, used in areas such as mathematics, physics, biology, medicine and economics. A second group includes the domains of both sports and politics. Interestingly, no mention is made of the Internet or the Web as domains of language use. For the Accademia, ‘nuove parole’ (‘new words’) are considered: “parole apparse per la prima volta in anni molto recenti; parole preesistenti ma che hanno subito negli stessi anni un mutamento semantico o un forte rilancio nell'uso pubblico7”. According to this definition, the language of the Internet , cyber language, or netspeak, would constitute a legitimate domain of language use. It is also increasingly apparent that the special language of the Web is an important domain of the Italian language. The growing number of online and paperback glossaries and dictionaries published in Italy over the last few years is indeed a testament to the very special status of the terminology of the Web in the Italian language. Interestingly enough, though a distinction is made between 6 “[…] we use the term technical-scientific to refer to language use characterized by the highest level of unambiguity. This type of language consists of nomenclature that is rigid and closed class (not subject to lexicalization) both in terms of its syntactic makeup and how it makes its connections (meanings) and links explicit. We use the term sector-based more generically to refer to language use that pertains to social groups and recognized professional circles. This type of language use is characterized by recurring terminology that finds its way easily into common language and is therefore used in more liberal language exchanges.” [my translation] 7 “words that have appeared for the first time in more recent years; preexisting words but those that have undergone, in more recent years, semantic shift or a strong resurgence in public use.” [my translation] 10 language registers (colloquial vs. formal and specialized vs. non specialized) there is no indication that an area of language use which is context specific (the Web/Internet ) merits another category of investigation. It appears that to truly understand the denomination processes of Web language, we would need to study language use from a point of view that allows for proper treatment and analysis of synonomy and polysemy. Technical languages do not support synonymous terms and polysemous terms: “technical terminology is the most divested of connotative elements in its language of origin and thus it is less conditioned by the lexical system into which it is inserted” (Gusmani 1981, 104). However, with regard to borrowings, Dardano observes that “unadapted technical terms, Anglicisms, when they are very well known, can acquire a metaphorical meaning in certain contexts” (1986, 244). What Dardano states is significant for proving a case for linguistic banalisation, for when terms are well known, they no longer belong to the realm of purely technical or specialized use. This further justifies my choice to adopt Galisson’s concept of linguistic banalisation (see section 1.5.1) as a frame in which to view and study the influence of English on Standard Italian on the Web. 1.3 Literature Review 1.3.1 Examination of Previous Studies Maurizio Dardano has contributed significantly to Italian linguistics, has written several articles on the influence of English on Italian and is considered an authoritative source by Italianists and Romance linguists alike. He has written extensively on borrowings from English in context but his article English Influence on Italian sums up his overall methodology and approach to contact linguistics. Dardano believes that it is essential to look at language use in context: “since knowledge of English is spread over different categories of speakers, it is necessary to go beyond 11 traditional analyses concerned with the temporal diffusion of loanwords to ascertain their position ‘in the various levels of sociolinguistic reality’ (Gusmani 1981, 109)” (Dardano 1986, 232). For Dardano, the linguistic reality of which he speaks is primarily specialized language (techincal, scientific, etc.) as opposed to non-specialized or literary vs non-literary. He does not mention other overlapping areas of use such as those we find in the case of linguistic banalisation. Nevertheless, the same author does give weight to the questions posed by synonymy which is an area of enquiry that merits some attention especially when exploring competing expressions: “this kind of research requires an analysis of the relationship between loanwords and their Italian substitutes” (1986, 250). Dardano’s work touches briefly on categorization of borrowed terms and more specifically categorizations of terms such as calques, compounds etc. A more detailed discussion of word categories is taken up in his text Manualetto di linguistica italiana, in which he discusses the affinity between English and Italian and posits these similarities as motivators for the possible linguistic outcomes. His approach to categorization and his comparative analysis between English and Italian word morphology will be examined in chapter three of the present study and will serve as a basis for the organization of terms. There are also factors that influence borrowing that are not only linguistic but rather sociological. Dardano wants to know not only how, but why and who borrows from English: he is interested in analyzing the motivations and contact situations that trigger borrowing. Though he does provide a few examples, no linguistic analysis is provided except in the section on phonetic adaptation. He concludes his treatise on the influence of English on Italian by stating that today unadapted borrowings “have the upper hand” (1986, 250) but does not say in which spoken or written 12 context. In the case of Italian Internet terminology, we hope to explore how many terms become fully integrated, and, though not apparent in their surface form, take on complex paths of meaning typical of the paths found in the recipient language (Standard Italian). Also notable is the distinction made by Dardano with regard to use and mention: “with respect to the past, it can be said that today contact with English creates a non-homogeneous situation within the various sectors of our lexis: in addition, the interval “between citation” of an Anglicism (that is, when it is used to refer only to things and events in the Anglo-Saxon world) and a true borrowing of the word has grown shorter”. He proposes that studying Italian in contact in the new world (Italiese) could offer some meaningful insights on how Italian adapts to English influence (Menarini 1947; Saltarelli and Craven 1984; Rando, 1984; Danesi and Clivio 2000). I plan to do a comparative analysis of a small set of terms in the concluding chapter of this thesis with Italiese and with some gaming language to see if some of the same mechanisms of change and assignment of meaning are similar or not. By so doing, I hope to test the notion of banalistion as a frame. Dardano’s work , much like my own, reflects a more qualitative approach; however his attention to such qualitative measures as frequency, an important variable to express the use of a term, is significant: “The study of borrowing shows from a particular perspective the complex themes related to the conditions affecting the production of discourse” (1986, 251). The present study relies on establishing the frequency of terms to determine common use and to build from that list of common terms a corpus of central terms. In this vein, I have chosen a lexicological approach to studying terminology and will look at some of the work of the pioneers in the field of lexicology and context-specific vocabularies. 13 1.3.2 Past Studies on Specialized Languages Lexical studies on nomenclature and, in particular, the formation of neologisms in different semiotic systems are numerous in the French tradition, to which lexicologists such as Wexler, Galisson, Boswell and Gilbert have contributed significantly. Here I discuss the work of Wexler, Boswell and Galisson as these three extensive studies have provided the overall general direction, organization, and methodological approach of the present study. Gilbert’s classification of neologisms has shaped the categorization methods I discuss in chapter three. 1.3.2.1 Galisson Galisson (1978) describes his approach to the study on football terminology as descriptive lexicology and, to justify his domain of usage, proposes that ‘banalisation’ is a social manifestation of linguistic accommodation whereas popularization is only an individualized manifestation. In his study, Recherches de lexicologie descriptive: la banalisation lexicale, he proves that lexical banalisation functions according to rules that can be inventoried (see section 1.5.1) in such a way as to set it apart from other categories of language use. To give a better idea how banalised language differs from others types of language use, Galisson uses differential analysis of what he calls stratifications or parallel languages (langue spécialisée, argotique, banalisée) of a domain of experience which enjoys privileged status in France: football. In his purely synchronic study, he adheres to the theory of structuralism in his approach to the sign as is seen by the way in which he organizes and analyses the terms. Just as Galisson studied current use of football terminology from print sources, I too have opted to use written media (online sources) as my primary source. He gives very clear explanations of his data collection techniques, how he organized and verified the data and how he analyzed the data. These methods 14 have greatly influenced the present study. 1.3.2.2 Wexler Similar studies, such as Wexler on railroad terminology (La formation du vocabulaire des chemins de fer ) explore banalised language and give further evidence that specialized languages deserve particular attention. Although Wexler does not describe his data reduction criteria nor does he give great detail about how he built his corpus, his methodology is significant in that he approaches his study from a situation rather than from a group of words (Wexler 1955: 9) . Moreover, he looks at the modern word and its meanings in context rather than taking the traditional classificatory approach which generally starts from the dictionary definition. In sum, Wexler studies the denomination processes of newly attested items in great detail and is thorough in grouping together multiple terms with common referents. I have chosen to do the same in my study as I investigate synonymous terms. Though his approach is diachronic and mine is primarily synchronic, I will look at a small selection of terms diachronically for comparative purposes in the conclusion of this thesis. 1.3.3 Studies on Language Using Corpora COBUILD, an acronym for Collins Birmingham University International Language Database, is a British research facility led by John Sinclair. COBUILD was set up at the University of Birmingham in 1980 and was funded by Collins publishers. The most important achievement of the COBUILD project has been the creation and analysis of a corpus of contemporary text (the Bank of English), and the production of the monolingual learner's dictionary Collins COBUILD 15 English Language Dictionary (1987, 2nd edition 1995, 3rd edition 2001, 4th edition 2003, 5th edition 2006), based on the study of the COBUILD corpus. Some of the main concepts developed through COBUILD are: i) a return to empiricism as a methodology once the corpus became machine readable ii) greater observability of language phenomena (language use in context/ language performance [parole]) iii) frequency information (productivity of the term) It is not unusual to read a dictionary entry which displays a huge number of possible meanings for one word. According to Sinclair, this is due to the fact that dictionaries try to describe the wrong entities, or entities that are out of context (actual use). In natural language, there exist hardly any ambiguities. This is why Sinclair suggests a statistically motivated approach to the concept of meaning. For Sinclair, meaning is not only expressed by the examined (node) word, but also by the neighbouring, co-selected words so that a lexical item consists of several words and their relationships to each other. Hence, he looks for a new way to describe language (using largely automatic means) where lexical items are not limited to single words and phraseology gains importance. In defining and examining lexemes, the syntagmatic dimension has to be taken into account and combined with the paradigmatic one. My study takes into careful consideration Sinclair’s concept of lexical items and syntagmatic expressions (syntagms). Many of the terms in my corpus of banalised Web Language are of the composite type (Galisson 1978), which include syntagms. The machine readability of my 16 corpora and the use of a concordance program help look for patterns not immediately apparent through reading. Other patterns of interest such as suffixation can also be explored through the use of a concordance program. This will be discussed in the next chapter (2.5.2). 1.3.1a Summary of Previous Lexicological Studies Who Approach Area of Enquiry Key Concepts Wexler Diachronic denomination of Competing 1955 Lexicology words and expressions groupings of words (synonomy) in French railway terminology. Sinclair Synchronic spoken and written Collocation 1966 Descriptive English word patterns (each corpus which word is viewed as a explored the semantic unit and meanings of words not multi-word of high frequency expressions) and their collocations Galisson Descriptive Banalised banalisation: 1978 Lexicology (separate from defining Synchronic technical jargon parameters to and slang) football create a corpus terminology from based on this French print media concept Boswell Descriptive Banalised productivity of 1982 Lexicology language (sport conversation Quantitative terminology taken Diachronic from non specialized French print media) 17 1.3.4 Recent Studies on English Borrowings on the Internet Some researchers have noted the strong presence of English in lexical studies and have observed that “cultural vocabulary is most susceptible to borrowing” (Danesi and Clivio, 191). In his study on the French language and the Internet , Tattersall notes that “lexical anglicisms make up some 80% of those discovered related to the Internet ” (11). However, his treatment of the material is purely descriptive, making a case only for the quantity of terms that are borrowed with little attention to lexical analysis. Moreover, he deals with the French language in general and does not make distinctions with regard to context-specific language. This probably explains why I was drawn to the title, Il lessico dei newsgroup: varietà di lingua a confronto (Gheno 2006), as this synchronic, corpus-driven study based on 12 telematic discussion groups appears to deal with a specialized, or at least, context-specific language given that the author looks at language from the point of view of computer-mediated communication and domain-specific use of Italian. Though Gheno does not mention banalisation she considers English, computer terminology, and computer-mediated communication English as separate varieties of English making clear distinctions between technical English, and fashionable English as domains of use. Newsgroup language is seen as a unifying code between users and is rich in neologisms and creativity. She claims that Internet language (cf. Crystal 2001, 77) does not eliminate rules but creates, different, new ones that are not like those of traditional grammars. Unfortunately, Gheno fails to explain what these new rules are and if they are proven in her data. The study’s major weakness is that there is no solid theoretical framework or linguistic analysis. 18 A cursory glance at more recent studies on loanword studies reveals that most researchers consider contact between English and the recipient language to be a situation of linguistic contact regardless of the fact that no geographic boundaries are crossed. In Boundaries Crossed: the Influence of English on Modern Polish -a descriptive, synchronic, and qualitative study- Sztencel (2009) examines different aspects of lexical as well as structural borrowing from English to Polish using data collected from both unspecified Internet pages and one Scientific Internet page. As is the case in many lexical studies of this kind using Internet corpora, the author does not deal with a domain-specific area of the Polish language but instead uses a variety of lexical examples from different semiotic situations. As a preamble, she is careful to describe the current sociolinguistic situation in Poland, commenting on both the prescriptive stand of language purists and the social attitudes towards English that have allowed a strong influx of English terms to enter the recipient language. She briefly classifies the terms studied, which include: loan-shifts, calques, semantic loans and touches lightly on inflectional morphology. The few examples given are used to draw the conclusion that colloquial speech allows more readily for inflection while the formal data does not reflect this. She concludes that it is important to look at two scenarios: formal/authoritative sources such as newspapers and spontaneous/informal/blog sites for more colloquial use. My study also considers these two situations. In the paper Internally Motivated Structural Borrowing in Spanish Morphology, the borrowings studied are those well-rooted in the grammar of the language of adoption. The authors Varela and Felìu view borrowings as instances of language variation in non-specialized language and their data is derived from several authoritative corpora. This study is of particular interest to me 19 because it focusses on compounds from the perspective of universal grammar and the generative tradition. Given the presence of autocthonous right-headed forms, the authors assert that “right- headed compounds belong to the class of internally motivated borrowings and are not a case of mere calque or loan translation” (2008, 4). For this reason they state that it is important to look comparatively at preexisting forms. Though English does exert some pressure, the underlying morphological processes are already well-rooted in Spanish grammar. This is why I decided to compare the inflectional and derivation patterns of English and Italian as many patterns may be rooted in the existing grammar of Standard Italian. Varela and Felìu’s study demonstrates a strong organization of morphological characterization and links the productivity of certain compound patterns to specific domains of use. Most pertinent to my thesis is the section on deriving new compounding parameters. 1.3.5 Conclusion to Literature Review There are a number of studies that have formed the basis of the present study as all deal with specialized languages and derive their data from a printed corpus. Galisson’s study of banalised language meant that he had to make a distinction between banalised, technical and slang language use (banalised language is discussed in detail in 1.4.3). I opt to use online newspaper sources to avoid slang and highly technical language. However, nowadays, many newspapers cater to technical experts using specialized terminology in sections that deal primarily with Internet and new technologies. In the construction of the corpus for this thesis project, articles of a highly technological nature were avoided as, in most cases, it was also possible to restrict a search through the advanced search function in Google.it excluding web address extensions that 20 lead to Information Technology sections of these news sources. For the corpus derived from blog sites, the same is true, however, given the spontaneity of online speech, careful manual scanning was the only way to exclude such terms. It is essential to note that although many studies derive their data from Internet sources, few deal with the language of the Internet as does the present thesis. Like Wexler’s study on railway terminology, the present study attempts to look at the denomination and word formation processes or terms, mainly those terms borrowed from English. Multiword expressions are of particular interest and, in accordance with Sinclair’s methodology, will be considered as units of meaning8 . It is for this reason that the word ‘term’ is used and not ‘word’. Word morphology, like other fields of linguistics, benefits greatly from the use of corpora. Several French studies dealing with derivational endings make active use of electronic text from the World Wide Web for data due “to the ease with which word forms are gathered and processed by simple computer programs” (Hathout, Montermini and Tanguy 2008, 67). However, as the same authors note in their paper “Extensive data for morphology: using the World Wide Web”, “only a few suffixes have been investigated [using these corpora...] and almost all French affixes remain to be studied” (82). The same authors also warn that Web derived corpora may also run the risk of containing language which is too technical or of a low register (i.e. blog-talk). In the present study, this has been carefully avoided by the use of Galisson’s approach in defining and restricting my object language to banalised language to 8 Though Sinclair’s stance on multi-word expressions refers to English, it can very comfortably be extended to other languages that employ multi-word expressions (phraseology) to convey a singular meaning: “the whole drift of the historical development of English has been towards the replacement of words with phrases” (1991:68). 21 study. As previously stated, building a corpus with national journalistic sources also ensures that the language is consistent with that of the Italian Standard used in all published national sources. However, since the primary corpus contains blog derived data, I had to ensure that all samples are characteristic of standard usage. As such, I chose to compile all data from the blog site, www.beppegrillo.it, which is frequented by Italians from all over Italy. From observation and experience, I contend that most contributors to this blog will not use dialect when communicating with others across the peninsula. Moreover, I carefully read each post entered into the corpus and all non Standard Italian (dialect) entries were discarded. Aside from the examples given above, few studies which have taken borrowing as their main object of investigation have tended to aim at drawing conclusions of a non linguistic nature from the data: it was assumed that lexical items directly reflect historical and cultural movements. Though sociological conditions certainly instigate linguistic change making foreign lexical data available and, in the case of the Internet , indispensable, the underlying linguistic mechanism (lexical, morphological and semantic mechanisms) cannot be ignored and must be viewed within the appropriate theoretical framework. In Anglicisms in Contemporary European Spanish, Pratt (1986) describes and classifies his object: anglicism. He sets out to identify the anglicism based on set comparative criteria with respect to: orthography, phonetics, morphology, and stress patterns, before studying it. This is an important, but often neglected, step in the investigation of linguistic phenomena. In Europe, the now classical loanword studies have tended to centre on the influence of French. However, it has become evident that, with the widespread use of English on the World Wide 22 Web, lexical borrowings from English (often referred to as ‘anglicism’)9 have become a more frequent subject of linguistic research as seen in the numerous studies done on Spanish. Most of the current literature in Spanish is in the field of clinical linguistics and deals with linguistic interference where linguists seek to find more answers about how the language faculty in bilinguals works. The goal of such research is to better inform language testing normatives for patients with cognitive deficiencies who are often required to take word recognition/production tests. From the current literature in the classical tradition of lexicology, only a small few in French studies refer to the phenomenon of banalisation. Of these, Russon Wooldridge’s (2008) corpus based, diachronic work on the formation and occurrence of new terms in French, where the concept of banalisation is at the forefront, has provided me with some foundational considerations in my own study. It was through conversations with Professor Wooldridge and the work of one of his doctoral students, that I came upon the work of Wexler (1955), Galisson (1978), and Boswell (1982). It is evident that the basic methodological impetus of this project was borne out of the French tradition. The present study however is the first to investigate lexical borrowings from English to Standard Italian using the essential notion of banalisation. 1.4 Essential Notions 1.4.1 Banalisation Through his study of French football terminology, many of whose terms are derived from English, Robert Galisson, in his book Recherches de lexicologie descriptive: la banalisation 9 Pratt defines an anglicism as “a linguistic form used in a foreign language and which has and English linguistic form as its immediate and direct model” (Pratt 1986, 374). 23 lexicale, coins the term “lexical banalisation” to denote “une langue seconde, greffée sur un langage ‘technique’, pour assurer une diffusion plus large aux informations relevant du domaine d’expérience couvert par la langue technique en question” (Galisson 1978: 9)10. His insightful corpus-based study of written texts, mainly newspapers, enlightens readers on the unique space within a language that domain-specific languages hold. Since many computer terms did not, at one time, exist in Italian, or were first used in America, we may consider English (American English) to be the main source language for much of the Italian Internet terminology we see today. Robert Galisson (1978) proposed the idea of the banalisation of language which makes a distinction between two types of terminologies which can be applied to the context of the Web/ Internet : one is technical and used only by specialists (i.e., those creating websites, Internet protocols, etc.); the other is a banalised language because it is used by main-stream society to function within the medium. Since the goal of Galisson’s study was to study the phenomenon of banalisation, he had to distribute his findings into three categories: banalised, technical, and slang. The principal characteristics of banalisation are defined by Galisson according to five notions (392-96): a) composition: banalised vocabulary is a borrowed vocabulary of the composite type (compound forms are very productive); b) nature and form: banalised vocabulary has an explicit balanced formula, which allies it with current vocabulary more than with technical vocabulary: i) adjectival and 10 “a second language [is] grafted on to a ‘technical‘ language in order to insure broader diffusion of the information relevant to the domain of experience by the language in question” (Galisson 1978: 9). [my translation] 24 adverbial items that are rare in technical language comprise one fifth of the banalised vocabulary he studied; ii) verbs, which represent only one sixth of the lexical inventory of technical languages make up one third of banalised vocabulary; iii) nominal items that represent five sixths of technical vocabulary account for less than one half of banalised vocabulary; c) choice of technical vocabulary and borrowing from current vocabulary: banalised vocabulary retains from technical vocabulary those items which have the largest coverage ability; it borrows vocabulary of value judgments, war, business from current vocabulary; d) usage volume: in banalised vocabulary technical terms have global usage; e) different kinds of sensitivity: banalised vocabulary proscribes formal redundancy, relies liberally on synonyms, which according to Cabré (1999) is atypical of technical languages, uses different verb tenses systematically. The distinction between banalised terminology and technical terminology allows me to limit my object of study to that which is found in natural language of two types: 1.) formal written (journalistic sources); 2.) informal written sources (blogs). We can illustrate the place Italian banalised language on the Internet holds in relation to technical language and to the standard natural language, Standard Italian, with the following Euler diagram. 25 1.4.1.1 Diagram of Banalised Language The dotted lines used on the outer boundaries of the medium grey and light grey circles illustrate permeability and communicability with Standard Italian and technical Italian and with other languages like English. 1.4.2 Mention vs. Use A common referent must be assigned to a term by a group of users in order for the term to have meaning: “Lorsque les linguistes disent qu’un signe à l’état isolé n’a pas de sens, c’est parce qu’ils assimilent le fonctionnement d’un signe à sa présence dans un discours mondain” (Rey- Debove 1971, 90)11. To utter the word ‘mouse’, for example, while referring to the instrument used to scroll and move the cursor across the computer screen is to use that word: “L’usage d’un signe déclenche la signification, ou production de sens. Une telle affirmation présuppose qu’un signe linguistique peut exister sans fonctionner, ce que nous mettons en doute” (Rey-Debove 11 “When linguists say that a sign in its isolated state has no meaning, it is because they liken the way the sign works to its presence in worldly discourse” (Rey-Debove, 90) [my translation] 26 1971, 90)12. Therefore ‘use’ means to talk about what a word refers to while ‘mention’ means to talk about the word itself, that is to say, to use the term metalinguistically. In writing, there are various conventions that allow one to determine whether the word (term) is being used or mentioned. Mentionings are commonly enclosed in quotation marks or printed in italics. The use/mention distinction is an essential concept when considering the integration of a term into discourse. This integration often takes place in stages with the final stage being that of lexicalization of the term. Below I show instances of a.) an Italian sentence that quotes a borrowed word (by use of italics or quotation marks); b.) a combination of mention (the typographical marking) and use (use of the borrowed term in an Italian utterance); c.) an unmarked borrowed term used in an Italian utterance which is indicative of pure use. This study is concerned with use rather than mention. As such, no mentions were included in the corpus. 1.4.2.1 Examples of Mention vs. Use: spam/spamming/spammare a.) an Italian sentence that quotes a borrowed word (by use of italics or quotation marks): Gli spammer mandano la loro pubblicità indiscriminatamente ad adulti e minori e vendono spesso prodotti destinati a un pubblico adulto: pornografia, Viagra e altri coadiuvanti sessuali (presunti o reali). (http://www.attivissimo.net/antispam/ antispam.htm) Una parola infame, nel gergo della rete, è spam. Indica la cattiva abitudine di mandare messaggi non richiesti nelle caselle postali (mailbox) di tante persone, oppure di collocare lo stesso messaggio in diverse liste, forum o newsgroup così che la stessa persona lo riceve più volte.(http://www.gandalf.it/uman/44.htm) b.) a combination of mention (the typographical marking) and use (use of the borrowed term in an Italian utterance): 12 “The use of a sign unleashes meaning or the production of sense. A claim such as this presupposes that a linguistic sign can exist without functioning, which we doubt.” (Rey-Debove, 90) [My translation]. 27 Gli “spammatori” abituali ci mettono un po’ di tempo a scoprire la nostra esistenza e identificare il nostro indirizzo in rete. Ma presto o tardi l’invasione comincia, ed è molto fastidiosa. Fin dalle origini della rete si è pensato al modo di eliminare lo spam, ma non è facile. Ci sono organizzazioni che si occupano attivamente di combatterlo ma finora non sono riuscite a distruggerlo. (http://www.gandalf.it/uman/44.htm) c.) an unmarked borrowed term used in an Italian utterance which is indicative of pure use: Quindi hai torto: non mi sento affatto onorato di essere stato spammato da te. Almeno sino a quando non comincerai a “dialogare con Napoli” (http://osvaldocontenti.blog.lastampa.it/.m/.../comments) In a.), the sentence talks about the meaning of the word. It is assumed that explanation is needed to show what the word represents. In b.) we observe that spammatori is contained in quotation marks and spam is italicized. Even though both terms are understood to need no explanation as to their referents, they are made distinct by the speaker by means of typographical markings. The example given in c) show that the referent is understood to the reader and is also considered part of the recipient language. The term has been fully integrated into the morphology of the language. 1.4.3 Terms That Appear in Other Semiotic Systems To delimit the terms that make up the basis of my corpus, I have already underlined the distinction between mention and use. There exists yet another caveat. There are terms that, although part of the domain of Internet Language, can also fluctuate between the general vocabulary of Italian and that of Italian Internet terminology and make the term ambiguous: In the case of the competing terms, account (E) and conto (I), any data collected on these terms 28 must be parsed manually to ensure that the attestations of conto pertain to the domain of Internet use. conto =‘(bank) account; ‘(email, blog, chatroom) account’ account =‘(email) account’ The co-text will disambiguate by permitting only one interpretation to make sense in context (Allan 2006, 24). The use of the term in context is crucial for it is not in the interests of this study to take up a discussion on the use of conto to mean ‘bank account’. 1.4.4 Areas of Use I restrict my corpus by dealing only with the following categories of Italian Internet terminology: i. general web functions (e.g. ‘scroll’, ‘click’) ii. email and filesharing iii. blogging I consider texting (including colloquialisms and abbreviations) under a different domain of study as messaging language is not terminology. Messaging belongs to a different category of users (and therefore part of a different semiotic system) and involves different pathways of transmission between users (see 2.2.1). Since I deal with online media sources, the banalised Italian Internet terminology would need to lie within the boundaries of formal use as well and we would not find messaging language in the written media sources from which the corpus was built. 29 1.4.5 Regional vs. Standard Italian The banalised Italian Internet terminology is studied in the context of Standard Italian. Neither regional Italian nor Italic dialects are taken into consideration (I will discuss how this is accomplished in chapter two) as this would be too lengthy an enterprise for this dissertation. 1.4.6 Terms and Terminology In my research the sign is considered complex in that the signified is represented by the system of notions of a domain of human experience where the signifier is expressed through the linguistic inventory describing that domain. I follow an onomasiological approach and take into account the theory of Cabré whose goal is “to search for a new approach that would help account for the complexity of terminological units within the framework of specialized communication” (1999: 69). Starting from the idea that knowledge is not homogeneous (especially in a banalised language context), Cabré considers the basis for a new theory in terminology studies which would account for the complexity of the terms. She regards terms “as special cognitive units that do not exist […] outside natural languages” and terminology as “dynamic and diverse both formally (the denomination) and conceptually (the concept)” (Cabré 1999: 14) . This approach allows for the consideration of banalised language, not as an artificially constructed language, but as the spontaneous outcome of a unique socio-linguistic environment. Therefore, the use of the term ‘terminology’ is used metalinguistically. To study the denomination of the terminology of Italian Internet terminology, I use the term terminogenic trait translated from the French trait terminogénique based on Sonina’s (2007) understanding of Guiraud’s notion. For Guiraud (1967) the terminogenic trait is based on 30 the notion of lexicogenic sememes13. Guiraud explains that ‘sèmes lexicogéniques’ are like “des caractères physiques, fonctionnels, circonstanciels, etc., générateurs de noms” (1967:23)14. As such, I have based my research on the concept of central meaning linked to the compositionality of elements. Compositionality is an essential feature in linguistic theory since it gives an explanation for the understandability, learnability, and creativity of a language (Grandy 1990). This idea is best summed up in Frege’s Principle: “The meaning of a complex expression is a function of the meanings of its parts and their syntactic mode of combination” (Frege 1892)15. In this sense, Pierce’s idea of salience, the relative importance or prominence of a piece of a sign, is fundamental in the consideration of the ranking of elements within a sign. It is in Pierce’s theory that only salient data will receive the full attention of the cognitive elements of the mind in order to prevent sensory overload (Liszka 1996). To find the terminogenic trait we pose the following question: How are data elements ranked in terms of their significance and what categories of data are filtered out if irrelevant to survival? In my research the sign is considered complex in that the signified is represented by the system of notions of a domain of human experience and where the signifier is expressed through the linguistic inventory describing that domain. I propose that the terminogenic trait in the case of Italian on the Internet is the functional role of the term. The circumstantial role is something that is expressed by the 13 A sememe is the signified. A number of semes make up a sememe (Russon Wooldridge, University of Toronto, personal conversation, January 23rd, 2010). 14 “physical, functional, circumstantial, etc., characteristics that generate names.” (1967:23) [my translation]. 15 “W.V.O Quine (1960) pointed out some problems with this assumption. For example, the contribution of ‘red’ in ‘red apple’ is not the same as the contribution of ‘pink’ in ‘pink grapefruit’, since a red apple is usually understood to be an apple with (mainly) red skin on the outside while a pink grapefruit is usually understood to be a grapefruit with (mainly) pink flesh on the inside” (Chapman & Routledge 2009, 25). 31 connotatum (locus: where the term is used). In Sonina’s (2007) analysis of the terminogenic trait in clothing terminology, the characteristic (or characteristics) that are most salient and are those after which the object is named. In Sonina’s study, this is more easily perceived because her corpus deals with physical objects (nouns). However, her methodology proposes looking past the physical object. In Italian Internet terminology, I also deal with lexical families made up of nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Therefore, I chose to look at a term such as chat by considering all of its possible realizations: (il) chat, la chat, chatroom, le chat, chatting, chattare. Let us consider la chat (chatroom): Referent: /place to chat online/ Components of meaning: Dn------Ds------Cn feminine singular Linguistic form: la chat I can therefore define the terminogenic trait as that element which is common to all realizations of the same lexical family. It is my contention that it is the telic (function/goal) role that assigns the general sense of the denotatum and that the designatum, containing underlying information about the argument (where does the chatting take place?) of the term, makes it distinct from other terms within the same lexical family. While the Saussurian tradition proposes a bilateral psychological unit composed of signifier and signified, I opt for Piotrowski’s model (as per Sonina: 2007) as it contains the three elements: denotatum, designatum and connotatum (Piotrowski 1990:23) and represents the underpinnings 32 of Pierce’s theory 16 of the ranking of elements within a sign in a cleaner format. The Piercean model presents the dynamic triadic17 relationship in the following manner: “a sign or a representamen is something which stands to somebody, that is, created in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. The sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object” (Hartshorne et al. 1958 2.228). Semiosis is therefore an endless process, something that Eco (1976) defines as “unlimited semiosis”. 1.4.6.1 Diagram: The Linguistic Sign 16 “…action, or influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs” (“Pragmatism”, Essential Pierce 2:411: 1907). 17 The triadic paradigm is also found in Ogden and Richards (1923) symbol, thought, referent; Carnap’s (1942) lexis (sign), intension, and extension; Charles Morris’s (1938) sign vehicle, designatum or significatum, and denotatum; Frege’s Sinn, Zeichen, and Bedeutung; Pierce’s representamen, interpretant, and object. 33 Piotrowski explains the compositional elements of the sign in the following way: denotatum (Dn): the referent or the entire image of an object; designatum(Ds): the dominant conceptual items of that object that sets it apart from others of its kind; connotatum (Cn): contains additional nuances of meaning connected to style or emotion; Term (Tm): contains the morphological adjustments to the term. In chapter three I will explore compositionality in from the model of the Generative Lexicon (Pustojovsky 1990) where the attempt is to spread the semantic load across all constituents of the utterance. Unlike purely verb-based approaches to compositionality 18, the model of the Generative Lexicon poses the following question: Are lexical information and the representations used in composing meanings separable from our common-sense knowledge? Here it is essential to note that “cognitive grammar eschews abstract entities. The claim instead is that semantic content is structured and symbolized overtly, in the surface forms of the language, not at the level of abstract underlying representation” (Taylor 1995, 239). If what cognitive grammar says is true, the most salient features of terms should be immediately visible. This will be investigated further in chapter four. 18 Jackendoff (1990) mainly considers verbs and prepositions while Pustejovsky considers a whole network of lexical relations. Pustejovsky proposes that nouns, in many cases may even be more structually complex than verbs (Wunderlich 1996, 171). 34 1.4.7 Syntax In Davidson’s view, every operation of syntax should be associated with an operation of the semantics (Davidson and Harman 1972)19. Hence, the syntax of the term needs to conform to a model that will allow us to see inside the complex structure of meaning contained within the linguistic sign. While Donaldson speaks mainly of sentences, this insight can also be applied to syntagms (synapsis) and structurally similar constructions (compounds) from the point of view of word syntax. These structures are discussed in chapter three and, in greater detail, in chapter four. 1.5 Plan of Study In the present chapter, I have shown that my object language, Italian Internet Terminology, is truly unique and worthy of investigation because of its unprecedented extent and context of use. There is undoubtably strong evidence that the Web is a unique domain of language use that can be categorized as a banalised context. Given the unique linguistic patterns that banalised language takes, it merits investigation in order to gain a better understanding of how terms take on the meanings they do and how they are formed. It is evident from the literature review that very little attention has been given to the notion of banalised language with regard to Italian on the Web. However, the many studies on Romance and non Romance languages consulted for this study have offered some important insights on theoretical and methodological approaches especially with regard to the collection of data and the organization of material. In chapter two, I discuss the status of the Internet and the World Wide Web in Italy, why I use data collected from media sources and explain how my corpus was created, on what parameters and why. The way in 19 Lakoff has some conflicting views to those of Davidson, especially regarding metaphor. This will be discussed in chapter five. 35 which the data was processed to make it accessible for research is also explained in detail. The aim of chapter three is to explain the rationale for the organization of data, give background on the linguistic motivators for borrowing and discuss what methodological approaches I use to investigate the structure and meaning of terms. In chapter four, the data is presented both in the format of the morphosyntactic categories outlined in 3.3 and also contains lists of all forms of a term linked semantically. Each term or unit of terms is given in context followed by a linguistic analysis of form, morphology and syntax. Chapter four also contains the semantic analysis of terms based on a break-down of semiotic components as viewed through Pustejovsky’s qualia structure (see: 3.5.2.1). A summary is provided of the terminology that has the greatest coverage ability and undergoes lexicalization. Chapter five contains the conclusions to this study offering a deeper look into the semantic and morphological motivations and patterns for the lexicalization of these key terms. The final chapter also offers a comparative view of how these terms are lexicalized in Italian in a popular Italian blog site. Future work will also be discussed. 36 2 Corpus and Tools 2.1 Introduction In this chapter, I begin with a discussion of the status of the Internet and the World Wide Web in Italy and justify why I have chosen to use data collected from media sources. I attempt to illustrate the importance of Italian language news blog sites and the Italian media online as a salient areas of study with regard to banalised language and Internet terminology and provide background on the important role that the media have played in the linguistic shaping of the country. On a methodological note, I explain how my corpus was created, along what parameters and why. To do this I discuss how my central terms were defined, revised and reduced. My pared down list of terms was further restricted once my data was processed by the text analysis and computing tool Concordance. I also explain how this tool is used in the analysis of my collected data. I give some preliminary examples of some word sets that make up my central terms to justify why I study synonymy in chapter three. 2.2.1 How the Net Differs from World Wide Web Since all lexical data used in this study are collected from the World Wide Web, it is perhaps relevant that we make a distinction between what is meant by ‘Net’ - the Network (Internet) - and ‘Web’ (WWW) - one of its realizations. According to Wikipedia “The Internet is a collection of interconnected computer networks, linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, etc. In contrast, the Web is a collection of interconnected documents and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLS. The World Wide Web is one of the services accessible via the Internet, along with many others including e-mail, Usenet, filesharing […].” ( 37 specifically, the World Wide Web, or the Web, ‘is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, a user views Web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigates between them using hyperlinks’ ( 2.2.2 Internet Coverage and Use The validity of the corpus is contingent upon the availability and use of the Internet in Italy. Not only does our corpus need to be representative of a broad number of sources, but it must encompass a large number of participants and informants across those sources. In 2006, the number of Italian native speakers using the Italian language online is estimated at 23.31 million, accounting for 3.3% of the world’s population (Global Internet Statistics 2006 Nations data and the CIA Factbook) of Internet patterns of use and infrastructure in 189 countries: 38 Table 2.2.2.1 Table: Internet Usage in Europe by Comparison EU Country Population No. of ISPs Internet Users Users/Population United Kingdom 59,000,000 400 34,300,000 57% Germany 83,200,000 200 37,100,000 38.5% Holland 16,00,000 52 9,730,000 60% Spain 40,077,000 56 7,890,000 19.7% France 59,760,000 62 16,970,000 29% Italy 57,700,000 93 19,250,000 33.36% Wolk posits that “English has become the official language of the Internet by default. Internet technology uses English words. Most of the Websites are available only in English. The English speaking United States dominates in active Internet users, E-commerce, Internet advertising, and B2B industry collaboration” (174). Wolk’s hypothesis is that “the level of English language adoption is related to the degree of Internet use” (176) and that the level of English adoption with regard to the Digital Divide20 will give these countries a competitive advantage. A United Nations study has linked the growth of E-commerce -commercial activity conducted via the Internet- in developing countries to improvements in competitiveness, the lowering of the costs of transactions and increased economy of scale allocation of resources (UNCTAD 2001 in Wolk, 175 ). In the table above, the last three rows examine Internet use in the three largest Romance- 20 The term digital divide refers to the gap between people with effective access to digital and information technology and those with very limited or no access at all. It includes the imbalances in physical access to technology as well as the imbalances in resources and skills needed to effectively participate as a digital citizen. In other words, it is the unequal access by some members of society to information and communication technology, and the unequal acquisition of related skills. The term is closely related to the knowledge divide as the lack of technology causes lack of useful information and knowledge. The digital divide may be classified on the basis of gender, income, and race groups, and by locations. (Adapted from: National Telecommunications and Information Administration. (2000, October). Falling through the net: Toward digital inclusion. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce. accessed August, 2009, from http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/fttn00/contents00.html) 39 language-speaking countries in the European Union. Italy leads both France and Spain in both Internet users and in the number of Internet Service Providers and, according to Wolk’s hypothesis, Italy would have a higher level of English language adoption based on its population’s higher percentage of use. What Wolk does not mention however is the distribution of Internet use and access in Italy. EU Commissioner for Media and Society Viviane Reding has pointed out “that 50% of any growth in the European GDP is linked to the development of information and communication technology (ICT), with the Internet being its spinal cord. The lack of access to broadband services is perhaps the most significant indicator of how far [Italy is] lagging behind in the important TLC sector”( European TLC21 operators’ organisation ECTA22, the Italian situation regarding broadband access is as limited: “Broadband distribution: Italy (16.5) is falling further behind the EU average (19.8), and is falling increasingly further behind other comparable countries, such as France, the UK and Germany ... Of the main 15 European countries, [Italy is] ... lagging behind Ireland, and [is] closely followed by Portugal. In essence, the distribution of broadband in Italy is less than in other countries with similar industrial and social homogeneity.” With regard to the growth of broadband services between September 2006 and September 2007, according to the 21 TLC stands for Telecommunication 22 “The European Competitive Telecommunications Association was founded in 1998, and supports the regulatory and commercial interests of new entrant telecoms operators, ISPs and suppliers of products and services to the communications industry. [It] work[s] for a fair regulatory environment which allows all electronic communications providers to compete on level terms in order to multiply investment and innovation throughout an effective European internal market. The association represents the telecommunications industry to key government and regulatory bodies and maintains a forum for networking and business development.” (http:// www.ectaportal.com/en/ABOUT/Mission/ accessed: December 30th 2009) 40 same source, “the rate of growth in Italy was only 3%, ... [whereas] the established rate of growth has been between 5% and 10%” ( In a videotaped interview, Reding expresses her concern for the limited access of non city- dwelling Italians citing that the large number of ‘white spots’, areas where only non broadband is available, mainly in mountainous regions, rural areas, and in many areas of the Italian South, is one of the reasons Italy scores lower (17%) in terms of its penetration rate compared to the European average (18%)( 2.3 The Media 2.3.1 Studying the media: Establishing a Community of Practice24 As previously stated, the data for the corpora created for this thesis are drawn from online media texts and online news blogs. As such, the data pooled is representative of a group of users that 23 Regional Italian is strictly avoided in formal writing and is not a factor in journalistic writing. Regional language is also avoided in blog language where it is considered by some to be of a very low register. Spoken Canadian -Italian is characterized by anglicisms and regionalisms. It is not used in the written media and seldom, if ever, in blogs. 24 This expression is used extensively in: Silverstone, Roger. Why Study The Media? London: SAGE. 1999 41 have certain shared pratices and share lexical choices based on the domains of usage. The more general domain of usage is that of the World Wide Web whereas the more restricted community of practice is that of the online media. This community of practice engages in the exchange of information using a vocabulary which is driven by exact connotations such as ‘smart’, ‘modern’, and ‘net-savvy’ and can be highly emblematic, favoring efficiency (especially with regard to direct borrowings such as Net) due to their association with Internet Technology and computers. The community of users contributes to and is influenced by the media. For this reason, the relationship between members of this community is outlined below under each category of online sources used to create the corpus of terms: 1. Internet newssite: journalist (governed by newspaper) whereby X communicates to Y recipient/receiver of message (see list of newssites and circulation below): X >Y 2. Blog: Beppe Grillo’s blog is not governed by the state, ensuring users/readers who may not conform to any of the political views upheld in many of Italy’s mainstream newspapers. Again, the journalist, X, communicates to Y recipient/reciever of message:X>Y 3. Internet blogs and editorial commentary includes written interactions whereby readers Ya and Yb leave messages on sites visted by more Ya and Yb. These exchanges are read and responses given also but X, the journalist or editor. Yb: X<>Ya<>Yb In sum, our sample-text corpus includes journalistic texts (genre), in the Italian language and involve the media (a group of users) making them part of a community (Kennedy 1998:21). 42 Silverstone (1999:100) states that the media ‘do25 community’ in three ways: 1. expression: “One can detect a singular political agenda as well as a social one.” 2. refraction: “Community is refracted”. I interpret this for my purposes to mean that although the national newspapers inform and provide news on current events, the community is varied due to the differing political slants of the varying media. 3. critique: On Beppe Grillo’s Blog site, the media poses as both informant and critic. The number of blogs on this site is almost parallel to the number of news articles. Since the blog is heavily laden with editorial comment, it provides a rich source of anonymous (the public at large) and spontaneous (linguistically important as it contains unedited usage) commentary. A unifying aspect of the online media is in the ritual of its use: one must not only interface with the computer (as one would do with television and print media), but one must also surf through the sites, using the same vocabulary one reads on the sites. 2.3.2 Establishing Trust in the Community of Users Another unifying factor in the importance of the Media as a social and linguistic presence is the particular psychological trust relationship held within the public’s collective conscience. Silverstone has argued for “the significant role of television in particular, and radio before it, in 25 Silverstone’s expression 43 enabling our ontological security”26. He comments on the enhanced role of the media after WWII stating that its presence had a “kind of repetition…becoming deeply engrained in what we all take for granted as an essential component of experienced reality.” (119) We rely on the media for information and are dependent upon it for a sense of security. Trust is linked to how the audience makes a judgement about the modality (online media sites) of the whole (Silverstone, 110). The medium of communication employed must evoke trust from the audience based on the audience’s collective experience and understanding of the real world. Most Italians rely heavily on newspapers [state quote here on how many read the paper] since there is perceived validity in the source: it represents real happenings and real world situations. Luzi confirms that the press “greatly influences communication, and this is even more true with the newer, smaller format of newspapers” (http://www.tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=5012). 2.4 Materials 2.4.1 Media Sources: Italian Language Media Online 2.4.1.1 National News Websites in Italian Language Name Domain Print Circulation Description Corriere della www.corriere.it Based: Milan Newspaper According to the BBC, it Sera (Milan) is Italy’s best-selling broadsheet. Founded: 1876 Publishes a national and four regional editions Circulation: 615,000 (2004) La Gazzetta www.gazzetta.it N/A Newspaper/ Sports (very popular) dello Sport 26 For Silverstone, ‘ontological security’ is that which ‘emerges as a result of the consistencies of care that a parent provides for a child in the first months of infancy, and in the consequent development of the kind of confidence in oneself as well as in others that is the result of such care.’ In essence, he states, ‘through learning to trust others we learn, one way or another, to trust things’ (118). 44 Il Messaggero www.ilmessagger Based: Rome According to the BBC it is Italy’s o.it third newspaper in terms of Founded: 1878 readership. Circulation: 236,000 (2004) La Repubblica www.larepubblic Based: Rome According to the BBC it is Italy’s (Rome) a.it leading centre-left newspaper.It has Founded: 1976 the widest presence of any Italian paper Circulation: 330,000 (2004) La Stampa www.lastampa.it Based: Turin Important daily newspaper in the (Turin) north western region of the country. Founded: 1867 Circulation: 330,000 (2004) Sole 24 Ore www.ilsole24ore. Based: Milan Best-selling financial daily com Founded: 1865 Circulation: 343,000 (2004) Il Giornale www.ilgiornale.it Based: Milan Centre-right owned by Paolo Berlusconi (brother of Silvio Founded: 1974 Berlusconi) Circulation: 204,000 (2004) Domains to be researched are: Italy (.it) and Canada (.ca) (unless media domain is a .com address). (all data taken from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4373775.stm) Name Domain Print Circulation Description Corriere www.corriere.com 30,000 The only daily Italian paper published in canadese Canada Il Postino, Il Cittadino Canadese, Il Corriere Italiano, Insieme, and L’Ora di Ottawa were not included in our study as they are neither national nor daily papers. 45 2.4.2 The Corpus The corpus created for this project fits the criteria defined by both Habert, Nazarenko, Salem (1997 : 11) and Sinclair (1996 : 4): it is made up of a collection of language data selected and organized according to explicit linguistic criteria in order to be used as a language sample. As we deal with the banalised language of the Web, the corpus created for this thesis project can be considered, according to Graeme Kennedy, a ‘sample-text corpus’ since it is ‘designed to be a representative sample of the total population of discourse…not necessarily the language as a whole’ (Kennedy 1998, 21). It is essential here to note the difference between langue (what Kennedy calls ‘language’, Chomsky (1964) calls ‘competence’ and Saussure (1916) calls “collective knowledge and linguistic awareness”) and parole (what Kennedy calls ‘discourse’, Chomsky calls ‘performance’ and Saussure calls ‘individual production’). In the Saussurian sense, the performance (parole) of a language are outcomes of natural speech reflected in a corpus of natural language. Since these outcomes are real examples of real speech (parole), it is thought that we can understand, through, for instance, a study of paradigmatic examples, something about the the general building blocks of sound, structure and meaning in a given area of language. By restricting our corpus to a domain of use and, therefore to a restricted ‘world’ (to use Montague’s27 terminology), we can gain insight into context-specific parole (eg. banalised 27 For more on Montague see: D.R. Dowty, R.E. Wall and S. Peters: Introduction to Montague Semantics. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1981. 46 language)28. For this reason, Kennedy states that a sample-text corpus can include texts from “sub-populations, according to regions, genres, or groups of users” (Kennedy: 21) and can include journalists and anonymous journalistic writing. The written language corpus for this thesis is made up of both journalistic writing and anonymous blogging from authoritative Italian language national level newspaper websites from Italy and Canada and a very popular Italian political blog which has no affiliation with any newspaper in Italy found on the Web. As this corpus has specific research goals in mind, and concentrates on the use of its lexical data, it can also fall under the category of “specialized corpora” (Kennedy 1998: 20). The research approach is corpus driven (cf: Sinclair and the COBUILD project 1987 and Leech 1993, Biber 1999) meaning that actual use and occurrence of the terms and structures tell us something that dictionaries and glossaries generally do not: “in a corpus-driven perspective, the corpus is not considered merely a repository of examples that should support pre-existing theories and descriptions of language. The role of corpus evidence is that of providing new insights into the nature of language and eventually challenge traditional language descriptions” (Martelli 2003: 15). Hence, the corpus will reveal real use and frequency and, as such, possess, according to McEnery and Wilson, features such as “representiveness, finite size and machine readable form” (1996:21). The machine readability of the corpus is important as a text retrieval program/concordance is used to analyze the data (the software used will be 28 “The Marxist linguist Mikhail Bakhtin disapproved of Saussure’s efforts to distinguish individual production of language (parole) from collective knowledge and linguistic awareness (langue), a division that, to Bakhtin’s way of thinking, isolates an individual from society; he was much more in favour of a theory of language that portrays speech as dependent on, and product of, a specific social context” (Chapman & Routledge 2009, 115). It is my contention that Kennedy’s methodology with regard to creating and studying specialized corpora reflects Bakhtin’s position. 47 discussed in detail in 2.5). 2.4.3 Source and Number of Terms Generated To understand how Italian establishes its central terms on the Web, I have created a corpus of terms to study based on a primary corpus and a secondary corpus. The primary corpus is based on popular Italian online blogs which represent popular or colloquial language use where Internet terminology functions at its most dynamic. The secondary corpus, comprising as sources, newspaper articles, will be considered a normative imprimatur. As previously mentioned, Galisson studied football terminology from a corpus of written texts (newspapers). Today, the Web makes corpus-driven lexical research much easier through the use of search engines such as Google and Yahoo. The source of the material collected for lexical analysis is the World Wide Web. For the present study, several categories of Internet Terminology attestations have been compiled through lists from several online English and Italian language dictionaries as well as from the Vocabulaire d’Internet de l’Office québécois de la langue française, (www.olf.gouv.qc.ca/ressources/bibliotheque/dictionnaires/Internet/index/.) to form a preliminary base consisting of over 5000 terms. This base was too large for study so the Panlatin Internet Glossary29 from Public works and Goverment Services Canada site:(http:// 29 This site was created with the expertise of Giovanni Adamo to whom the site ascribes the following credentials: ‘è ricercatore presso il Lessico intellettuale europeo, centro di studio del Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche (Cnr). Si occupa di lessicologia e terminologia, e dei metodi di applicazione dell’informatica allo studio dei testi, in particolare filosofici e scientifici. È professore a contratto presso l’Università di Roma La Sapienza. Ha partecipato alla redazione di questo vocabolario con la collaborazione di uno dei suoi allievi, Alessandro Cardamone, e si è avvalso della consulenza di Giuseppe Sindoni, del Dipartimento d’informatica e sistemistica (Dis) dell’Università di Roma Tre’ /‘is a researcher at the Lessico intellettuale europeo and the centro di studio del Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche (Cnr). His work focuses on lexicology and terminology, information technology application methods primarily in the study philosophical and scientific texts. He is a lecturer at the University of Rome La Sapienza. He aided in the editing of this dictionary in collaboration with one of his students, Alessandro Cardamone, and acts as consultant for Giuseppe Sindoni, at the Department of Information Technology and Systems Engineering (Dis) at the Università di Roma Tre’ ( 48 www.translationbureau.gc.ca/index.php?lang=english&cont=i_494) was carefully studied and then merged with a glossary I created using the criteria explained below made up of 21 online glossaries. I was then able to reduce my original corpus from over 5000 terms to 148 terms. Name of Glossary Address of Glossary Area of Focus 2graphicʼs Simple Internet http://www.2graphic.co.uk/ Cross referenced A-Z Glossary web-help/Internet- explanation of the common glossary.htm terms and acronyms used on the Internet. Alphabet Soup Explained http://members.aol.com/ List of terms commonly nigthomas/alphabet.html used on the Internet. (no longer accessible) Basic Web Analytic http:// A review of some of the Terminology www.searchengineguide.c basic terminology found in om/claiborne/ most website visitor log 2005/0426_sc1.html analytics programs. Dictionary of Internet http://www.techterms.org/ Definitions of Internet Terms Internet.php terms, including Web, e- mail, and data transfer terminology. Glossary of Common http://www.walthowe.com/ It contains general use, Internet Terms glossary/a.html programming language terms and abbreviations. Glossary of Internet Terms http://domainavenue.com/ An Internet terminology faq_glossary.htm reference with informative definitions. Internet Acronyms http://www.gaarde.org/ Definitions of most of the Dictionary acronyms/ used terms. Internet Glossary http:// A freeware project to build www.ebusinessrevolution.c an independent Internet om/glossary/ Glossary. IRC Dictionary http://www.dlc.fi/~frog/ Explanations of terms acronyms.htm used in chat rooms. Matisseʼs Glossary of http://www.matisse.net/ A list of Internet-related Internet Terms files/glossary.html terms and definitions. 49 Name of Glossary Address of Glossary Area of Focus Netdictionary http:// Alphabetical reference www.netdictionary.com/ guide to technical, cultural, and humorous terms related to the Internet. Netlexikon.org - Internet http://www.netlexikon.org A glossary which offers an Glossary overview of important terms concerning the Internet and information technology. It contains general use, programming language terms and abbreviations. NetLingo Inc http://www.netlingo.com/ Definitions that describe the online world of business, technology, and communication. It contains general use, programming language terms and abbreviations. Ollie Clarkʼs Acronym http://www.ollieclark.com/ A dictionary of email, news Dictionary acronyms.html and online chat acronyms. Search Engine Dictionary http:// A comprehensive glossary www.searchenginedictiona of search engine ry.com terminology. Contains technical terminology, general use terminology and gives information on search engines Svetlozar Onlineʼs http://www.svetlozar.com/ Thousands of computer, Abbreviation Glossary learningcenter/glossaries/ networking, and ag/ telecommunications acronyms and their meanings. The Sharpened Glossary http://www.sharpened.net/ List of acronyms used in glossary/acronyms.php email, chat, and instant messaging. 50 Name of Glossary Address of Glossary Area of Focus Web Glossary http://www.geocities.com/ A glossary of Internet webglossary/ terms and jargon (no longer available) Web Hosting Glossary http:// Web hosting terms with www.webhostingratings.co short and simple m/glossary.html definitions. Webmaster Glossary http:// Web-related terms and www.yourhtmlsource.com/ abbreviations with links to starthere/glossary.html articles providing detailed background information. Except where specified in the description section of each site, the above online dictionaries are generally large databases of terms ranging from general use, email functions and blogging (much like my reduced list of terms), to acronyms, programming language, and abbreviations. None of the above sites contains a list of terms common to my corpus of 300 terms. Few of the sites focus on one particular category of use except those that specify terms for use in chatrooms. 2.4.4 Subcategories of Terms The creation of categories of terminology is based upon areas of use. It is the context of use that provides us with the following categories: i. general web functions (e.g. ‘scroll down’, ‘click’) ii. email and filesharing iii. blogging The above areas of usage are deemed most pertinent to a banalised context as these categories apply to users outside the domain of specialized or technical language use. These are areas of use 51 that do not require training such as that required of those in the Internet Technology or software design sectors. 2.4.5 Other Kinds of Terms Excluded from Corpus As previously stated, lexical items deemed too technical such as vocabulary items specific to programming languages like Java etc. were avoided as they do not conform to a wider range of use by the general public. Texting and messaging are also not given consideration in the data as the domain of use differs substantially; short message service (SMS) or text messages travel through limited networks. Since we are dealing with online media sources, the banalised Italian Web Language would need to lie within the boundaries of formal use as well. 2.4.6 Use of a Control Group to Test Terms The terms for inclusion were then subject to testing on a control group of 10 members from the two major language groups represented in the attestations table to check the validity of terms and reduce the list. Native speakers of Standard Italian and English comprised these two groups. Members ranged from 25 to 45 years of age as this was thought to be an age group with a high frequency of contact with the medium using the Internet daily for both work and pleasure, and did not include any subjects that use highly specialized/technical jargon such as those who design websites or write software programs. Testing on this control group was done to ensure that the terms are familiar to ordinary users of the Internet. The criteria were set to include only lexemes from categories of use and from Web sources pertaining to the Italian media online. The result: the original base sample of just over 5000 words supplied by the Vocabulaire d’Internet de l’Office québécois de la langue française, was reduced to 148 words. 52 2.4.7 Attestations / Frequency of Terms This list of 148 terms was then subject to further reduction based on a frequency test performed through the advanced search pages of Google.it. Google’s advanced search allows users to set specific words or phrases, by language, text type and domain extension. To establish the frequency of terms, Google search parameters were set to include Italian language only pages with extensions such as ‘.it’ as well as those from countries with a high incidence of Italian speakers and Internet users: Canada (.ca). Extensions for Argentina (.ar), and Switzerland (.ch) were originally included but were discarded since the number of attestations proved too low. The number of attestations (hits) for each word retrieved by Google is recorded in a table (see appendix i for full chart) showing the frequency of the terms. Borrowed terms showing his frequency of usage (250,000+ attestations) were then chosen along with their corresponding competing Italian terms. These pairs are considered to be the strongest terms due to their frequency. Since technical language does not generally support synonymous terms (Cabré 1999), the concept of synonymy as a characteristic of banalization is a prime point of interest. 2.4.8 Establishing Central Terms A comparative table of synonymy (see appendices for full table) was created to be then used to help establish the central terms of the corpus. By checking the frequency of terms through Google, mention cannot be distinguished from use (the terms were discussed in the previous chapter) as clearly in the base sample of Internet attestations. However this procedure is an important starting point in pairing down the list of terms to be studied. 53 2.4.8.1 Table of Synonomous Terms ITALIAN ENGLISH CATEGORY ITALY ITALY CANADA CANADA ARGENTINA ARGENTINA TERM SYNONYM OF USE Italian English Italian English Italian English abbonati members website info 234000 249000 276 3510 6 79 accedere access all 227000 204000 3090 4360 168 84 accedere enter all 227000 123000 3090 2360 168 51 conto account email/web 332000 235000 5810 16800 324 89 spazio di account all 255000 235000 499 16800 62 89 memoria aggiornare update (v) file sharing 222000 185000 4580 716 27 51 allegare attach file sharing 260000 53200 203 51 8 4 allegato attachment email/file 244000 16400 589 159 44 2 sharing applicazione application file sharing 265000 170000 1420 473 104 63 (f) archivio file (m) file sharing 313000 229000 30000 24700 1800 901 area sensibile hotspot 40900 16600 73 44 32 1 area sensibile hot spot web general 40900 67800 73 521 32 7 attivare activate all 236000 10400 774 33 329 3 disattivare disactivate all 32 4 184 10 4 1 barra (f) slash email 296000 26100 812 110 376 2 bloggare to blog blog/ 5290 231000 9 5970 4 515 newsgroup/ message area bloggare blogging 5290 53500 9 787 4 3 bloggare blogged 5290 888 9 4 4 261 Cache (f) cache file sharing 125000 125000 524 524 103 103 cam (f) cam website info 250000 250000 1010 1010 251 251 (camera) Campo (m) field file sharing 2620000 112000 7480 395 3510 66 canale channel website info 260000 1870000 1100 10700 157 101 Cancellare delete all 267000 45500 1320 1360 293 116 Caricare load all 302000 65200 740 491 29 18 Cartella folder (m) file sharing 274000 50100 2330 203 42 8 54 cartoline electronic email/web 1390000 68 19200 0 20 0 elettroniche postcards Casella (f) mailbox email 253000 36000 881 41 29 1 cercare search website info 304000 245000 7470 15300 217 1210 cestino trash email 456000 197000 3010 227 17 19 chat (f) chat blog/ 227000 227000 6760 6760 873 873 newsgroup/ message area Chattare to chat (v) blog/ 144000 235000 225 3820 28 315 newsgroup/ message area chatting 144000 4390 225 15 28 0 chatted 144000 105 225 1 28 0 cliccare click web general 282000 263000 11800 8320 20 187 fare un clic click website info 174000 263000 283 8320 14 187 fare doppio double click web general 7480 17000 44 137 2 5 clic cliente client website info 296000 233000 1800 1110 211 44 codice PIN password all 54200 274000 65 8740 4 491 Collegamento link website info 260000 287000 3140 17200 162 1720 (m) colpo hit website info 242000 229000 2140 4800 196 195 Configurazion configuration file sharing 267000 25700 12400 199 74 3 e (f) Cookie (m) cookie file sharing 236000 236000 337 337 5 5 Copia (f) copy email/file 273000 135000 1580 381 111 29 sharing copiare copy 289000 135000 508 381 16 29 Cornice (f) frame website info 268000 180000 708 984 76 22 cyberspazio cyberspace web general 16800 4120 7 8 2 2 decomprimer decompress file sharing 9090 297 8 1 0 0 e link profondo deep link website info 1230000 50600 241 121 8 5 Desktop (m) desktop file sharing 247000 1060 128 destinatario recipient file sharing 272000 7770 1430 33 25 1 diffusione di streaming website info 144000 266000 14 382 3 55 audiovisivi 55 Directory (f) directory web general 263000 5710 349 domanda frequently website info 2250000 47400 23600 52 44 6 posta di asked frequente questions domanda FAQ 2250000 301000 23600 22800 44 631 posta di frequente Dominio (m) domain web general 279000 75800 4030 2 89 35 dorsale backbone web general 46500 3990 105 19 10 3 Esplorare Explore web general 143000 25700 361 231 46 3 Estensione (f) Extension file sharing 246000 35000 497 109 62 8 fiamma flame blog/ 149000 62200 791 76 40 3 newsgroup/ message area file non file not found web general 191000 12400 2420 165 21 5 trovato (404 error) Filtro (m) filter file sharing 417000 220000 22800 837 Finestra (f) window all 420000 235000 2060 1200 finger (tipo di finger web general 57000 57000 345 345 programma internet) Firewall (m) firewall web general 333000 333000 498 498 firma digitale digital website info 299000 6900 62 10 signature Foglio (m) sheet all 351000 79100 872 499 Formato (m) format (noun) file sharing 413000 249000 7370 2620 Formattare to format file sharing 65900 234000 78 1760 (verb) Gruppo (m) di discussion blog/ 469000 18400 20700 1100 discussione group newsgroup/ message area Gruppo (m) di forum email 469000 372000 20700 75200 discussione catene di hoax email 11600 17500 67 25 S.Antonio catene di chain mail web general 11600 73700 67 102 S.Antonio Host (m) host web general 298000 289000 1230 1230 Icona (f) icon web general 389000 258000 867 1260 56 in linea online email/file 326000 340000 8110 38800 sharing Incollare paste email/file 77600 121000 133 602 sharing Indirizzo (m) address website info 469000 261000 24400 3150 Ingresso home blog/ 449000 529000 1710 107000 newsgroup/ message area instant instant email/file 80000 80000 93 93 messenger messenger sharing intestazione header web general 172000 333000 215 660 ipertesto hypertext blog/ 11300 11500 24 6 newsgroup/ message area lanciare use web general 516000 17700 3 6 emots emoticons larghezza di bandwidth web general 36500 15600 433 58 banda Layout (m) layout web general 388000 388000 1240 1240 Link (m) link web general 375000 375000 32600 32600 link rotto broken link web general 94000 39700 108 120 link non broken link web general 3030000 39700 19700 120 funzionante loggato (whomever web general 379000 70400 282 3500 is) logged in login login 394000 394000 39000 39000 logoff logoff blog/ 2880 2880 3 3 newsgroup/ message area lurker (colui lurker web general 11400 11400 8 8 che assiste senza partecipare) posta mail email 549000 385000 3760 41300 elettronica posta email all 549000 420000 3760 28600 elettronica mailing list file sharing 319000 985 Memorizzare save website info 80500 266000 136 2060 57 Menu (m) blog/ 342000 12900 (a.e. menu a newsgroup/ comparsa) message area messaggi private web general/ 580000 95300 18700 3620 privati messages email Messaggio status file sharing/ 416000 23500 5790 1420 (m) di stato message email mittente sender newsletter/ 370000 23100 151 43 subscription web modulo/ form form web general 416000 328000 12600 5570 Navigare surf 356000 352000 2790 440 navigare surfing web general 356000 91600 2790 138 Navigatore di browser (m) 531000 282000 121 12900 ricerca Motore di browser (m) blog/ 383000 282000 17800 12900 ricerca newsgroup/ message area netiquette blog/ 269000 77 newsgroup/ message area newsgroup blog/ 355000 337 newsgroup/ message area nik (m) nickname web general 283000 495000 70 1120 nodo host web general 223000 298000 315 1230 nodo (host) node web general 226000 188000 301 1460 nodo di gateway website info/ 20300 165000 5 286 transito blog etc. nome utente username 434000 322000 12900 8480 id user id web general 327000 268000 13800 634 non down 361000 358000 657 59700 accessibile non visibile in down 2150000 358000 519 59700 rete non down website info 2210000 358000 292 59700 raggiungibile notizie/news news blog/ 374000 403000 19200 50400 (tipo newsgroup/ newsgroup) message area 58 novellino newbie web general 117000 321000 8530 190 Pagina (f) page website info 324000 289000 37200 34300 (documento/ gruppo di informazioni disponibile mediante www) pagina home home page 2330000 272000 27000 22100 (fem) scherma di home page web general 5590 272000 5 22100 ingresso (fem) parola chiave keyword web general 324000 218000 17500 1260 popup popup email/file 318000 318000 343 343 sharing popunder popunder 4670 4670 1 1 posta non spam 602000 235000 92 2840 desiderata posta spamming email/file 270000 102000 30 70 spazzatura sharing Preferenze (f, preferences website info/ 315000 20900 705 128 pl) blog etc. preferiti favorites web general 352000 247000 7030 6780 Privacy (f) privacy blog/ 310000 310000 70800 70800 newsgroup/ message area profilo profile web general 318000 303000 29200 9390 Programma program web general 324000 230000 8290 1740 (m) Proprietà (f) property file sharing 325000 249000 18000 2050 Protocollo (m) protocol web general 29300 64500 3 155 IMAP Provider (m) provider web general 311000 311000 1160 1160 Proxy (m) proxy web general 110000 110000 191 191 pulsante (m) key 409000 235000 3770 3660 Pulsante (m) button web general 409000 304000 3770 1200 Puntatore (m) cursor website info 56600 24800 61 73 cursore cursor 437000 24800 104 73 ricerca query web general 2190000 290000 545 5720 attraverso i search engine 59 ragnatela world wide web general 47900 135000 1 147 mondiale web Rete (f) network web general 315000 250000 19500 20500 Ricarica reload web general 362000 63800 1180 368 (imperativo) ricerca advanced web general 360000 248000 29200 10500 avanzata search Salvare save web general 299000 248000 3470 2150 Scaricare download all 294000 264000 9200 36600 scrolling scrolling web general 31800 31800 90 90 Segnalibro bookmark chat 366000 275000 3170 4520 (m) Server (m) server web general 281000 218000 12000 12000 Server proxy Server proxy blog/ 420000 420000 88 88 (m) (m) newsgroup/ message area Sessione (f) session web general 348000 236000 648 1320 Sfoglia browse web general 3040000 232000 63200 9000 (imperativo) Sfondo (m) background web general 296000 341000 2600 1520 Sito (m) site web general 286000 305000 70400 26000 Sorgente (f) source web general 290000 268000 390 16800 Spostarsi move all 110000 183000 174 1070 Strumento tool blog/ 344000 291000 1620 2670 (m) newsgroup/ message area superuser superuser blog/ 5550 5550 6 6 newsgroup/ message area teleconferenz teleconferenc blog/ 4850 303 10 1 a e newsgroup/ message area tempo reale real time 334000 248000 1820 33000 tempo attuale real time blog/ 306000 248000 1520 33000 newsgroup/ message area Trascinare drag blog/ 481000 128000 108 178 newsgroup/ message area 60 trasferimento file transfer blog/ 195000 26700 1630 122 di file newsgroup/ message area valore default blog/ 410000 253000 94 9150 predefinito newsgroup/ message area Valore (m) value blog/ 332000 343000 4130 1320 newsgroup/ message Velocità (f) speed blog/ 326000 270000 2410 2270 newsgroup/ message area verme worm blog/ 50700 78700 91 65 newsgroup/ message bruco worm 234000 78700 16 65 visualizzatore viewer blog/ 73400 58400 29 129 newsgroup/ message area Web (m) web file sharing 326000 326000 45800 45800 zippare zipped 2340 3110 3 6 zippato zipped 8640 3110 52 6 compresso compressed 68700 10700 59 102 2.4.8.1. Results of Italian Language Sites Searched Through Google.it The next step in restricting my set of terms is that of an analysis of the most frequently occuring competing terms and variant forms (i.e. fully lexicalized forms vs. syntagmatic expressions). I provide a few examples of lexical families and synonymous couplets from the two main categories of terms present in the data: verbs and nouns. 61 2.4.8.1.1a Frequency of Synonomous Terms: ‘to click/ click!’ fare click/fare clic; fate click/fate clic cliccare/cliccate 3000000 2250000 1500000 750000 0 Results from Google.it The graph above illustrates the frequency of the terms verb forms of click/clic on Italian language sites (.it). A search of fare click/ fare click, fate click/ fate clic and cliccare, cliccate was achieved through an exact phrase search on Google.it. The terms are considered synonyms in Italian but the lexicalized forms cliccare/cliccate appear to be more fully embedded into Italian morphology. I opt to search for imperative forms based on the domain of use as there is a high incidence of this grammatical mood in Internet terminology30. Here, it is not possible to make a distinction between use and mention other than what we observe by the degree of integration of the term. The corpus contains only instances of mention, thus a sampling of data such as this from the Web does not give us contextualized use of the terms. It does however serve to show different levels of integration of a term. The following observations made below allow us to choose which terms, or families of terms (lexical families) merit more investigation: 30 “All registers use the same language system [...] but the probabilities of occurrence of particular configurations of grammatical and lexical choices from the system vary from register to register” (Chapman & Routledge 2009, 62). 62 a) the more frequent terms cliccare/cliccate are more integrated into Italian morphology than the verb phrases (syntagms) fare click/ fare click, fate click/ fate clic b) while cliccare is an infinitive and would appear most often as a formal/generic imperative (i.e, ‘Cliccare qui!’ = ‘Click here!’), it can also be used as a substantive: ‘Cliccare è facile!’ = ‘Clicking is easy!’. This could have a profound effect on the number of occurrences. 2.4.8.1.1b Frequency of Synonomous Terms: ‘chat / chat!’ fate chat chattate 60000 45000 30000 15000 0 Results from Google.it As previously mentioned, the imperative forms are frequently used. For consistency, I chose the second person plural form (voi) since it is generally used both formally and informally in the plural. The chart shows the distribution of the forms chattate and fate chat for the purpose of comparing, the syntagmatic form (verb phrase) to the lexicalized form which is more integrated. However, the imperative form of chat here has the same form as the term meaning ‘online 63 conversations’ (le chattate). I did a separate string search for both le chattate and chattate and subtracted the frequencies of the former from the latter to get an accurate number: (chattate 55,000 - le chattate 4,060 = chattate 50,940). Only the terms in context and co-text will allow us to have a full understanding of the degree of integration of terms. Though the chart does shed some light on frequency and preference, it is too removed from the actual context of the language, rendering it inconclusive. 2.4.8.1.2a: Frequency of Synonomous Terms: ‘streaming’ diffusione di audiovisivi streaming 300000 225000 150000 75000 0 Results from Google.it The graph above illustrates the frequency of the terms: diffusione di audiovisivi and streaming on Italian language sites (.it). The terms are considered synonyms in Italian. Streaming has a higher frequency. Some reasons for this may be: a) Streaming is a more economical term due to its compact nature as a single word unit of meaning. 64 b) Streaming (short for streaming media) has the status of a noun in Italian. However, in English, the verb form streaming also exists and is productive. Italian can use streaming in both substantive form and verb form without having to make any modifications to the word. For example: Fare lo streaming = to stream. Therefore, the higher frequency of streaming may be due by and large to its grammatical flexibility. Though the chart does clarify frequency and preference, it is too removed from the actual context of the language and the grammar (verb vs. noun as stated above), rendering is inconclusive. 2.4.8.1.3a Frequency of Synonomous Terms: ‘link’ link collegamento 290000 280000 270000 260000 250000 Results from Google.it The graph above illustrates the frequency of the terms: collegamento and link on Italian language sites (.it). The terms are considered synonyms in Italian in the context of Web Language. In Italy, link has a higher frequency. Some reasons for this may be: a) Link is less ambiguous and more economical an utterance. 65 b) Link and collegamento are both nouns in Italian so both can be inserted into the construction ‘creare un collegamento’ ; ‘creare un link’. However, in English and elsewhere, the term link is restricted to a smaller limited arena of usage. Therefore, the higher frequency of link in Italian may be due to its unambiguous nature and it may be more immediately understood due to its emblematic nature by users given the context of the Web. The chart shows that the terms exist almost in balanced frequency. However, the higher incidence of use for the term link may be a matter of economy, unambiguity and trend given the prestigious and fashionable status of English Italy today. In the latter two situations given above, rapidity may prove to be a motivating factor in the preference for the English term. The term link has a narrower semantic map than does collegamento in Italian making the term less ambiguous to the user. The same is true then for the synonomous terms diffusione di audiovisivi and streaming. One further observation to be made is that of the more compact nature of the English synonyms. A preference by users of these terms could be a matter of André Martinet’s principle of ‘economic change’ which, according to Danesi and Clivio, states “that complex structural systems tend to change in line with a general process of simplification” (2000: 188). 2.5 Tools 2.5.1 Google.it These media sources can be accessed through browsers such as Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer which, in turn, provide access to search engines like Google where one can search for items or specific sources of interest. By using basic, advanced or refined searches, one can search and retrieve documents containing a word, phrase or one can request a type of document (e.g, 66 Italian newspaper La Corriere della Sera). Refined searches such as those limiting language or country of origin can be performed through phrase queries or by Boolean operators such as those used by Google: 2.5.1.1 Google Advanced Search Page Not only then does the Web provide a context-specific and accurately representative arena for a banalised language but it also provides us with a vast pool from which we can draw current, machine readable data. Machine readability is very important for this study since the software program Concordance is used to process the data. 67 2.5.2 Concordance To analyse the large amount of data in this corpus, a concordance tool was chosen. Concordance is a multilingual software program used for analysis designed to do text-retrieval and analysis on written works (machine readable texts). Concordance is used in my research to retrieve occurrences of a word (word frequency), word pattern (syntagmatic constructions) or word combinations. The output takes the form of a concordance, a list or a table. To process a text, I first tag (or mark up) an ASCII copy of the text downloaded from the Internet. Tagging involves inserting relevant source information on each document in angle- bracket delimiters. My delimiters appear in the following way: • Country = Italy: • date = 10/01/08: • source (media source) = Corriere della Sera (cds): After creating a database, I use an application of Concordance to select either a word, a group of words, or a word pattern and can display it in five ways: 1. keyword-in-context (KWIC) 2. concordance 3. variable-context concordance 4. occurrence distribution graph 5. table of collocates Another application of Concordance can present a complete list of words from which a subset for retrieval may be selected, one word at a time. Through what is called ‘regular expression’ 68 capability, I may also write a query according to a pattern of characters (e.g. all words starting with blog-, or all words ending in –ing, -ed, -er). I can also find words through ‘selectors’ (a refined or advanced search process) to find words that are similar in spelling (e.g. un clic vs un click), or, through proximity of collocation to find two or more words found together within a user-specified span of words (domanda posta di frequente = frequently asked questions). Therefore, Concordance not only allows one to view frequency and percentage of use of the terms in the corpus but allows one to look at the specific context of usage. One can view which word units occur most often with certain verbs (e.g. fare la chat). For example, a thorough search of patterns such as suffixes would also allow for a systematic study of semantic plasticity. Simply stated, we can also explore if and how specific English suffixes differ in meaning when used in Italian in our corpus. 2.6 Synchronic Approach It is appropriate to mention that absolute synchrony is impossible because the Web is dynamic and, much like natural language, is ever changing. I have opted to take a synchronic approach to the study since my corpus is substantial. A synchronic approach is further justified by the fact that my goal in this study is not to investigate how language changes over time but rather to explore, analyse and subsequently define, by its observable characteristics in the data, a unique domain of language use: banalisation. 69 2.7 Conclusion Chapter two offers some insights into how the Web and Internet are used in Italy and illustrates how restricted its use is in very rural areas of the peninsula where the standard language is not spoken as much as it is in the urban centres. From this we can conclude that most bloggers, having Net access, do speak Standard Italian with great regularity which helps restrict my corpus to only Standard manifestations of the language. I assert that Italian language news blog sites and the Italian media online are legitimate areas of study with regard to banalised language and Internet terminology because of the long tradition of newspaper readership in the country and because of the proven role that the media has played in the linguistic shaping of Italy. After justifying my sources for data collection, I explain how my corpus was created, with what parameters and why. I discuss how my central terms were defined, revised and reduced and I give some preliminary examples of some competing terms to prepare the reader for a an analysis of synonymous terms in chapter four. My reduced list of terms was further reduced once my data was processed by the text analysis and computing tool Concordance. The final section of this chapter gives some considerations on how I will approach a diachronic study on a small set of terms in the final chapter of this thesis. The next chapter of this thesis examines the phonomenon of lexical borrowings from a linguistic point of view, how terms are borrowed and what categories of borrowings exist. Keeping in mind the theory of compositionality of elements and the relationship between, syntax, semantics, form, and morphology, I take a step-by-step approach to organizing the data. I start with lexical features, but keep in mind the syntactic, morphological and semantic links between terms. In a discussion on derivation, I offer a comparative analysis between English and Italian word formation. In the spirit of the French 70 tradition and keeping in mind the important concept of word formation, I follow the categorization methodology of Gilbert. Once the lexical units are organized, I consider categories such as compounds, semantic calques etc. These categories allow me to view the terms not as individual units but as multi-word units of meaning. It will then follow that in chapters four and five, I will be able to break down the components of terms and term syntagms on the basis of morphology, syntax, and semantic make up through qualia structure which is introduced in the final section of chapter three. 71 3 Neological Aspects of the Italian Lexicon 3.1 Introduction The aim of this chapter is to explain the rationale for the organization of data, give background on the linguistic motivators for borrowing and discuss what methodological approaches I use to investigate the structure and meaning of terms. First, we examine what constitutes borrowing, how terms are borrowed, and what categories of borrowings exist. Keeping in mind the theory of compositionality of elements and the relationship between, syntax, semantics, form, and morphology, I take a step-by-step approach to organizing the data. I start with lexical features, but keep in mind the syntactic, morphological and semantic links between terms. We start with the premise that knowing a word means having at least four types of information: i. Phonological: the sounds that make up words ii. Semantic: the meanings associated with words iii. Syntactic: what category the word belongs to iv. Morphological: how related words are formed I begin my analysis of the data by placing the terms under investigation in the appropriate lexical categories below: 1. verbs 2. nouns 3. adpositions (only prepositions for our study) 4. adjectives (attributive [part of noun phrase]or predicate[not part of noun phrase]) 5. determiners (articles and demonstratives) 72 6. pronouns 7. adverbs Classes 1, 2, are central categories because: “the need for new nouns, adjectives and verbs arises frequently in some cultures, and additions to these lexical categories occur freely” (Finegan 96). Category 5, mainly articles are important as they are used often in Standard Italian to differentiate homynyms. Adpositions and pronouns are closed classes and are not under investigation in this thesis as they are not represented in our corpus. In the final section of this chapter I briefly discuss an approach to the semantic layout of the terms under investigation in this thesis which will prepare the reader for subsequent analysis in chapters four and five. Pustejovsky puts forth the a model that attempts to find out what aspects of semantics are relevant to the guiding structure of a term both borrowed and native to a language. However, as most of the word stock studied in this thesis is derived from English borrowings, it is appropriate Italian language on the Internet discuss at this time how and why borrowing occurs and, most importantly, what borrowing is. 3.2 Borrowing 3.2.1 Conditions of Borrowing Borrowing is traditionally considered “the attempted reproduction in one language of patterns previously found in another” (Haugen 1950, 212). Many traditional studies on borrowing deal with situations of bilingualism since it is generally accepted that “language contact, and therefore, borrowing, relies on bilingualism” (McMahon 1994, 200). Contrary to this view, we are aware that borrowing takes place even when there are not situations of bilingualism or linguistic hegemony. Bilingualism is not a factor in the borrowing patterns of mainstream Italian 73 and more recently, the borrowing of Internet terminology. Studies on English loanwords in Internet terminology (Crystal 2001; Romero & Vaquero, 2001; Tattersal 2003) and language dictionaries specializing primarily on computer technology and the Internet (“Vocabulaire d’Internet” Office québécois de la langue française, 2002) feature many terms of English origin (e.g. download, mouse). The use of English sporting terminology in French (Galisson 1978) and the use of English railway terminology in French (Wexler 1955) are just a few testaments to an already well-attested linguistic phenomenon independent of bilingualism. The aforementioned examples are prime examples of the mainstream borrowing found in the expression of Italian Internet terminology. Many borrowings in mainstream language are cultural borrowings, defined by Myers-Scotton as “words that fill gaps in the recipient language’s store of words because they stand for objects or concepts new to the language’s culture” (2006, 212). Cultural borrowings are often a result of the exposure of a recipient language to a lending language in a specific domain of use (e.g. railway, sporting, Internet, etc.) Intensity of borrowing is often mirrored by ‘intensity of contact’ between the donor and the recipient languages. Thomason & Kaufman (1988) propose a five-point scale of intensity of contact. Beginning with stage three, we also find non-basic vocabulary among the loanwords. While many Italians using the World Wide Web do not speak English as a second language, the unique domain of use makes borrowing from English an irresistible tendency because the terminology used existed first in English before it did in Italian and that the impetus for borrowing, therefore, is that of pure necessity. Brown (1999), examined words for 77 “items of acculturation” (things/ concepts unfamiliar to Native Americans before the European invasion) in 292 Native American languages noting that words were borrowed simply out of necessity. We must be aware that “the 74 unifying factor underlying all borrowing is probably that of projected gain; the borrower must stand to benefit in some way from the transfer of linguistic material” (Winter 1973: 138 cited by McMahon 1994, 201). Context-specific vocabulary (a ‘banalised’ language) derived from English makes the contact situation more intense, and, in the case of Italian Internet terminology, the pure dominance of English on the Web exerts stronger pressure on Italian Web users. In a banalised context, the intensity of contact is more extreme as the recipient language’s need for “items of acculturation” increases. This is evidenced in both Wexler, where the early technological advances (mainly steam) play a fundamental role, and Galisson, where football was an English sport before it became a French one. Both Galisson and Wexler demonstrate that the technical language of the recipient language retains from technical vocabulary those items which have the largest coverage ability and satisfy the lexical gaps in the recipient language. 3.2.2 Integration of Loanwords: Phonological Considerations Loanwords can be more or less integrated phonologically and morphologically. Much of the current literature on loanwords is devoted to studying regularities of integration as a way of gaining insight into the nature of phonological and morphological structure. We may look at phonology as a potential factor as to why some words that are not easily pronounceable in the recipient language are those that are inevitably not borrowed. One limiting factor not yet discussed is that of phonological assimilation. In 1971, Gaetano Rando commented on modern Italian’s “somewhat limited capacity for phonological assimilation” and predicted that, as a result, Italian would have the “tendency to assimilate the numerous anglicisms it borrows by semantic means rather than by adaptation or by derivation” (Rando 251). However, the Web is not a spoken medium and its rapid and highly visual nature may render some models of word 75 formation phonology difficult to apply. Proof of how terms are articulated would be necessary to draw any tangible conclusions. However, this does not preclude the value of doing an exhaustive study of lexical borrowings and neologisms in context as pooled from the corpora to help determine which phonological or morphological constraints may obstacle or influence borrowability of items of acculturation on the Web. Most importantly, we may be able to address whether or not the absorption of English terms in Italian on the Internet has any effect on Italian syntax. To understand whether this happens or not, the borrowings analyzed in this study are those that are well rooted in the grammar of the language of adoption. Will some compounding patterns mimic the syntactic order of English compounds as is the case in some calques? In the next chapter, the English bound morpheme -er will be studied to see if it has a productive status in Italian Web Language. Use of these morphemes may reveal more information about how Italian speakers interpret those forms and what meaning is assigned to them. 3.2.3 Constraints on Borrowing According to Winter (1973: 144) “no component of a natural language is totally immune to change under the impression of outside languages. However, not all components appear to be equally susceptible to such changes”. McMahon (1994:209) notes that “generally speaking, the lexicon is most easily and radically affected, followed by the phonology, morphology and finally the syntax. It is harder to formulate acceptable constraints on what can be borrowed within a particular component, or when it is feasible to propose an external source for a particular linguistic innovation.” Structural incompatibility has often been invoked as explaining resistance to borrowing, although in recent years it has come under attack (especially by Thomason & Kaufman 1988). Thomason and Kaufman (1988:17) state that “a language accepts foreign 76 structural elements only when they correspond to its own tendencies of development.” In terms of lexical morphology, we are told by McMahon (1994:211) that, although morphological material can be borrowed, “it seems easier to borrow derivational affixes than inflectional ones.” Since we know that “derivational affixation is much more active in Italian than in English” (Agard and Di Pietro 1965:5), it appears that Italian lexical morphology allows for many ways in which to incorporate English borrowings. At this point, however, it may be opportune to consider some of the main structural differences at the lexical level between English and Italian both from an inflectional as well as from a derivational standpoint. 3.2.4 Derivation in English and Italian: A Comparison Vizmuller-Zocco (1985:305) defines lexical (or morphological) derivation as “a process which is used to form new words from those already existing in the language by means of prefixes, suffixes (and less frequently, infixes).” The linguist also notes that “both English and Italian have similar means of forming derivatives: to existing (simplex or complex) roots, suffixes and/or prefixes are added to derive new words. On the superficial level, the languages differ in at least five respects: i. Derivational affixation is much more active in Italian than in English ii. Whereas most prefixes and suffixes in Italian are of Latin and Greek origin, those in English stem from Latin, Greek and Anglo-Saxon iii.The Italian system of derivational morphemes includes also ‘alterating’ morphemes (those with affective meaning). English resorts to other means in order to express the 77 intended affective meaning, e.g., ragazzino vs little boy. iv. Some suffixes enjoy greater frequency of use and are more productive in one or the other language (depending also on style and the register used): in English, -tion occurs in derivatives of a technical nature; the use of –ment seems to be on the decline. In Italian, there is a marked preference for the avoidance of accumulated suffixes, especially in the formation of adjectives (Migliorini 1956; Valesio 1967:365) v. Where the base of the derivatives in both languages is related etymologically to a Latin word, then: 1. an Italian non-derived form may correspond to an English derived word, e.g., ‘government’ governo;’arrival’ arrivo; ‘comical’ comico 2. the lexical base, etymologically identical in the two languages, may select two different suffixes for the actual derivative, e.g., ‘recognition’ riconoscimento; ‘suggestion’ suggerimento 3. a historically identical suffix (e.g., the Latin –tione) is used with different bases in the two languages with the derivatives having at least one meaning in common, e.g., ‘-tion’ –zione: pollution (Eng.) = contaminazione (It.); introduction (Eng.) = introduzione/presentazione (It.); assumption (Eng.) = supposizione (It.) 4. on the syntactic level, some derivatives in English may differ in their function from their cognates in Italian; e.g., ‘professional’ (Eng.) professionista (noun)/ 78 professionale (adj.)’ (Vizmuller-Zocco 1985:306). Point number four (4.) brings about an interesting question with regard to leveling. Could borrowed words of similar English nature/paradigm influence leveling of the two forms in Italian? How or why does this happen? A morphological and syntactic analysis of the central terms of the corpus will help us gain a better understanding of the underlying processes of signification and why there may be a preference for one structure over another. 3.2.5 Word Morphology and Borrowed Lexical Stock Morphology refers to what constitutes a word and what units (smaller than words) convey meaning. Many words can be split morphologically: eg. birds = bird + s. Words are free form but a word may contain one or more bound forms like the endings –a and –o in Italian. In synthetic languages such as Italian one word may have many bound forms. It is apposite, at this stage, to offer a glimpse of the morphological subsystem, the level at which words are given their particular shape and are made to agree in form with one another, to give a better idea of how word morphology is studied in this thesis: • an analysis of the pluralization of nouns • a description of the agreement patterns between nouns and adjectives to isolate gender • an account of inflection patterns related to articles • an analysis of verbal tenses • a description of affixation 79 To explore English lexical borrowings in Internet Italian, new opportunities for functional changes and the tendency for simplification and leveling in Internet Italian and to understand how Italian speakers choose certain expressions from English, we must remember that Italian is morphologically flexible. With this in mind, I will address how Italian word morphology reacts to the English lexical items it absorbs and its possible syntactic consequences. Below is a simplified look at some of the grammatical information considered based on basic category features (this will be examined during the analysis of data): 80 Table 3.2.5.1 Noun Analysis Morphological Type Parameters Examples Inflected simple gender/number agreement only apparent by article/ adjectival agreement il download (invariable) complex pirataggio derivational endings compound compound forms whereby an English ADJ. + N prefix is added to Italian head noun cyberspazatura/ webgiornale N+ ADJ. web-based N + N webnauti/ webcam Non-inflected simple nouns used as in verb fare il booting/ rifare il phrases booting (There is overlap here. Please see 3.2.5.2) 81 Table 3.2.5.2 Verb Analysis Morphological Type Parameters Examples Inflected complex full range of conjugations downloadare, lui ha and tenses (generally downloadato, io taken from the first downloado, conjugation) downloadava/ chattare, lui chatta etc. Non-inflected simple Verb (fare) + Borrowed VERB + NOUN term Fare chat nouns used as verb support (used as a noun VERB + GERUND that function as a verb but (interpreted as NOUN) rely on constructions with the verb ‘fare’ as noted fare downloading above) VERB + ART. + GERUND (interpreted as NOUN) fare il downloading/ fare il booting/ rifare il booting/ fare un clic Inflectional morphemes alter the form of the word without changing either its lexical category or its central meaning (marking grammatical case, gender, and semantic notions such as number). In 3.2.5.1 and 3.2.5.2, we find evidence of inflectional adaptation. Borrowing of inflectional endings from English to Italian such as the sigmatic plural do appear in our data and will be explored in chapter three. This is significant since borrowed nouns from the donor language that are not absorbed derivationally into the recipient language are traditionally invariable: blogs 82 (Eng.) > i blog (Italian). Number and gender in Standard Italian are often only revealed in context by the use of the definite or indefinite article or adjectives agreeing in gender and number. Similarily, verbs derived from the donor language remain either immutable employing the help of the verb fare in Italian or take on the derivational morphology of the recipient language: to click (English) > fare un clic vs cliccare (Italian) (Frequency of use on the Web will be discussed in detail in chapter four). 3.3 Word Formation in Italian 3.3.1 How Words Are Formed We may consider, as a basis, the following categories in which dictionaries break down lexical entries: morphological, syntactic, semantic. Morphology deals with the way in which words are formed with regard to either derivational or inflectional construction; word syntax deals with the collocational and combinational possibilities of a word in larger constructions like sentences. Lexical syntax allows us to examine the behaviour of nouns and verbs and their secondary characteristics such as intransitivity (verbs), gender, mass (nouns). The acceptability of certain forms or non acceptability of forms will be revealed by our data, and the reasons for constraints affecting borrowability, morphological adaptation etc. will be revealed by the treatment of the data. In order to strategically study the terms in question, a careful classification of the principles of word formation should first be considered. According to Tekavčič (1980: 16), traditional morphology proposes the following six main processes in word formation: 83 1. derivation: latte -> latt+aio (free + bound morpheme) 2. word formation with suffixes: lavoro -atore 3. parasynthetic: trono -> in+tron+izzare 4. grammaticalization (trascategorizzazione): telefono -> telefonare / prorogare-> proroga 5. compounding: posa+cenere (verb + noun) 6. scientific word formations from Greek and Latin elements Though it is essential to consider the traditional means of word formation in Italian, not all of the categories mentioned above pertain to this study. Furthermore, it may be argued that categories 2 and 3 could be merged into one category as they are both types of derivation and that the differences between categories 1, 2 and 4 is not explained adequately enough to use in the present study. This traditional categorization method also leaves out some important notions on borrowed word stock and how such terms react to the word morphology. I have chosen to start by taking into consideration the six main models of formation from Pierre Gilbert’s Dictionnaire des mots nouveaux: 1. Direct translation: rete = the Net or the Web (Polysemy) 2. Borrowing: il mouse = computer mouse 3. Lexicalization: chattare from chat; loggato from to log in /out 4. Derivation: -ing and -ed as bound morphemes in Italian and, as such productive in other contexts or as inseparable if not tied to a specific recognizable word 84 5. Compounding31: cyberspazio = cyberspace 6. Syntagmatic constructions: nodo di transito = gateway; fare la chat = to chat In addition to these processes, vocabulary specific studies such as those by Galisson (1978) who studied football terminology or Boswell (1982) who studied banalised sport terminology propose two more processes specific to specialized vocabularies: linguistic conservatism and synapsis32. In this corpus, borrowing is the most productive process accounting for the majority of the lexical base of the corpus of this dissertation. However, word formation through compounding is also highly productive in Italian Internet terminology and may contain many borrowed elements. Further exploration in Chapter Four may tells us more about the phonetic factors influencing these processes. The following is a more detailed description of the categorization schema I have chosen to adopt which melds Gilbert’s with that of Dardano (1986 & 2000). 3.4 Categorization of New Words Categorizing the terms studied in this thesis posed many challenges. The terms blog and blogger are semantically related as are the terms file and upload. However, as seen from the examples above in 3.3.1, they all belong to very different morphosyntactic categories. So just how should one prepare a list of terms to study? According to Allan (2001) a lexicon needs to be accessible 31 In Chapter Four, compounded terms such as cyberspazio, cyberbullo, webnauto etc. I will explore these terms further to see whether or not a term such as cyberspazio is a realization of the Italian paradigm ‘cyber-’ . 32 In Benveniste’s terminology, ‘synapsis’ is a semantic unit consisting of several lexemes that are syntactically related to one another, in which the determined element precedes the determining element and every lexeme retains its original separate individual meaning. (Benveniste 1966) An example of this in Italian Web Language is: motore di ricerca (search engine). To simplify, I use Gilbert’s term ‘syntagm’ to refer to ‘synapsis’. 85 from the following three directions: 1.) Form: phonological and graphological 2.) Morpho-syntactic category: items from the same category are accessible to each other. 3.) Meaning: an item’s intrinsic meaning and also its location within a semantic field should be identified, thus making items with related meanings mutually accessible. I have decided to organize the terms studied in this thesis first from a morphosyntactic perspective as many scholars in the French tradition have done (Gilbert) and, then from a semantic perspective grouping terms from similar lexical families together such as: chat, chatting, chattato, la chat, il chat. It must be noted that some terms do not belong to the morphosyntactic categories outlined in 3.3 as is the case with synonymous expressions and some direct borrowings. It is Allan’s view that “combining listemes33 imposes a structural organization upon them by the rules of syntax. For this purpose, up to five kinds of morphosyntactic specifications in the lexicon have been proposed” (Allan 2001, 254) 33 Allan (2001) uses ‘listemes’ where I use ‘terms’. 86 Morphosyntactic Example specification category features N, V, ... strict subcategorization [+ __NP] for syntactically transitive verbs features rule features whether or not an object NP can occur between the V and the vPrt of a phrasal verb inherent features [+human, + female, ...] for woman or [+active] for go selectional features e.g. for a verb [+[+animate]__[+abstract]] “has an animate subject NP and an abstract direct object NP” (Adapted from Allan 2001, 254) From the above categories of morphosyntactic specification, I am most interested in category features as a point of departure (as expressed in 3.2.5). This has been the approach used most often used in the French lexicological tradition (Gilbert) and appears to be the most efficient way to begin categorization because most of these features are readily recognizable. Aspects such as inherent features are also important from the standpoint of semantics but these are not immediately visible. We need to investigate the terms further before we can look within them, that is to say, to find their more internal characteristics. 3.4.1 Polysemy: metaphorical extension/semantic shift A new domain of use assigns a new, but semantically related, meaning to existing lexical stock. The semantic boundary is that of domain of use. A dictionary entry relates words to words when it gives the sense or senses of a term. Simplified entries for polysemous terms such as navigare and verme may look something like this: 87 i.) navigare verb [Latin nāvigāre to sail or cruise] 1: to sail 2: to surf the net ii.) verme noun [Latin vermis worm] 1: worm, maggot 2: a software program capable of reproducing itself and that can spread from one computer to the next over a network Both terms are ambiguous34. It is the context of use that tells the recipient (the hearer) of the message which meaning is meant to be understood in the utterance. If the co-text35 provides enough information, there will be no ambiguity. Both co-text and context make the use of ‘verme’ and ‘navigare’ clear. When neither the context nor the co-text manage to disambiguate, alternate terms may be used (see: Synonomy in 3.4.6). 3.4.2 Borrowings It is widely acknowledged that nouns are borrowed more easily than other parts of speech (e.g. Whitney 1881, Moravcsik 1978, Myers-Scotton 2002: 240). Van Hout and Muysken (1994: 42) give the following explanation: “A very important factor involves one of the primary motivations for lexical borrowing, that is, to extend the referential potential of a language. Since reference is established primarily through nouns, these are the elements borrowed most easily.” In our corpus we have two main categories of borrowing: a) Semantic Borrowing: ‘rete’ (the meaning of existing lexical stock has been extended through metaphor36) b) Formal Borrowing: ‘il mouse’ (the form and the sense of the foreign term is transferred 34 “Polysemy is ambiguity in a listeme” (Allan 2001, 43) 35 ‘Co-text’ here means ‘accompanying text’ whereas ‘context’ means ‘domain of use’. 36 Metaphor will be discussed in chapter 4. 88 over from the lending language to the recipient language). 3.4.3 Lexicalization of Borrowed Terms Foreign terms can often conform to Italian word morphology and syntax. Some possible results are listed below. a) NOUN + -are ending = VERB chattare from chat; b) NOUN + -are ending = VERB ~ past. participle = NOUN loggato from to log in /out 3.4.4 Derivation a) Suffixation: VERB + -er = NOUN b) Suffixation: VERB + -ing = GERUND (Interpreted as NOUN) This brings about the question: Are the bound morphemes -ing and -er understood as such to users in Italian or are they meaningless if not tied to a recognizable word? 3.4.5 Compounding Compounding, as seen in a) below, has been a recent development whereas compounding in general is highly productive in Italian. Nouns are the common denominator in all compound forms and are the most frequent lexical category featured in the corpus of borrowed terms. According to Myers-Scotton (2002: 240), nouns are borrowed preferentially “because they receive, not assign, thematic roles”, so “their insertion in another language is less disruptive of predicate-argument structure”. Compounding takes on many forms in Italian as seen in the examples below. 89 a) hyphenated forms and compounds identical to these without the hyphen cyber-spazio vs cyberspazio vs cyber spazio b) syntagms: these are word groups that, according to Gilbert, “tendent à se lexicaliser37” becoming single units of meaning (Dictionnaire du Neologisms: avant-propos iii). These consist of: i) NOUN + ADJECTIVE - cartoline elettroniche (electronic postcards) e area sensibile (hotspot) ii) NOUN + NOUN - (head noun plus determiner): posta spazzatura (spam) iii) NOUN +PREP. + NOUN -(by means of two NOUNs that are linked by a preposition): diffusione di audiovisivi (streaming), spazio di memoria (account) e nodo di transito (gateway). The preposition di is the most productive in the data iv) VERB + ART. + NOUN - we find many syntagmatic constructions for verb forms such as: fare le chat (to chat) that coexist with fully integrated forms such as chattare or, fare lo streaming which has no first conjugation infinitive form 37 “tend to lexicalize” [my translation] 90 Examples from the the corpus: ...uno dei principali social network americani per donne che fanno il blogging... v) VERB + NOUN- Fare chat (to chat) is a varian of fare il chat - (see fare le chat above in iv.). If chat is very likely the direct object of the transitive verb fare. Similarly, Italian also uses the gerundive form in English (i.e., blogging) in expressions like fare blogging. The term fare chat is understood to mean chattare (to chat). Examples from the the corpus: ...il 34% fa chat con persone adulte... vi) VERB + GERUND (interpreted as NOUN) - forms such as: fare downloading (to download) [COMMENT ON: static=result vs. dynamic= verbal] Examples from the the corpus: ...hanno tenuto anche corsi di formazione su come fare blogging... vii) VERB + ART. + GERUND (interpreted as NOUN) - forms such as: fare il downloading (to download) 91 3.4.6 Synonymous Terms In our data, there are numerous synonymous terms. Those that remain will serve to disambiguate an utterance. Synonymous terms in our corpus are usually found in sets consisting of: Italian term, borrowed English term. It is my contention that, with time, many native Italian synonyms will fall out of use for reasons of linguistic economy, ambiguity, and fashion and only a few native Italian terms will remain. Why some may remain may be contingent upon their signifying power: do they mean what they are meant to mean with immediacy and efficacy? To understand the role of meaning in a lexicon, it is not only essential that one analyze the meaning of a term in context but that a term be viewed as counterparts of meaning to another term. Terms cannot be read in isolation from each other and, thus, a comparative approach is necessary: “comparisons of words is the approach taken by structural semantics which analyzes types of semantic relations among words, including hyponymy and antonymy” (Croft & Cruse 7). By looking at the opposing meanings some terms hold in relation to each other, we get a sense not only about what terms express, but also what they do not express. 3.5. Semantic Approaches to Terms 3.5.1 Frames and Profiles A fundamental aspect of semantics that cannot be ignored is that of domain of usage. The semiotic situation (banalized context) in which a group of terms is used is given particular attention by Fillmore (1982) who states that there are significant phenomena in linguistic semantics that cannot easily be captured in a model of structural semantics and that “certain concepts ‘belong together’ because they are associated by experience” (Croft & Cruse 7). A 92 common analogy made by Schank and Abelson (1977) is that of restaurant as being associated with concepts such as ‘customer’, ‘waiter’, ‘ordering’, ‘eating’, and ‘bill’. Though these concepts are not related to restaurant by hyponymy, meronymy, antonymy or other structural semantic relations; they are related to restaurant “by ordinary human experience” (Croft & Cruse 7). In this approach to semantics, we account for a unique frame of reference, a banalised context as described in chapter one, which allows us to read the meaning of certain terms on the basis of contextual use and experience, namely the Web and Internet38. As Croft & Cruse state: “words and constructions evoke an understanding, or more specifically a frame; a hearer invokes a frame upon hearing an utterance in order to understand it” (8). I will still examine certain terms on the basis of lexical sets, analyzable in terms of features, but will more often draw the central meaning to a frame/domain39 to understand the underlying centre of signification. This will allow me to account for synonymous terms such as account and conto which appear to denote the same referent but often times profile it against a different frame40. In other words, I explore why, in some instances, it is preferable to use one term over the other. Certain aspects of salience (discussed in Chapter 1), such as selection, have much to do with the phenomenon of profiling a concept in a semantic frame (Croft & Cruse 2004, 47). Here it may be necessary to 38 “Fillmore also uses the notion of framing to describe differences in the community or social domain of use of a word...he notes that in the legal domain, that is, the community that engages in legal activity, the concepts of MURDER and INNOCENT differ from those concepts used outside that domain/community. In the legal domain, MURDER is profiled in a frame/domain where it contrasts with MANSLAUGHTER, but outside that domain, MURDER is profiled in a domain lacking that contrast.” (Croft & Cruse 17) 39 The terms frame (Fillmore) and domain (Fillmore, Lakoff, Langacker) are used interchangeably here. 40 Langacker gives the example of ‘roe’ vs ‘caviar’ where ‘roe’ is profiled against the frame/ domain of the reproductive cycle of fish and ‘caviar’ is profiled against the frame/domain of food/consumption. (1987, 164-165) 93 describe some of the differences based not only on conceptual grounds but on social grounds as well. 3.5.2 Frames and Selection Restrictions A more detailed approach to semantic frames is found in James Pustejovsky’s 1995 Lexical Semantic Structures. The Generative Lexicon (GL) theory proposed by Pustejovsky presents a set of resources conceived to semantically analyze natural language expressions (Pustejovsky, 1995). Generative Lexicon is characterized as a system that integrates four levels of representation (described below by Allan). It is thought that a set of generative operations, associated with the lexicon links these four levels and thus enables a compositional interpretation of terms in context. 3.5.2.1 Pustejovsky’s Generative Lexicon Theory 1.) Argument structure specifies the number and type of logical arguments and how they are realized syntactically. 2.) Event structure defines the event type as state, process, or transition. 3.) Qualia structure identifies the characteristics of the denotatum. There are four types: i.) consitutive: material constitution, weight, parts, components ii.) formal: orientation, magnitude, shape, dimension, colour, position iii.) telic: function or goal iv.) agentive: creator, artifact, natural kind, causal chain 94 4.) Lexical inheritance structure identifies relations within what Pustejovsky calls the lexicon41. (Allan 2001, 253) It is the ‘qualia structure’ that I will use to decompose my most central terms. I hope to use a set of paradigmatic examples that will show some common semantic core (terminogenic trait). I will elaborate on this process in chapter five. 3.6 Conclusion This chapter examines the phenomenon of lexical borrowing and introduces to the reader the aspects of borrowing which are of primary interest to this study. A comparision of word formation patterns between English and Italian as well as a subsequent discussion on the categorization of the terms studied conclude this chapter. It is generally believed that an examination of the structural differences and compatibility between the two languages may aid in establishing some expected patterns in new word formation in Italian especially as far as analogy and the sense offered by cognates is concerned. Therefore, in the discussion on derivation, I offer a comparative analysis between English and Italian word formation. Keeping in mind the important concept of word formation, I follow the categorization methodology of Gilbert to organize my terms for analysis. Once the lexical units are organized, I consider categories such as compounds and semantic calques. These categories allow me to view the terms not as individual units but as multi-word units of meaning. In the next chapter, the data is presented both in the format of the morphosyntactic categories outlined in 3.3 and also contains lists of all forms of a term linked semantically. Each term or unit of terms is given in context followed by a 41 This is said by Allan to resemble encyclopedic information (Allan 2001, 253). 95 linguistic analysis of form, morphology and syntax. Chapter four also contains the semantic analysis of terms based on a break-down of semiotic components as viewed through Pustejovsky’s qualia structure (see: 3.5.2.1). The semantic mapping of terms will be related back to the terms’ original categories of function and, from there, we will see if any interesting patterns emerge that are unique to this example of banalised language. 96 4 Presentation of Data and Analysis of Terms 4.1 Introduction In chapter three we discussed the rationale for the organization of data, the linguistic motivators for borrowing and discussed what methodological approaches I use to investigate the structure and meaning of terms. We examined what constitutes borrowing, how terms are borrowed, and what categories of borrowings exist. Keeping in mind the theory of compositionality of elements and the relationship between, syntax, semantics, form, and morphology, I took a step-by-step approach to organizing the data starting with lexical features while keeping in mind the syntactic, morphological and semantic links between terms. In this chapter the data is analyzed and discussed in the same order presented in chapter three with emphasis on the following categories: 1. Borrowings 2. Lexicalization (morphological type/composition) 3. Synonymy and Polysemy. A brief description of each category is outlined. Below each category heading, the term is provided in context with its co-text as it appears in the original corpus. Each term or set of terms is followed by a semantic map and/or semantic lattice and a discussion. These main categories are followed by observations on other phenomena such as pluralization and gender assignment. At the end of this chapter, a summary is provided of the vocabulary that has the greatest coverage ability and undergoes lexicalization. 97 4.2 Borrowing 4.2.1 Semantic Borrowing The term rete refers to the Web. Its meaning in Standard Italian is ‘net’. Here we see how the meaning of existing lexical stock has been extended through metaphor42. In many cases, a new domain of use assigns a new, but semantically related, meaning to existing lexical stock. When neither the context nor the co-text manage to disambiguate, alternate terms may be used (see: synonomy 4.3). In the data, only two semantic borrowings were found. One reason for this may be that the underlying metaphors of many English terms are not known to most users of Italian on the Internet. We also observe that the two semantic borrowings, rete and finestra, denote in their metaphors physical objects that do not display markedness. Their connotative sets are limited but their denotative sets are determined by their use in context: the Internet. Semantic Borrowings in the Corpus: Comparison of Competing Terms Italian Internet Term English Borrowing Used in Italian on the Internet RETE...... 358 (5.170%) NET...... 0 (0%) WEB...... 480 (10.148%) FINESTRA...... 17 (0.245%) WINDOW...... 1 (0.021%) 42 Metaphor is addressed in chapter five. 98 With regard to the percentage of use in the corpus, net does have frequent occurrences as an Internet address extension or as part of the term network(ing). Most dictionaries show that rete is synonymous with both net and web as seen here below in the definitions given by Il Corriere della Sera43 in Italian: net Net 1 /net/ n rete f, Internet f web web /web/ noun rete f; (Informatica) web m, Web m, rete f; (http//dizionari.corriere.it/dizionario_italiano/ accessed March 8 2010) Examples from the corpus: rete e web/net(work) ...creare newsgroup fornire agli abbonati un account di posta elettronica fornire ai navigatori di Internet la possibilità di cercare le informazioni disponibili in rete tramite digitazione di parole chiave fornire ai soli abbonati la possibilità di comunicare tra loro database campi caratteri transistor chip... Sarà un bottone sui più frequentati siti di social network a difendere i bambini dagli abusi in rete... Garantire e tutelare la navigazione nella Rete, è stato sottolineato a Bruxelles, è un obbiettivo che supera i confini nazionali: i bambini in rete aumentano sempre di più e rappresentano una grossa fetta dei 42 milioni di utenti che usano regolarmente i siti di socializzazione e che, secondo la Commissione Ue, diventeranno 107 milioni entro il 2012. 43 Il Sansoni is the dictionary database used by the Corriere della Sera website: http// dizionari.corriere.it/dizionario_italiano 99 ...nello sperimentare l'autopromozione via passaparola sulla rete si è spinto lo scrittore Roberto Cotroneo che ha sapientemente centellinato su Facebook gli annunci del suo nuovo libro Il vento dell'odio... Il sito di social network che sta facendo impallidire ogni altra esperienza passata del Web per i proprio numeri... Un atto di dovuta prudenza, visto che l'età dell'accesso alle maglie del web si abbassa di continuo: a sette anni chattano in rete con amici e sconosciuti e, già alle elementari - dice un'indagine Telefono Azzurro-Eurispes - 33 bambini su cento frequentano abitualmente Facebook, le communities e i blog. Usano il web per giochi di ruolo, cyber bulli o vittime che insultano, intimidiscono o cercano amici usando la rete. Observations: It should be noted that, unlike technical jargon, banalised language does conform to the stylistic norms of journalistic writing inasmuch as repetition of terms is avoided by the use of synonyms. In the last example immediately above, we observe that the speaker uses both rete and web interchangeably. This stylistic preference was also observed by Galisson (1978, 358) in his analysis of football terminology. In the data however, the high frequency of web is misleading. It is important to note that most (approximately 80%) of the occurrences of web were found in compound constructions such as web battaglia and webcam. In compound constructions, web is not syntactically equivalent to rete (see 4.2.1.1). In the program Concordance, I am able to perform string and word searches for either compound or syntagmatic constructions to view these differences. Examples from the corpus: finestra and window Sarà possibile condividere direttamente foto online con la persona con cui chattiamo o accedere a servizi esterni direttamente dalla finestra di Messenger. L'indirizzo da memorizzare sul cellulare e sul proprio Pc è [email protected], aggiungendolo alla lista di amici, per comunicare con Lisa basta aprire una finestra di conversazione 100 Adesso è possibile trascinare una tabella aperta in un'altra finestra, senza che la tabella debba ricaricarsi. Observations: Given that the search for the term window yielded no results in the data, we can deduce that the brand name Windows may have influenced the choice by speakers to opt for the Italian term finestra. Another motivation for the use of the Italian term in the case of finestra and rete may also lie in the underlying meanings immediately associated with the concepts themselves. If the speaker understands the telic structure of the term, the basis of its metaphor, then he is more likely to employ the term. Pustejovsky’s Qualia and the Archetypes of Dominant Synonyms Qualia Structure rete finestra Constitutive open fabric of woven material aperture i. material i. varies/ not specific/unmarked i. varies/ not specific/unmarked ii. weight ii. varies/ not specific/unmarked ii. varies/ not specific/unmarked iii. components iii. varies/ not specific/unmarked iii. varies/ not specific/unmarked Formal physical object physical object i. orientation i. varies/ not specific/unmarked i. varies/ not specific/unmarked ii. magnitude ii. varies/ not specific/unmarked ii. varies/ not specific/unmarked iii. shape iii. varies/ not specific/unmarked iii. varies/ not specific/unmarked iv. dimension iv. varies/ not specific/unmarked iv. varies/ not specific/unmarked v. colour v. varies/ not specific/unmarked v. varies/ not specific/unmarked vi. position vi. varies/ not specific/unmarked vi. varies/ not specific/unmarked Telic i. function i. capture/contain i. see-through/contain Agentive i. creator i. - i. - ii. artifact ii. artifact ii. artifact iii. natural kind iii. - iii. - iv. causal chain iv. - iv. - In the qualia structures above, the constitutive role describes the physical/visual aspects of the terms from where the Internet terms get their names. When we compare the real world objects rete and finestra to the Internet world objects rete and finestra, we will find that it is only the 101 nature of the constitutive role that changes. One may argue that the terms rete and finestra on the Internet are not physical objects as they can not be felt or heard, but they can be seen and experienced. The use of metaphor here is of necessity for the intangible nature of these artifacts makes them difficult to comprehend otherwise. 4.2.2 Formal Borrowing In a formal borrowing such as il mouse, both the form and the sense of the foreign term are transferred over from the lending language to the recipient language with little to no orthographical modifications. The borrowings listed below are those that have remained in their native form and have not been lexicalized. When the terms are considered in their co-text and context in the recipient language, we see that each term has a fixed referent with a simple and locus-specific connotation. With these terms, gender does not appear to have any bearing on the referent. Therefore we can say that la streaming is semantically equivalent to lo streaming. This is not the case with some terms in section 4.1.3. The most frequent formal borrowings are listed below in context. Examples from the corpus: 4.2.2.1 background...... 2 (0.042%) ...è in grado di operare in background, usando il computer infettato per inviare spam o infettare altri computer... ...Ma il cellulare connesso al Web è fondamentale se l'Internet provider è in grado di fornire servizi "mirati" e "configurati" per le specifiche esigenze di ogni singolo utente. E' quello, ad esempio, che sta realizzando Katawap, forte del background fornito da uno dei più grandi gruppi editoriali italiani 102 4.2.2.2 streaming...... 32 (0.677%) ...hanno spinto il colosso di Redmond a lanciare un servizio di streaming musicale... ...Stiamo così per lanciare un servizio di streaming musicale entro breve... ...Un'ondata di siti streaming (illegali) si sta abbattendo su Hollywood ...che Martin Scorsese da questo mese offre gratis in streaming... ...3 offrirà in video streaming le immagini live... ...A livello tecnico, invece, la streaming utilizzer… una banda a 250 Kbit ...Per vedere la diretta streaming sul computer basta connettersi... ...Come non bastasse il download, prende piede lo streaming di film e serial tv... ...passando per la formula dello streaming sul web... “...A livello tecnico, invece, la streaming utilizzerà una banda a 250 Kbit al secondo grazie alla rete Hsdpa di Vodafone.” 4.2.2.3 cam...... 8 (0.116%) “...potrà essere utilizzato con le nuove Cam.” “...oltre che testando le prime Cam con la nuova tecnologia...” “...gli interventi correttivi e gli sgravi su ruoli operati dai Cam grazie ad una web cam.” “...grazie ad una web cam e ad un sistema di sensori applicati in diversi punti del corpo: alcuni algoritmi elaborano i movimenti e forniscono al professionista...” “...Dopo circa un'ora le forze dell'ordine hanno fatto irruzione nella stanza e spento la web cam che continuava a registrare l'accaduto.” Observations: The term cam is used primarily in the corpus as the head in compound constructions such as webcam /web cam and has a very specific denotation (see 4.2). Likewise, 103 streaming and background are very specific to particular domain of use (for more on streaming see 4.3.1). Background and sfondo are synonymous in meaning but not perfect semantic equivalents (synonymy is discussed in 4.3). One may argue that in Standard Italian, background is a specific type of sfondo since the latter has a much broader denotative and connotative set and that sfondo is merely a hypernym of background. The difference then between the two terms can be illustrated in the following manner: sfondo > Dn{a,b,c...}, Cn {x,y,z...} background > Dn{a}, Cn{x} 4.2.3 Lexicalization of Borrowed Terms Foreign terms can often take on the shape of Italian word morphology and syntax. The meanings of certain terms are optimized through grammatical modifications and gender assignment. Few of these modifications are achieved through inflection (discussed in chapter five). These patterns are observed in eleven terms of high frequency in the corpus listed below. Following this list, the eleven terms are presented in context as they appear in the corpus. The terms with the greatest morphological flexibility are then viewed in closer detail in the framework of semantic lattices with a brief discussion to follow. 1. Blog and its various manifestations in the corpus: blog blogger blogghista/e blogging 104 2. Chat and its various manifestations in the corpus: chat chatroom chattare; chattando; chattano; chatta; chattato; chattava; chattiamo; chatti 3. Clic/click and its various manifestations in the corpus: click clicca cliccando cliccare cliccate clicatissimi cliccato cliccarlo 4. Log and its various manifestations in the corpus log loggati loggato loghi login 5. Mail and its various manifestations in the corpus mail email mailbox mailer mailing 6. Network and its various manifestations in the corpus network; networks networking 7. Scroll and its various manifestations in the corpus scroll scroller scrolling 8. Spam and its various manifestations in the corpus spam spammer; spammers spamming 105 9. Surf and its various manifestations in the corpus surf surfing surfare 10. Tag and its various manifestations in the corpus tag tagged tagghi 11. User and its various manifestations in the corpus user user-friendly userid username users 106 4.2.3.1 Most Frequent Lexicalized Borrowings as They Appear in the Corpus 4.2.3.1.1 Results from Search of Blog in the Corpus BLOG...... 189 (3.996%); BLOGGER...... 51 (1.078%) BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION blog ...Ne parlano ovviamente ‘blog site/ noun (masc. singular molti blog, board’ and plur. invariable) internazionali... -the most productive preposition is ...Innanzitutto bisogna ‘su’ (‘on’) assicurarsi che il blog sia ben indicizzato... ...A Bilbao però non si premiano solo i blog... ...E mentre la notizia rimbalzava su blog... ...Le notizie sui blog arrivano due ore e mezzo dopo... ...Sui blog iraniani intanto continuano a girare informazioni pesanti... ...Uno studente canadese ha invece deciso di dare vita ad uno specifico blog chiamato ®Macchine fotografiche ritrovate e fotografie orfane... 107 BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION blogger ...Consigli per aspiranti ‘blogger’ or noun (masc./fem.; blogger?®Ecco come ‘one who sing/plural) farvi notare in rete... contributes to a blog/ ...In generale ho notato adds blog una certa differenza tra i entries but blogger dell’est Europa e not quelli dei grandi Paesi necessarily dell?Occidente... he who initiates one ...La nostra blogger or has a finalista era Caterina blog site’ Policaro... ...Ci sono birrerie (BeerBankroll) fondate e gestite dai consumatori e network di 200 food blogger che valutano i nuovi prodotti... ..è stato arrestato un blogger con l'accusa di aver messo in pericolo "gli scambi economici sui mercati"... 108 BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION blogghista/bloggiste ...Lo raccontano in ‘a blogger noun (masc. singular Appena ho 18 anni mi but more and plur. invariable) rifaccio, storie di figli, specifically, genitori e plastiche one who (Bompiani) di Cristina initiates a Sivieri Tagliabue, blog or has giornalista, blogghista e a blog site presidente and not dell'associazione "Non merely a chiederci la parola"... contributer to a blog ...le bloggiste si sono site’ rimoboccate le maniche ed -ista hanno tenuto anche corsi denotes di formazione... special competence ...queste rappresentano solo una parte delle 15 mila bloggiste che pubblicano regolarmente sul sito... 109 BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION blogging/ fare blogging ...Google sarebbe In ‘the act of noun (masc. singular trattative per acquistare writing / invariable) Twitter, il servizio gratuito contributing di micro blogging che to blogs’ permette agli utenti di scambiare brevi messaggi... ...Ma il blogging non è specifying solo per mamme... complement ...per permettere agli utenti del social network e a quelli del motore di ricerca (e dei suoi servizi noun (masc. singular di posta e blogging... invariable) ...si stia avverando sul web e particolarmente verb phrase nell'area del blogging... (syntagm) composed of: ...uno dei principali social VERB + ART. + network americani per NOUN (gerund) donne che fanno il blogging... Syntagm composed of: ...hanno tenuto anche corsi VERB + NOUN di formazione su come (gerund) fare blogging... 110 4.2.3.1.2 Results from Search of Chat in the Corpus CHAT...... 98 (2.072%) BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION fare chat ...il 34% fa chat con ‘to chat/to verb phrase persone adulte... converse (syntagm) composed online’ of: VERB + NOUN le chat ...le tue chat, i tuoi scritti, i ‘online noun (fem. plural) tuoi pensieri... conversatio the underlying Italian ns in gloss is most general’ probably: chiacchiere (fem. plural) ‘to chitchat’ in general chat ...che numerosi servizi di ‘online chat noun complement chat... room sites’ (gender not revealed) in adjectival relationship to servizi with specifying preposition ‘di’ 111 BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION (la) chat Adescava le donne in chat ‘chatroom’ noun ...nei file personali di una (metaphoric -although gender is giovane mentre era in al location not always revealed, chat... as a site or a it is often fem. ...ferito da una donna board on singular when it is to appena conosciuta su una which to mean a ‘virtual space chat su Internet post in which chatting che ha bussato alla sua messages) takes place’ and fem. chat.... plural to mean ‘to ...che entrano in chat... have conversations ...mi sono ritrovata in una online’ / ‘online piccola chat, ho provato conversations’ ad usarla... -accompanying le chat (da pc o cellulare) prepositions are those e i siti di social network denoting location possono essere... such as ‘in’ (in or at), ...su forum, siti, chat, ‘su’ (on) -a place on news group e altri which to write or contenuti telematici... post fanno uso delle chat -‘ha bussato alla sua direttamente dal chat’ = ‘he or she telefonino, knocked on his/her ...sfruttando le chat’: this example funzionalità… di chat further evidences the precaricate nei cellulari... concept of chat in as ...Tra le tante, la speed a locus (in this case a chat che permette di room with a door on comunicare con gli amici which one can e a postare messaggi sulla knock) chat... fem. sing.=place Sulle chat, scrive il nostro -‘Adescava le donne redattore in chat’ = ‘he baited women [who were] in the midst of chatting/in a chat space’: Here the metaphor of ‘chat’ is understood clearly as a locus (a body of water) 112 BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION chattare ...a sette anni chattano in ‘to chat verb rete con amici e online’ sconosciuti... ...Non sempre parli, chatti e condividi informazioni... chattare ...mentre stava chattando ‘to chat verb su Msn con il suo online’ nickname...... rende possibile vedere su una mappa dove si trova la persona con cui si sta chattando... chattare ...inviti da estranei o aver ‘to chat verb (past infinitive chattato con adulti... online’ [aux.+ past participle]) chattare ...ha confermato di essere ‘to chat verb (infinitive) lui "Renixo" e di chattare online’ su Msn... 113 BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION (la) chatroom ...Transazioni, afferma ‘chatroom’ noun (fem. sing.) Lovet, che avvengono in (metaphoric chatroom (Internet Relay al space in Chat) nascoste, in cui i which 400 dollari diventano conversatio denaro virtuale, visto che ns take il denaro virtuale non è place online regolato da alcuna in a given legislazione, è registrato online in paesi offshore, può ‘space’-one essere creato online e must enter trasferito a conti di denaro the space reale in modo anonimo... [room] to participate ...è stato salvato grazie in the alla segnalazione alla conversatio Polizia postale di Genova n) di un frequentatore della chatroom... Observations: In English chat in an Internet context (banalised context) has a more restricted meaning (‘to converse online’) whereas, in Italian, the lexical unit chat takes on many meanings associated with but extended from the original. Italian chat comprises both the act of chatting online as it does the space (locus) in which the act of online verbal exchange takes place. Gender and number play a role in adding or adjusting the denotative set. i.e. le chat = ‘chatting’ (from le chiacchiere) la chat = ‘chatroom’ (from room= stanza (fem.)) 114 4.2.3.1.3 Results from Search of Click/Clic in the Corpus CLICK...... 26 (0.550%); CLIC...... 22 (0.318%) BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION (il) click ...Bastano un paio di click ‘click noun (sing. gender sui siti internet... (depress a not revealed) button on a -instrumental ...Il tutto nello spazio di mouse)’ pochi click (un) click ...il tutto può essere ‘click noun (masc. sing) mandato su YouTube con (depress a -instrumental ‘with/ un click... button on a by means of a click’ mouse)’ cliccare ...Per votare il nostro ‘click verb tr. sondaggio, clicca qui per (depress a tornare alla home page... button on a mouse)’ ...se andate su Google e verb tr. cliccate ®club priv‚ a Milano... cliccare ...Qui, schivando ‘click verb intr. "tecnologia", "guida" e (depress a (impersonal/passive "home" si clicca su button on a form of the present "design"... mouse)’ indicative) -followed by the preposition ‘su’ (English ‘on’) cliccare ...cliccando sul link ‘click verb intr. (gerund) -- "Richiedi l'esercizio dei (depress a followed by the diritti online... button on a preposition mouse)’ ‘su’ (English ‘on’) ...Poi cliccando sul quadratino verde si apre finalmente un pop up... cliccare ...Il link da cliccare in ‘click verb (infinitive) questo caso... (depress a button on a mouse)’ 115 BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION (la) cliccata/ (le cliccate) ...poteva continuare a ‘clicks (of noun (fem. plural) comprare in tre cliccate the mouse) / -renders the meaning fotolibri di nudi di visits (hits)’ ‘by means of three Playboy... polysemous (idiomatic use of the number three to mean ‘very few’ or ‘just a click’) clicks’ *cliccata (fem. sing.) ...Cindy Crawford (43 anni) inschiumata sul sito -cliccate also means di Allure ha superato le ‘hits’ alluding to the 400 mila cliccate... popularity of a site, image or person viewed online. Popularity is understood here to be measured by the number of times (clicks) users ‘click’ on the site/person/ image 116 BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION cliccato Pancini, tira in ballo il ‘popular’ adjective blogger più cliccato -literally the d’Italia, Beppe Grillo... most ‘clicked’ in un sito, livingthemap.com, the che in pochi mesi, con i adjectival suoi 3 milioni di user al sense giorno, diventa uno dei applying to più cliccati della rete... both people,plac es,images ...Recentemente un simile etc. and adjective virus è stato posizionato sites (superlative absolute) anche sui cliccatissimi portali americani... ‘the most popular’ Observations: There are cases in which Italian functions more easily and more elegantly than English. In many of the examples we have seen so far, and in particular, in the case of click/clic, we observe the multiplication and synthesis of a central term. As Wexler observed in his own data, there is a tendency in banalized language use for one term to dominate. All of the lexicalized terms discussed here are singular in that there is no synonym for any of them. It can be reasoned, with some certainty, that click arrived first into the lexicon and once the term was established took on the morphological and syntactic patterns of Italian. The use of the past participle cliccato as an adjective along with its superlative absolute cliccatissimo is not found in English. This demonstrates how embedded the term click is in Standard Italian on the Internet. 117 4.2.3.1.4 Results from Search of Log in the Corpus LOG...... 5 (0.106%); LOGIN...... 6 (0.127%) BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION (i) log Il provvedimento inoltre ‘access/ noun (masculine richiama l'adozione di entry’ plural) sistemi idonei ai log, ai sistemi di elaborazione e agli archivi elettronici da parte degli amministratori di sistema. Dal punto di vista tecnico, l'80% degli intervistati ritiene difficile conservare e correlare i log generati da più sistemi tecnologici, e tra questi il 43% considera questa operazione "molto problematica". log ... che definiscano ‘entry/ noun complement giuridicamente cosa si access (noun functions as intende per sistema records’ adjective) informatico, che si pronuncino sulle legittimità delle procedure per l'acquisizione della prova digitale in relazione al trattamento dei dati personali, ovvero sulla gestione dei files log e sui sequestri cautelari di apparecchiature elettroniche... 118 BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION loggarsi Se mi cerchi mandami un ‘to log in/ verb (2nd person sms, oppure loggati con on’ singular imperative Skype... of the reflexive verb *loggarsi) accompanied by the prepositions: con, su Chi tra gli oltre 200 ‘to log in/ verb (3rd person milioni di utenti di on’ singular present Facebook si è loggato sul perfect of the social network nelle reflexive verb ultime ore è stato avvisato *loggarsi) della piccola rivoluzione accompanied by the che prenderà il via nel fine prepositions: con, su settimana: l'arrivo degli Url personalizzati. effettuare il/un login Usufruire dei servizi di ‘to log in’ noun (masculine The Auteurs è piuttosto singular) semplice: basta iscriversi e effettuare un normale syntagm login con parola chiave... V+Art.+N Effettua il login o avvia la registrazione effettuare il login (to execute or carry out the login process) 119 BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION il login È accessibile solo tramite ‘username’ noun -There is no login verb form expressed as in the above examples, however, Attraverso il Windows ‘the process the noun login is live messenger web toolkit of logging supported by the verb rilasciato da Microsoft, in’ utilizzare (to utilize). chiunque possieda o Since gestisca un sito, o realizzi logging in un'applicazione sul web, requires a può includere delle nuove username, caratteristiche che by consentono ai suoi extension, visitatori di iniziare the word sessioni di chat in tempo login here reale, utilizzando login, really password e profilo già means registrati su live ‘username’ messenger. 120 4.2.3.1.5 Results from Search of Mail/Email in the Corpus EMAIL...... 42 (0.888%); MAIL...... 76 (1.607%) BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANIN GRAMMA G TICAL FUNCTION una /la email Scopre che la moglie è lesbica ‘email’ noun da una email Il giudice: non c'è violazione della privacy Ha diffuso con successo il suo servizio di email La email, ancora vista come un documento fluttuante, nonostante oggi anche i supporti digitali siano sempre piùdifficili da cancellare o controllare, favorirebbe quindi la menzogna "E' giusto condannare il coniuge che viola la corrispondenza, anche in email e sms...” sovrappeso iscritti alle email salutiste dopo 16 settimane sono diventati più attivi con 30 minuti a settimana più degli altri dedicati un moderato esercizio fisico 121 BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANIN GRAMMA G TICAL FUNCTION email Sarà finalmente possibile ‘email’ adjective controllare diversi account email “...mixed cioè che il numero di siti infetti web and ha superato di gran lunga email quello di siti creati attacks...” appositamente per scopi illeciti. Non è tutto, perché‚ sono aumentati anche gli attacchi misti web ed email: il 90,4% della posta indesiderata, circolata nella seconda metà del 2008, era spam che conteneva un link a siti maligni, con un aumento del 6% delle email con link a siti compromessi. le caselle email più consultate mail bombardando di spamming i ‘email’ adjective mail server di tutto il mondo... Adj. + N scambio di mail “email exchange” di + N = Adj. 122 BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANIN GRAMMA G TICAL FUNCTION la/ una mail Perché vengono citate le mail ‘email’ noun (fem. che aveva scoperto il marito e sing./plural) che servono a descriverla come lesbica affetta da disturbi della personalità... ha mandato una mail da un indirizzo sconosciuto chattare con lui o inviargli una mail l'utente inoltra e le mail fanno il giro del web. Arriva dalle Filippine e comincia il suo percorso via mail, nascosto in messaggi sdolcinati... la mail e infine non vivere in totale ‘the act of noun (fem. dipendenza dalla mail... emailing’ sing.) le sette regole per migliorare l'uso della mail mailing list rivendono gli elementi di base ‘mailing noun del crimine informatico, come list’ (accompanie mailing list di spam, php d by list, mailer, proxie, numeri di carte gender di credito... unknown) i nuovi mezzi di comunicazione (newsletter, blog, forum, newsgroup, mailing list, chat, messaggi istantanei 123 BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANIN GRAMMA G TICAL FUNCTION mailer I "coder", veterani hacker che ‘mailer’ noun producono tool pronti all'uso (‘a virus in come trojans, mailer e bot... the guise of email’) di base del crimine informatico, come mailing list di spam, php mailer... Observations: Though the terms above show little morphological variation, the synonyms un’email and una mail are worthy of some attention. Mail seems to have been derived from mailing and mailer. Both email and mail are phonologically similar and seem to collocate with the same word sets. 4.2.3.1.6 Results from Search of Network in the Corpus NETWORK...... 233 (4.926%) BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION social network Il sito di social network ‘social noun complement che sta facendo network’ (used almost impallidire ogni altra exclusively in the esperienza passata del phrase social Web per i proprio network) numeri... i social network Un altro strumento ‘social noun (used almost fondamentale sono i social network’ exclusively in the network (Facebook e phrase social network Twitter in testa). or in compounds) 124 BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION il/i social network ...Bere vini di qualità e ‘social noun (used almost promuoverli sui social network’ exclusively in the network guadagnando phrase social 10mila dollari al mese... network) preceded by the preposition su ...anche della possibilità di (locus) aderire a gruppi elettivi che fioriscono sul social network... un social network ...anche Massimino ha ‘social noun (used almost compiuto un passo network’ exclusively in the destinato a passare agli phrase social annali: per la prima volta network) used here as nella storia delle an instrumental: ‘by esplorazioni spaziali un means of a social astronauta ha infatti network’ comunicato con la Terra tramite un social network. il social network È il primo telefonino nato ‘the act of Noun suggesting per il social networking... social verbal action networking/ interacting on an online social network’ 125 BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION i/il social networking I blog, ma anche i social ‘social noun (masc.) networking, spesso networking "parlano" di quanto sites’ segnalato dall'informazione mainstream. Nel 3,5% dei casi, però, arrivano prima e vengono solo successivamente ripresi dai giornali online. Quantomento adeguato per essere costantemente on-line ovunque ci si trovi per navigare sul Web, leggere la posta, accedere al sito di social networking preferito e, perché no, guardarsi un video in streaming o scaricare un file... il social networking Alcune compagnie come il ‘social noun (masc.) social networking Fragegg networking si ripropongono... company’ 126 4.2.3.1.7 Results from Search of Scroll in the Corpus SCROLL...... 1 (0.021%); SCROLLER...... 1 (0.021%); SCROLLING...... 1 (0.021%) BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION lo scroll Lo scroll delle pagine ‘the noun come lo zoom di physical act immagini e documenti si of scrolling’ compie attraverso gesti naturali e l'utilizzo lo scroller Il mouse V500 sostituisce ‘the device noun lo scroller tradizionale con that allows un pannello sensibile al one to tocco scroll’ scrolling di utilizzare ‘scrolling as noun suggesting contemporaneamente più a function verbal action dita per facilitare le of the operazioni di scrolling o computer per poter ingrandire o mouse or ridurre le immagini keyboard’ -emphasis on that which scrolling will allow one to do on the computer (i.e. in this case, enlarge or reduce the size of an image) 127 4.2.3.1.8 Results from Search of Spam in the Corpus SPAM...... 39 (0.825%); SPAMMING...... 15 (0.317%) BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION lo spam Il vecchio spam resta ‘spam’ noun (masculine ancora un grave problema (undesired singular) per le aziende email/email from Lo spam tramite unsolicited newsletter sta diventando sources) un metodo di diffusione molto utilizzato Ma gli effetti negativi dello spam sono ben noti nessun nuovo mezzo è immune allo spam spam e utilizza email spam ‘spam’ noun sempre più subdole (undesired The accompanying email/email adjective email is from uncharacteristically unsolicited positioned before the sources) noun. The term email spam is understood as one unit of meaning. spammato Ho riaperto bottega ‘to be adjective domenica sera appena inundated The adjective derives tornata a Milano e il by from the past forum pareva, diciamo, undesired participle of the verb spammato. comments/ form *spammare. posts’ 128 BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION lo/uno spamming Spamming telefonico al ‘the act of noun suggesting contrattacco: come sending verbal action difendersi undesired email/mail Trasforma i computer in from zombie e gli fa compiere unsolicited azioni indesiderate, sources’ bombardando di spamming i mail server di tutto il mondo. In un solo colpo lo spamming negli Usa è crollato del 75%. Uno spamming gentile e terapeutico. Che induce a corretti comportamenti, a scadenza settimanale. Paternalistico, un po'. Fatto sta che alla fine del semi-bombardamento di magri consigli sulla casella, gli effetti durano svariati mesi. Continua cos l'azione del Garante della Privacy contro lo spamming e il marketing disinvolto gli spammer gli spammer sono ‘those who noun (agent) rapidissimi nel seguire le send spam’ abitudini degli utenti internet, e la loro attenzione si sta spostando dalla vecchia posta elettronica ai moderni social-network 129 4.2.3.1.9 Results from Search of Surf in the Corpus SURFING"...... 1 (0.021%); SURFARE...... 1 (0.021%) BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION il web surfing Se MySpace, il secondo ‘surfing’ noun expressing sito di social network al verbal action: mondo, prevede tra due compound of N+V anni che metà del suo traffico arriverà da smartphone e dispositivi portatili con schermo ridotto ed è sempre più convinta della pervasività del “Web surfing” via telefonino , Facebook sui cellulari spopola. Sull'iPhone, sui Blackberry e ora anche sugli smartphone a piattaforma Windows Mobile. surfare Certo surfare su 'Ocean in ‘to surf’ (in verb (infinitive form) Google Earth' non è come the sense of tuffarsi in un mare surfing on tropicale, i fondali non water sono riconoscibili e si può metaphorica avere la sensazione di lly extended venire inghiottiti dagli in this abissi. Ma il nuovo profilo example to diventa un utile strumento include the per capire i cambiamenti Web) di morfologia del pianeta, incluso il preoccupante impatto del surriscaldamento globale. 130 4.2.3.1.10 Results from Search of Tag in the Corpus TAG...... 6 (0.127%) BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION i/il tag E poi usare con ‘tag noun (masculine consapevolezza i tag, un (identifying plural or singular) altro strumento marker) fondamentale per la used to ricerca dei contenuti. locate noun (masculine something’ plural or singular) Senza le rete non sarebbe esistita la lotta dei giorni ‘placemark/ scorsi, già, ma cosa sta where succedendo a chi quella something lotta ha animato e is stated documentato? Su online /used YouTube si è fermato il as a flusso dei filmati. Su reference Twitter il mark’ "canale" (dizione non esatta ma serve per capirsi) dedicato a "neda", la ragazza uccisa nei primi giorni della rivolta è meno visibile e più rallentato. Resistono "Iran" e "Iranelection" (attorno a questo tag è nato il canale dell'oppositore Moussavi), ma si tratta di messaggi di solidarietà, scarseggiano le testimonianze. 131 BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION la tag le informazioni relative al ‘an noun (feminine prodotto potevano essere identifying singular) lette e cambiate marker’ riprogrammando la tag Rfid con un software semplice, al cui sviluppo lui stesso aveva collaborato e che è liberamente disponibile sul mercato. taggare ...familiare, quando lo ‘to tag (to verb tagghi... put someone’s name on a photo on Web site)’ Observations: The gender of tag poses some interesting questions with regard to polysemous expressions. It appears that once again (we witnessed the same phenomenon with the term chat) gender allows for the same term, if related semantically, to be used. Gender designates the terms to moderately different realms of meaning. For example, the following attestation, “Tutti i ragazzini che escono con le bombolette spray e lasciano una tag o scrivono, sono figli della borghesia”, which appeared the corpus is not included in the chart above since the word tag refers to graffiti art. Tag, in this instance, has the same semantic base but a different denotation and a different domain of use. A tag is a stylized word created by a graffiti artist. Similarly, on a gaming site one will find headings such as ‘Come creare una tag...’ ( 132 use in the domain of gaming gives it a context specific meaning: ‘an online image chosen and adapted by the user to identify himself in a gaming context’ which makes it distinct from il tag. The feminine singular version of tag in Standard Italian on the web is interesting indeed. Tag (feminine) can also refer to ‘hypertext tags’ and ‘gift tags’. Not included in the chart above were occurrences of tag to mean ‘tagging system/bar coding systems sometimes referred to as merchandise transponders’ as in the examples: È evidente che in questi casi torna utile la possibilità che esse hanno da gestire in modo coordinato le varie fasi del processo, cosa che, particolare non secondario, permette di ampliare la base su cui ‘spalmare’ i costi di acquisto dei tag, considerati piuttosto elevati. Insomma, sottolineano i ricercatori della Sda, il tag si ripaga con il collegamento a tutti i processi che possono utilizzare le informazioni in esso contenute e diversificandone l’uso. However, it is appropriate to list such examples in order to illustrate how similar the pathways of Standard Italian are to those of Italian on the Internet. Italian gender assignment allows us to make important distinctions in meaning from one term to the next. 133 4.2.3.1.11 Results from Search of User in the Corpus USER...... 14 (0.296%) BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION user trovare 50 lavori diversi in ‘user’ noun (gender not 50 settimane in tutti e 50 specified) gli stati d'America, raccontando l'impresa attraverso un sito, livingthemap.com, che in pochi mesi, con i suoi 3 milioni di user al giorno, diventa uno dei più cliccati della rete utenti power user Questi numeri danno la ‘users’ adjective chiara misura della Power user is used to tendenza da parte dei modify utenti which Fornitori a rilasciare means ‘users’. prodotti low cost e This redundancy caratterizzati da maggiore illustrates that the semplicità, al fine di adjective power user alimentare sia is most likely l'assorbimento di PC da understood as a parte di fasce di utenti whole unit of meno avanzati meaning. The tecnologicamente, sia di repetition of ‘user’ moltiplicare il numero di also allows the PC in dotazione ad utenti expression utenti power user power user to maintain its Standard Italian syntax: N +Adj. 134 BASE FORM CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION user I costruttori così non ‘user’ adjective dovranno più fare i salti used with the noun mortali per realizzare interface nuove user interface da montare sopra il vecchio 6.1 per realizzare smartphone moderni e a prova di touch. Observations: In the corpus, there was only one attestation for use in a borrowed expression (fair use) that was subsequently given further explanation (See: Mention vs Use 3.2). This term was not included in the data analysis as it is not representative of normal/regular use. 4.2.3.11 Highly Lexicalized Terms-Semantic Lattices The terms blog, click/clic, chat, and log are high frequency terms that have no Italian language synonyms. Once a term is adopted and any competing terms fall to the wayside, the chosen term takes on different morpho- syntactic pathways. In the example to the right, I illustrate the development of the terms semantically connected to their head terms (the head node) with a 135 semantic lattice. The arrows that radiate from the head nodes show the direction taken in the adoption and embedding of the terms into the morphology of the recipient language. Many of these pathways are not possible in English. One striking example of this is that of click/ clic from where we get the adjective/noun superlative absolute cliccatissimo (-a,-i,-e) used to denote either a site that is the most visited or a person who has the most hits. By extension, the term means ‘popular’. The adjective/noun is derived from the verb cliccare which derives from click/ clic through the syntagm fare un click. The adjective/noun loggato analogously. Peculiar to the term log are its verbal realizations fare/effettuare il login and loggarsi. Many reflexive verbs in Italian have prepositional verb counterparts in English. These verbs also usually translate with the idea of becoming or getting to a certain state (transformational aspect). 136 It is curious that the Italian verb loggarsi expresses this same information in Italian as that found in its English form: the agent is simultaneously the patient in a reflexive verb. The nature of reflexive verbs in the data will be discussed in chapter five. 4.2.4 Derivation The most common category of lexical derivation in the data is that of functional derivation with terms ending for the most part in the suffixes -ing and -er. I conducted a special suffix search through the program Concordance which allowed me to find all occurrences of the suffixes -ing and -er in my corpus. I am particularly interested in these two suffixes since they are widespread in the corpus and because these pertain to much of the most frequent core vocabulary of Italian on the Internet. Is the bound morpheme -er understood as such to users in Italian or is it meaningless if not tied to a recognizable word? Many terms like gamer, browser (and browsing discussed below) and hacker (and hacking discussed below), though derivatives if the English verbs browse and hack have no source counterparts in Italian. It is assumed then that terms such as these have been borrowed as whole units of meaning into Italian Internet terminology. However, terms such as blog, game and download also have derived counterparts such as blogger and blogging (discussed below), gamer and downloader and downloading (discussed below) in the data. To explore this more I conducted a search through the program Concordance which allowed me to find all occurrences of the suffixes -ing and -er in my corpus. 137 4.2.4.1 Subjective Nominalization (Nominative of Subject) From the data explored in 4.1.3, we observe the following derivational processes: Suffixation: V(stem) -(-ING) + -ER = NOUN ; V(stem) -(-ING) + -ISTA = NOUN Verbal expression (V+N) Nominal Definition of New Term (fare) blog(ging) blogger ‘one who blogs/one who bloggista/blogghista blogs often and has his own blog site’ (fare ) download(ing) downloder one who downloads’ Examples from the corpus: “...non è certo un desktop per gamer incalliti, ma è un vero computer dedicato a chi con il pc lo usa per la posta elettronica...” “In generale ho notato una certa differenza tra i blogger dell’est Europa e quelli dei grandi Paesi dell’Occidente...” “L'uomo, un romano insospettabile che vive ancora a casa con i genitori, si è rivelato invece un abile hacker.” “...da quando è passata la legge che punisce anche i semplici downloader...” Observations: Terms with the English suffix -er denote the agent and thus the terms in the data listed above are agent nouns. Though gamer, blogger and hacker all exist in English, and could have very well been borrowed by Italian as whole units, the term downloader is not typical of English on the Internet. It is quite likely then that the suffix, which has become familiar to Italians though the presence of words like blogger and hacker, has become known to Italians through inference. Bound morphemes are not as easily borrowed as are nouns by recipient 138 languages. It should be noted that the derivational treatment of borrowings such as download -> downloader accommodates native Italian phraseology. However, the need to fill such a gap could have been easily satisfied by using an Italian derivational ending such as - ore or -ista. To add -ore to download, the derivation process is more complex as the root of the term downlodatore would have to be derived from the verb root downlodare > downloda-: In sum, the addition of -er is less cumbersome and efficiency appears to be a motivator. Since downloader [+human, +agent] (‘the one who downloads something’) does not exist as a term in English, it is reasonable to conclude that Italian employs the word morphology of English in this case and uses the suffix -er, denoting a human agent productively. In sum, Italian is borrowing English word grammar. The suffix -ista on the other hand is used to denote an agent with special competence. In the case of the stem blog, the blogghista is a type of blogger but more specifically, one who initiates a blog or has a blog site and also one who blogs frequently. The latter demonstrates typical Italian word grammar. Examples from the corpus: “...le bloggiste si sono rimboccate le maniche ed hanno tenuto anche corsi di formazione...” “Lo raccontano in Appena ho 18 anni mi rifaccio, storie di figli, genitori e plastiche 139 (Bompiani) di Cristina Sivieri Tagliabue, giornalista, blogghista e presidente dell'associazione "Non chiederci la parola..." “...Altri invece erano molto più essenziali, ma comunque funzionali. In generale ho notato una certa differenza tra i blogger dell’est Europa e quelli dei grandi Paesi dell’Occidente...” “...Quindi un po’ di sane pubbliche relazioni: stabilire relazioni con blogger che trattano lo stesso argomento...” We can conclude the following about the suffixes -er and -ista in Italian on the Internet: V+suff -ER= N Dn [+agent, +human], Cn [-special competence, -prolific] V+suff -ISTA= N Dn [+agent, +human], Cn [+special competence, +prolific] 4.2.4.2. Objective Nominalization From the data explored in 4.1.3, we observe the following derivational processes: Suffixation: V(stem) + -ING = GERUND (Interpreted as NOUN) Verbal expression (V+N) Nominal Definition of New Term (fare) spamming lo spamming ‘junk email as a collective/the sending of junk email’ -noun suggests verbal action (fare ) blogging il blogging ‘the act of contributing to blogs/writing or engaging in blogs’ -noun suggests verbal action (fare) scrolling lo scrolling ‘the function of moving through pages on the computer screen’ -noun suggests verbal action 140 All verb phrase expressions of this kind in the data are intransitive requiring locative prepositions such as in, su, a. Typically, Italian does not allow for verbs to take two direct objects and the omission of the first hypothetical direct object appears to be a testament to this rule. The terms blog and blogging in Standard Italian on the Internet have different grammatical functions associated with them. It would be impossible to determine which term came into Standard Italian first. We know from previous studies that lexical borrowings are most often nouns related to items of acculturation (Brown 1999). The term blogging is only used as a complement noun in the expression fare blogging. It is very likely that the English gerundive was formed in Italian by analogy with expressions such as fare shopping, fare footing which have been in general use in the Italian language for many decades. What is significant here is that all of the occurrences of gerundive nouns and noun complements imply verbal action. It is therefore not only the telic role (goal or function) of the noun that is transferred from English into Italian but also the dynamic aspect of it as expressed by the English gerundive word morphology: the suffix -ing denotes verbal action (more on this in 4.2.2 iv-vi). This may to point to the reason why some expressions such as *fare blog are not acceptable phrases in Italian even though syntagms such as fare chat do exist. There may also be phonological or prosodic motivations for this discrepancy. Phonology and prosody will be discussed in chapter five. Examples from the corpus: “..uno dei principali social network americani per donne che fanno il blogging...” “...hanno tenuto anche corsi di formazione su come fare blogging...” “Google sarebbe in trattative per acquistare Twitter, il servizio gratuito di micro blogging che 141 permette agli utenti di scambiare brevi messaggi...” “...Ma il blogging non è solo per mamme...” “...per permettere agli utenti del social network e a quelli del motore di ricerca (e dei suoi servizi di posta e blogging...” “...si stia avverando sul web e particolarmente nell'area del blogging...” 4.2.4.3 Lexicalization of Nouns > Verbs The semantic relation between the verb and corresponding noun is in most cases trans- parent and predictable, taking the argument/event structure of the verb as the starting point. Noun-verb conversion is a productive process in Italian on the Internet, though morphosyntactic and/or semantic features must be added to an already existing root: either information about gender is added to a verbal root (i.e, past participles agree in number and gender with the nouns they modify), or event/argument structure information is added to a nominal root (fare, as discussed in 4.2.2, is used as an all-purpose verb in syntagmatic verb expressions). It seems, however, that lexical items that can surface either as nouns or verbs need to carry explicit marking about this in the lexicon (see 4.2.2 v and iv). i.) NOUN + -are ending = VERB e.g. chattare from chat Inflection of the verb produces the past participles (acting also as nouns and adjectives) chattato, cliccato, loggato. 142 Examples from the corpus: Chi tra gli oltre 200 milioni di utenti di Facebook si è loggato sul social network nelle ultime ore è stato avvisato della piccola rivoluzione che prenderà il via nel fine settimana: l'arrivo degli Url personalizzati. Pancini, tira in ballo il blogger più cliccato d’Italia, Beppe Grillo... un sito, livingthemap.com, che in pochi mesi, con i suoi 3 milioni di user al giorno, diventa uno dei più cliccati della rete... ...inviti da estranei o aver chattato con adulti... 4.3 Compounding, Syntagms and Ellipsis 4.3.1 Compounding Both compounding and syntagmatic constructions are highly productive in Italian. With regard to the classification of compounds, Bisetto and Scalise propose a novel classification which is based on “the fact that the two constituents are linked by a grammatical relation which is not overtly expressed...the possible grammatical relations holding between the two constituents of a compound are basically the relations that hold in syntactic contructions: subordination, coordination and attribution” (2005, 9). According to Bisetto and Scalise, compounds are classified as “subordinate” whenever there is a complement relation between the two constituents. If we follow this logic, then in the compound cyberguerra, cyber is the complement of the noun head guerra, in the compound web battaglia web the complement of the noun head battaglia. Therefore, in N+N compounds, the N on the left is treated like an adjective even though its grammatical identity is that of a noun. I will refer to this type of complement as an ‘adjectival noun’. The compounds in the data can be characterized in the following way: 143 i.) they are endocentric (A+B denotes a special kind of B): web-battaglia, cyber spazio ii.)they are adjectival for the most part iii.) only a few complements (meaning here: adjectival nouns) are used and these are highly productive. The adjunct roles of these complements are locatives and instrumentals. Below is a list of the all44 of the compounds that appeared in the corpus. The central term refers to the term searched in the data which may differ from its grammatical and semantic head. 44 Since super/super- is a highly productive prefixal adjective in Standard Italian, I chose not to explore it here. 144 4.3.1.1 Compound Constructions in the Corpus N [Adj. + N] [NCom+N]N [N+Adj]N [N+Adj]Adj cyber-amico web-battaglia power user (used as web-based cyber attacchi web-cam /webcam an adjective here: cyber bulli/ cyber webnauti utenti power user) user-friendly bullo websense user-friendly cyberbulli/ weblibreria user friendly cyberbullo/ web surfing cyberbullismo/ cyber bullismo/ username/user name cyberbullismo user interface cyber-campagna Gli user content cyber-censura cyber-criminali/ cybercriminali/ cyber criminali cyber-crimine cybercrime cyber-droga cyber-furto cyber-investigatori cyber-nido cyber-politica cyber-sesso cyber sicurezza cyber-shot cyber-spazio / cyber spazio cyberguerra cybermedicale cybernauti cyber spie cyberterroristi Some synonymous expressions are categorized differently since the synonym of a given compound is not always a compound but is seemingly made up of the same parts. Attestations of cyber attacchi (Adj + N) (compounding) and attacchi cyber (N+Adj) (uncompounding) as well as all other non-hyphenated constructions were almost equal in number in the data. The latter 145 follows traditional Standard Italian syntax while the former, although permissible in Standard Italian, is syntactically atypical and appears, at first glance, to mimic English syntax forming an E-calque. However, it follows the regular syntax for compounding in Standard Italian. It appears that in the case of cyber attacchi (Adj + N), the expression is understood by the user as a phrase and forms a single unit of meaning. Contrarily, in the case of the phrase attacchi cyber (N+Adj), the expression appears to contain two separable units of meaning (N+Adj). Though cyber is a highly productive complement, it is my contention that it forms part of the phrase attacchi cyber where cyber is instrumental (by ‘cyber[netic]’ means). Though its written representation shows both cyber and attacchi as separate units, it behaves much like left-headed Italian compounds. Moreover, given the restricted domain of use of the term, it is more likely identifiable as a compound expression. Graphic representations do not always present the true underlying grammatical relationships between units of meaning. In this same vein, differing graphic representations of cyberspazio, cyber-spazio, and cyber spazio are common but have no bearing on what the term means to the speaker and the hearer. However, it is the word order that indicates that these are indeed compounds and not simply nouns modified by adjectives. It is my hypothesis that the compounds are borrowed from English as whole units either as direct borrowings or as syntactic 146 calques from which new Italian forms are born. Over time, the meaning of cyber is learned by inference and takes on a separate grammatical identity as a complement. The complement may appear unbound, entering into the paradigm of native adjectives following Standard Italian syntax in non compounds (N + Adj), however it does not behave as an adjective in that it can never stand alone on the right of a copula expression as shown by the ill-formed sentences below: Compound = -(N + VCop + Com) e.i., *Gli attacchi sono cyber. * Il progamma è web. * Il password è user. In the case of user, we observe in the well-formed sentence below that it can stand alone as a noun but requires the indefinite article. È un user. = He is a user. It is therefore by this definition that I maintain that the complement is bound to compound expressions. Hence, the differing graphic representations of some compounds (cyber-spazio, cyberspazio, 147 cyber spazio) do not change the underlying representations of these expressions as compounds. Word syntax in Italian and the bound nature of the complements dictates that such expressions, regardless of spelling, are compounds. If we look at all occurrences of web as an adjective, we see that it functions as a noun and as an adjective. As an adjective, it does not modify any nouns on the opposite side of a copula. 4.3.1.2 Results from Search of Web in Non Compound Constructions in the Corpus WEB...... 480 (10.148%) CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION a) ...La maggioranza degli acquisti sul ‘Web’ noun (masculine singular) web riguarda i servizi, dai pacchetti The World Wide The noun is more often than turistici... Web as not accompanied by the instrument/locus definite article. b) Il tasto toccato in particolare da Page è quello delle prestazioni, The web is both an instrument necessarie per far funzionare via of use (b, d) as well as a locus browser applicazioni che attualmente as seen in the use of the sono molto difficili da processare via propositions su and da (a, c). Web. c) La criminalità informatica riparte dal web d) Solo il 32% del campione ritiene che la politica usi il web in maniera adeguata 148 CONTEXT MEANING GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION e) ...Non è tutto, perché‚ sono ‘Web’ adjective aumentati anche gli attacchi misti web The World Wide The syntax of the adjective ed email... Web as web in e) to f) appears to instrument/locus follow traditional Standard f) i criminali informatici si sfogano Italian syntax: N + Adj. disseminando codice malevolo in siti The adjective is never Web separated from the noun in a copula construction. g) soprattutto del malware che sfrutta la fiducia degli utenti web This may be proof that the term is well integrated into the h) Infatti OVI filtrando le pagine web Italian language and is dei contenuti "indesiderati" le rende accepted and understood as immediatamente disponibili agli such. However the collocation utenti of the term is subject to syntactic limitations. 4.3.2 Syntagms Syntagms are similar to compounds in that they contain a fusion of two or more words together to make them one unifying expression. The meanings of the words interrelate in such a way that a new meaning comes out which is very different from the meanings of the words in isolation. These are word groups that, according to Gilbert, “tendent à se lexicaliser45” becoming single units of meaning (Dictionnaire du Neologisms: avant-propos iii). Once they lexicalize, they take on, more or less, the same identity as compounds. They differ of course from the compounds seen previously in that they consist of components that have separate meaning on their own which can be placed on the right of a copula: Syntagm = +(N + VCop + Com); +(N + VCop + N). These consist of: 45 “tend to lexicalize” 149 i) NOUN + ADJECTIVE - a NOUN marked by an adjective: posta elettronica (email) Examples from the the corpus: “...newsgroup fornire agli abbonati un account di posta elettronica fornire ai navigatori di Internet la possibilità di cercare le informazioni disponibili in rete tramite digitazione di parole chiave...” “...A Barcellona Nokia ha rilanciato sul concetto tastiera fisica al servizio della posta elettronica con i nuovi E75 ed E55 che affiancano l'E71 lanciato a giugno.” ii) NOUN + NOUN - These are typically left-headed where the head noun takes first position and the specifying noun takes second position as in posta spazzatura (spam). Though orthographically represented as two words, the terms are bound in a compound relationship by their meaning as a single unit. In the case of posta spazzatura, we also have what appears to be a semantic calque from the English junk mail. Examples from the the corpus: “Gli ambientalisti di tutto il mondo hanno un nuovo nemico: È lo spam, la posta spazzatura che intasa le caselle e-mail con pubblicità indesiderate, proposte di facili guadagni, truffe e virus.” “...lo scorso novembre, uno dei principali diffusori di e-mail spazzatura venne messo fuori uso, fu come se fossero scomparsi dalle strade 2,2 milioni di veicoli.” “Usa, colpo alle mail spazzatura: eliminato il 75% dello spamming...” 150 iii) NOUN +PREP. + NOUN - (complemento di specificazione / specifying complement) by means of two NOUNs that are linked by the preposition di: diffusione di audiovisivi (streaming), spazio di memoria (account) e nodo di transito (gateway). The preposition di is the most productive in the data. Occurrences of these terms are found in our preliminary search on Google.it but none appear in the corpus. The most likely reason for this non-occurrence is ellipsis (see: 4.2.3). iv) VERB + ART. + NOUN - we find some syntagmatic constructions for verb forms such as: fare le chat (to chat) that exist along side fully integrated forms such as chattare or, fare lo streaming which has no counterpart first conjugation verbal form (*streamare). These forms are almost identical to the construction VERB + NOUN below where the article has been omitted. Examples from the the corpus: “...nel calendario eventi di quando si desidera fare lo streaming...” “Se qualche anno fa le chat creavano nuove coppie...” v) VERB + NOUN- Fare chat (to chat) - chat is understood here as a noun. Many expressions of this type in Italian that are used with great frequency omit the definite article signaling a close relationship between the verb and the accompanying noun. Standard Italian has the following expression: avere fame not *avere la fame; fare freddo not *fare il freddo. The term fare chat is 151 understood to mean chattare (to chat) and therefore the whole phrase or syntagm is understood as a single unit of meaning. Since chat is the direct object of the verb fare, the verb phrase (syntagm) is intransitive. Examples from the the corpus: “...il 34% fa chat con persone adulte...” It is Italian’s already widespread use of these syntagmatic verbal constructions with native nouns that makes the assimilation of foreign nouns using the same pattern very easy. However, Standard Italian tends to favour the construction: VERB + GERUND (see vi. below) when creating verbal phrases containing a borrowed unit with helper verbs like fare. Fare +N however is not very productive in Standard Italian (with the exception of course of expressions like fare sport). Italian on the Internet appears to take full advantage of these preexisting structures putting them to use more often due to the higher saturation of borrowed terms and the need for these borrowed terms on the Internet. vi) VERB + GERUND (interpreted as NOUN) - forms such as: fare downloading (to download). In many cases Italian uses the gerundive form in English (i.e., blogging) in expressions like fare blogging. In Standard Italian, many syntagms of this type exist: fare shopping, fare zapping, fare footing (the latter is 152 considered archaic these days). Much like the construction VERB + NOUN, the component to the right which behaves grammatically as a noun, is the direct object of the verb fare and therefore the syntagm is intransitive. The most common accompanying prepositions are con and su. Examples from the the corpus: “...hanno tenuto anche corsi di formazione su come fare blogging...” “ ...uno dei principali social network americani per donne che fanno il blogging...” The verb fare is the most productive verb in syntagmatic constructions. The only other verb appearing in similar paradigms is effettuare which means fare. Despite the fact that fare “may be used as an activity, as a state or as a telic predicate” (Bertinetto and Noccetti 2006, 19), fare is used only as a dynamic verb in the syntagmatic verb phrases found in the data. The use of an English noun or gerundive noun with the verb fare is curious indeed. As previously stated, in appears that the use of gerundive nouns like blogging in the syntagm fare blogging are associated with activities that are themselves dynamic. This will be discussed in chapter five. 4.3.3 Ellipsis Syntagmatic expressions such as the construction NOUN +PREP. + NOUN - (specifying complement) by means of two nouns that are linked by the preposition di: diffusione di audiovisivi (streaming), spazio di memoria (account) e nodo di transito (gateway) and compound constructions (see 4.2.1) can be truncated by users. In many cases the fewer the units the better in 153 this fast-paced medium. Some examples of these economical forms are: email > mail, spazio di memoria > spazio, la chatroom > la chat. Examples from the Corpus: “...o imbottiscono di microfoni e telecamere, copiano la memoria del suo pc, poi lo interrogano.” “Mi ha mandato una mail dicendomi di volermi conoscere, racconta il 19enne.” “Nelle settimane scorse Galati aveva infatti confessato in una chat di aver incendiato l'auto di uno dei suoi aggressori.” It appears that sytagmatic constructions, though very diffuse in Standard Italian, are often reduced by ellipsis. In the example given above, lo spazio di memoria is represented by la memoria which means ‘memory’ as well as the space that it occupies. In the case of una chat, the term uses the gender of its underlying feminine singular gloss stanza (room). The term chat is a central term of high frequency in the the data. It has many realizations through lexicalization. There were neither attestations of the expression diffusione di audiovisivi nor an elliptical form corresponding to it. This term does not share the same status of use of chat. Instead, the English synonym streaming appeared thirty-two times in the data. It is not always the case that ellipsis is the choice of speakers. If a shorter English equivalent exists, this tends to replace the syntagmatic expression altogether. If a core term is highly lexicalized (e.g. the term chat) the more likely we are to find an elliptical form of it. 4.4 Synonymous Terms In our data, there coexist a number of synonymous terms. Those that have higher frequencies of 154 use may be those that serve to disambiguate an utterance. Synonymous terms in our corpus are usually found in sets consisting of: Italian term, borrowed English term. With time, many native Italian synonyms will fall out of use for reasons of linguistic economy, ambiguity, and fashion and only a few native Italian terms will remain. Why some remain may be contingent upon their signifying power: do they mean what the speaker intends them to mean with immediacy and efficacy? Do the native terms that remain have any denotative or connotative information in common? Pustejovsky’s argument and qualia structures will be used here to gain a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms of meaning in these terms. The competing terms in the corpus are the following: 4.4.1 Synonymous Terms in the Corpus46 Italian Term.....occurrences in corpus (% English Term.....occurrences in corpus (% of corpus represented) of corpus represented) (IN) ALLEGATO...... 6 (0.087) IN ATTACH...... 1 (0.021%) AREA SENSIBILE...... 0 (0.000%) HOTSPOT...... 7 (0.148%) CARICATO...... 4 (0.058%) ------ CARICARE...... 12 (0.173%) UPLODARE...... 2 (0.042%) CARTELLA...... 9 (0.130%) FILE...... 112 (2.457%) COLLEGAMENTO...... 22 (0.318%) LINK...... 40 (0.846%) CONTO...... 89 (1.285%) ACCOUNT...... 63 (1.342%) E-MAIL SPAZZATURA SPAM...... 39 (0.825%) MAIL SPAZZATURA...... 7 (0.116%) MOTORE DI RICERCA...... 10 (0.162%) SEARCH ENGINE...... 1 (0.021%) NAVIGATORE...... 16 (0.231%) BROWSER...... 132 (2.791%) 46 Terms that have no occurrences exist in Italian but did not appear in the corpus. 155 Italian Term.....occurrences in corpus (% English Term.....occurrences in corpus (% of corpus represented) of corpus represented) POSTA ELETTRONICA...... 85 (1.227%) EMAIL...... 42 (0.888%) MAIL...... 76 (1.607%) DIFFUSIONE DI AUDIOVISIVI...... 0 STREAMING...... 32 (0.677%) (0.000%) PAGINA...... 117 (1.690%) PAGE...... 50 (1.057%) RETE...... 358 (5.170%) WEB...... 480 (10.148%) SCARICARE...... 43 (0.621%) DOWNLOADARE...... 1 (0.021%) FARE DOWNLOADING...... 2 (0.35%) SFONDO...... 8 (0.116%) BACKGROUND...... 2 (0.042%) SITO...... 388 (5.603%) SITE...... 3 (0.063%) The dominant English terms are all nouns: browser, email/mail, streaming, web, spam, link, hotspot, file. The dominant Italian nouns: pagina, sito, and conto are phonologically similar to English page, site and account respectively. The term browser has a low frequency of usage in Italian on the Internet perhaps because it is identified by its suffix as an agentive noun [+human, +agent]. From the data we observe that Italian on the Internet prefers to use native verbs over borrowed English ones. The Italian verbs that prevail are: caricare (upload), scaricare (download). Let us first look at what the nouns have in common with each other: 156 Pustejovsky’s Qualia and the Archetypes of Dominant Synonyms: English Nouns a) Qualia browser streaming web hotspot Structure Constitutive software (a flow of) (woven construct site/locus i. material i. varies/ not specific/ multimedia of) interconnected i. varies/ not ii. weight unmarked i. varies/ not specific/ nodes/locus specific/unmarked iii. components ii. varies/ not specific/ unmarked i. varies/ not ii. varies/ not unmarked ii. varies/ not specific/unmarked specific/unmarked iii. varies/ not specific/unmarked ii. varies/ not iii. varies/ not specific/unmarked iii. varies/ not specific/unmarked specific/unmarked specific/unmarked iii. varies/ not specific/unmarked Formal physical object physical object physical object/ physical object/ i. orientation i. varies/ not specific/ i. varies/ not specific/ locus locus ii. magnitude unmarked unmarked i. varies/ not i. varies/ not iii. shape ii. varies/ not specific/ ii. varies/ not specific/unmarked specific/unmarked iv. dimension unmarked specific/unmarked ii. varies/ not ii. varies/ not v. colour iii. varies/ not iii. varies/ not specific/unmarked specific/unmarked vi. position specific/unmarked specific/unmarked iii. varies/ not iii. varies/ not iv. varies/ not iv. varies/ not specific/unmarked specific/unmarked specific/unmarked specific/unmarked iv. varies/ not iv. varies/ not v. varies/ not specific/ v. varies/ not specific/unmarked specific/unmarked unmarked specific/unmarked v. varies/ not v. varies/ not vi. varies/ not vi. varies/ not specific/unmarked specific/unmarked specific/unmarked specific/unmarked vi. varies/ not vi. varies/ not specific/unmarked specific/unmarked Telic i. function i. locate/display i. capture/collect i. capture/collect i. give access Agentive i. creator i. - i. - i. - i. - ii. artifact ii. artifact ii. artifact ii. artifact ii. artifact iii. natural kind iii. - iii. - iii. - iii. - iv. causal chain iv. - iv. - iv. - iv. - 157 Pustejovsky’s Qualia and the Archetypes of Dominant Synonyms: English Nouns b) Qualia Structure spam link file email/mail Constitutive message connection/locus set of records/locus message i. material i. varies/ not i. varies/ not i. varies/ not i. varies/ not ii. weight specific/unmarked specific/unmarked specific/unmarked specific/unmarked iii. components ii. varies/ not ii. varies/ not ii. varies/ not ii. varies/ not specific/unmarked specific/unmarked specific/unmarked specific/unmarked iii. varies/ not iii. varies/ not iii. varies/ not iii. varies/ not specific/unmarked specific/unmarked specific/unmarked specific/unmarked Formal physical object physical object/ physical object/ physical object i. orientation i. varies/ not locus locus i. varies/ not ii. magnitude specific/unmarked i. varies/ not i. varies/ not specific/unmarked iii. shape ii. varies/ not specific/unmarked specific/unmarked ii. varies/ not iv. dimension specific/unmarked ii. varies/ not ii. varies/ not specific/unmarked v. colour iii. varies/ not specific/unmarked specific/unmarked iii. varies/ not vi. position specific/unmarked iii. varies/ not iii. varies/ not specific/unmarked iv. varies/ not specific/unmarked specific/unmarked iv. varies/ not specific/unmarked iv. varies/ not iv. varies/ not specific/unmarked v. varies/ not specific/unmarked specific/unmarked v. varies/ not specific/unmarked v. varies/ not v. varies/ not specific/unmarked vi. varies/ not specific/unmarked specific/unmarked vi. varies/ not specific/unmarked vi. varies/ not vi. varies/ not specific/unmarked specific/unmarked specific/unmarked Telic i. function i. communicate i. access i. collect/keep i. communicate Agentive i. creator i. - i. - i. - i. - ii. artifact ii. artifact ii. artifact ii. artifact ii. artifact iii. natural kind iii. - iii. - iii. - iii. - iv. causal chain iv. - iv. - iv. - iv. - 158 Pustejovsky’s Qualia and the Archetypes of Dominant Synonyms: Italian Nouns Qualia Structure pagina sito conto Constitutive locus locus locus i. material i. varies/ not specific/ i. varies/ not specific/ i. varies/ not specific/ ii. weight unmarked unmarked unmarked iii. components ii. varies/ not specific/ ii. varies/ not specific/ ii. varies/ not specific/ unmarked unmarked unmarked iii. varies/ not specific/ iii. varies/ not specific/ iii. varies/ not specific/ unmarked unmarked unmarked Formal physical object/locus physical object/locus physical object/locus i. orientation i. varies/ not specific/ i. varies/ not specific/ i. varies/ not specific/ ii. magnitude unmarked unmarked unmarked iii. shape ii. varies/ not specific/ ii. varies/ not specific/ ii. varies/ not specific/ iv. dimension unmarked unmarked unmarked v. colour iii. varies/ not specific/ iii. varies/ not specific/ iii. varies/ not specific/ vi. position unmarked unmarked unmarked iv. varies/ not specific/ iv. varies/ not specific/ iv. varies/ not specific/ unmarked unmarked unmarked v. varies/ not specific/ v. varies/ not specific/ v. varies/ not specific/ unmarked unmarked unmarked vi. varies/ not specific/ vi. varies/ not specific/ vi. varies/ not specific/ unmarked unmarked unmarked Telic i. function i. keep information i. keep information i. keep information Agentive i. creator i. - i. - i. - ii. artifact ii. artifact ii. artifact ii. artifact iii. natural kind iii. - iii. - iii. - iv. causal chain iv. - iv. - iv. - Observations: For the Italian terms pagina, sito, and conto we notice first that they are phonologically similar to their English counterparts. Then we see that the telic, agentive and formal roles are all the same and that their English counterparts would produce the same qualia structure. What is significant about these three Italian terms is that their constitutive roles all denote referents that have perfect equivalents in English so we can say with certainty that these terms are in a biconditional relationship: {abc}<=> {α,β,γ}. We must also note that each of the terms in the sets {abc}and {α,β,γ} is unmarked, meaning that it has a very limited connotative 159 set. The unmarkedness of the terms allows them to be used more freely in varying contexts and co-texts. This is not the case with the English terms (nouns) that dominate their Italian semi- equivalents because the former are marked by a locus of use and it is for this reason that these terms are not truly synonymous. The English terms are bound to the domain of the Internet yet true synonymy requires the terms to fulfill all denotative and connotative sets equally. What is interesting about the constitutive role of the terms web, hotspot, link, file is that they are all physically intangible concepts linked to virtual space and have a common referent of a type of locus and telic roles of capture/collect/access which denote tools. The terms browser and streaming are also tools that have telic roles such as capture/collect and locate/display. Spam denotes a special type of email/mail so we can say that it is marked. These terms have the same telic role of communication and are less cumbersome than their Italian compound counterparts posta spazzatura and posta elettronica. Italian on the Internet favours the use of the verbs caricare (upload), scaricare. Both verbs are syntactically transitive as shown by the notational variant of the strict categorizational feature: [+__ NP]. Contrarily, a verb phrase such as fare downlo(a)ding is intransitive: [-__NP]. Intransitive verb constructions are not as economical as transitive constructions as they require prepositional phrases to complete their senses. However, this is not the only motivator for their avoidance. Transitive constructions allow more flexibility in passivization (ergativity) which in turn allows past participles to be formed for use as adjectives and substantives. This was how cliccatissimi (‘most visited [site]’/most popular [person]’) was formed from cliccare after it developed out of fare (un) click/clic. The use of the verbal syntagms (verb phrases) with fare would not allow for these neologisms in Italian. Why then was downlo(a)dare [+__NP] used so 160 infrequently? In the comparative chart below, we observe that downlodare is used only once in the corpus and is the object of a modal verb. In Standard Italian, modal verbs are followed by infinitives. It may be the case that the non inflected form is more easily related to its root term download. 4.4.1.1 Comparison of Scaricare and Downlodare in the Corpus SCARICARE...... 43 (0.621%) DOWNLODARE...... 1 (0.021%) CONTEXT MEANING CONTEXT MEANING Approvata in via to download Nel caso dell'iPhone to download definitiva dal Senato la si potranno norma che vieta di downlodare scaricare film e musica l'applicazione anche coperte dal diritto d'autore dall'Apple store. è infatti possibile scaricare i file da installare invitano a scaricare gratuitamente software l’ipotesi di un marketplace da cui scaricare si potranno in futuro scaricare, gratuitamente, altri applicativi di social network, 161 4.5 Sigmatic Plurals From a prescriptive standpoint, the sigmatic plural of borrowed terms is highly discouraged in Standard Italian. Borrowed terms in Italian remain invariable and only their articles and accompanying adjectives decline to reflect pluralization. In verbal exchanges, on the radio and in television, it is almost never heard. Surprisingly, some borrowed terms in the data express the sigmatic plural. file vs files file...... 111 (2.347%) ...Si tratta di circa 55 mila file alla settimana e oltre 50 milioni di immagini di moduli all' anno... files...... 1 (0.021%) ...che si pronuncino sulle legittimità delle procedure per l'acquisizione della prova digitale in relazione al trattamento dei dati personali, ovvero sulla gestione dei files log e sui sequestri cautelari di apparecchiature elettroniche... cookie vs cookie cookie...... 2 (0.042%) ..Navigare nel Web in questa modalità permette all'utente di non lasciare traccia del proprio passaggio. In altri termini ciò significa che i cookie, i file temporanei, la cronologia, le informazione che si sono digitate al momento della compilazione di un form, così come i dati di accesso a un sito, tutto ciò scomparirà non appena si chiude Internet Explorer... cookies...... 1 (0.021%) ...La funzione di navigazione "privata" è simile a quella dei browser concorrenti e si attiva in modo semplicissimo permettendo di nascondere tutti i dati della sessione: dai form compilati ai cookies accettati... hit vs hits hits...... 1 (0.021%) Fatevi, dunque, cari lettori, il vostro giornale virtuale e su misura, attraverso Internet. Fatevelo bello o brutto, di destra o di sinistra, castissimo o porcellone, sportivo o politico, finanziario o pettegolistico e assumetevene la responsabilità. Se alla fine vi sentirete un po' confusi e molto 162 insoddisfatti del prodotto, se alla fine vi accorgerete con un brivido di orrore di averci messo molti più hits su Leonardo di Caprio che sulla fame nel subsahara, benvenuti nel l'amaro club del giornalisti. hit...... 2 (0.042%) Un gruppo che si crea degli alter ego d'animazione- anzi, a dirla tutta Damon Albarn e James Hewlett sono probabilmente gli alter ego in carne e ossa di Noodle, Murdoc, 2D e Russel Hobbs- e che arriva al successo mondiale con una hit47 che si chiama Clint Eastwood, con il cinema ha un rapporto simbiotico. user vs users user...... 14 (0.296%) Daniel decide di lanciare una sfida a se stesso e alla crisi: trovare 50 lavori diversi in 50 settimane in tutti e 50 gli stati d'America, raccontando l'impresa attraverso un sito, livingthemap.com, che in pochi mesi, con i suoi 3 milioni di user al giorno, diventa uno dei più cliccati della rete . Questi numeri danno la chiara misura della tendenza da parte dei Fornitori a rilasciare prodotti low cost e caratterizzati da maggiore semplicità, al fine di alimentare sia l'assorbimento di PC da parte di fasce di utenti meno avanzati tecnologicamente, sia di moltiplicare il numero di PC in dotazione ad utenti power user users...... 1 (0.021%) Su Facebook girano le istruzioni dei ‘green’ web users: si usa www.pagereboot.com, un sito che consente di refreshare in automatico la pagina web scelta. spammer vs spammers spammer...... 6 (0.127%) ...sono stati presi di mira dagli spammer in modo particolare...... gli spammer copiano modelli e struttura delle newsletter legittime... spammers...... 3 (0.063%) ...Spammers: ecco come difendersi...... Ladri di identità, hackers e spammers: come difendersi davanti al pc.. 47 All attestation of hit were all intended as singular as seen in this example. 163 Isolated Plurals communities ...33 bambini su cento frequentano abitualmente Facebook, le communities e i blog. 4.6 Gender Attribution Traditionally, in Standard Italian, borrowed nouns from English are assigned a masculine gender. Though there are many cases where the prescriptive rule holds true (e.g. il blogging, lo spamming, il login), Italian terminology on the Internet does assign feminine gender in some cases. In the examples from the corpus below, the feminine gender assigned is that of the gender of the same term in Italian. The underlying form of le communities is le communità (feminine singular). The term la chat is the elliptical form of la chatroom which, in turn, has been assigned gender on the basis of the semantic head room (Italian: stanza, feminine singular). le communities “...33 bambini su cento frequentano abitualmente Facebook, le communities e i blog.” la chat “...mi sono ritrovata in una piccola chat, ho provato ad usarla...” “...le chat (da pc o cellulare) e i siti di social network possono essere...” 4.7 Conclusion In this chapter the data was presented, analyzed and discussed within the framework of borrowings, lexicalization (morphological type/composition), and synonymy. Highly lexicalized borrowings were presented in semantic maps and lattices to help gain a better perspective of the 164 morphological pathways made available in Italian. These terms are shown to be deeply embedded in the word grammar of Italian taking full advantage of phenomena such as pluralization and gender assignment to extend denotative meaning. It is the vocabulary with the greatest coverage ability that inevitably undergoes lexicalization. As Galisson discovered, banalised language interacts with and behaves like natural languages by using verb tenses systematically, borrows terms from preexisting languages, retains items from technical vocabulary that have the greatest coverage ability, has a greater usage volume than technical languages and relies liberally on synonyms and operates on the lexicalization of the most common word families. The most common word families and verb phrase structures are as follows: Lexicalized Nouns blog, blogging, blogger, blogg(h)ista, fare blogging, bloggare, bloggato chat, le chat, la chat, fare, chat, chattare, chattato click, clic, la cliccata, fare clic(k), cliccato, cliccatissimo log, login, fare login, loggarsi, loggato, loggatissimo Verb Phrases (Syntagms) Fare + NP [N, N+(-ing)] (e.g. fare chat, fare login, fare click/clic, fare blogging) N (borrowed term) + Suffix (-are) = V (e.g. bloggare, chattare, cliccare, loggarsi) 165 5 Conclusions 5.1 Introduction The use of an electronic corpus gathered from the Web in the study of Italian on the Internet has proved to be an important method of analysis of Italian Internet terminology. The creation of a corpus allows us to gain greater insight into the use of terms through frequency. The program Concordance allows us, through its search parameters, to examine previously unpredictable forms in co-text quickly. The goal of chapter one was to make a case for the utility of a corpus- based study, explain the primary theoretical underpinnings of the study and give important historical and sociological motivations for such a study. In chapter two, I explained how terms were selected and discarded and how my corpus was created and how it proved suitable and representative of this lexical domain. In the third chapter, I elaborated on the classificatory system I employed which helped me to view the lexical items in grammatical context (compounds, syntagms, verb phrases, etc.). To gain a better understanding of the conceptual system of the terms studied as well as understand better the semantic structure of each term, I introduced another important analytical framework: qualia structures. In chapter four, the analysis of the morphosyntactic and semantic character of the terminology allowed for greater insight into the processes and patterning of denomination. In this final chapter I present the major findings in the study and draw comparisons to previous studies of banalised language use in other Romance languages. The main goal of the present chapter is to demonstrate that Italian Internet terminology is a banalised language governed by a systematic set of morpho-syntactic 166 rules and to summarize how Italian selects, uses, and optimizes terms based on core units of meaning. I will conclude this study with a brief discussion on future areas of inquiry. 5.2 Morphosyntactic Aspects of Italian on the Internet 5.2.1 Compounds The most productive compound type in Italian is the type V+N (Bisetto and Scalise 2004, footnote 11). In the data, we observed on the following constructions: Compound Type Number of Types [Adj+N]N (cyber attacchi) 22 [N(Complement)+N]N (web battaglia) 10 [N+Adj]Adj (user friendly) 4 Curiously enough, none of the observed categories in the data conforms to those that are most common in the Italian language. The motivations for this are the following: 1. Italian on the Internet uses only a small number of verbs from which to construct such compounds. Most of these verbs are derived from borrowed nouns which, in time, take full advantage of Italian’s highly flexible morphology to produce the verb forms needed. The verbs, however, are very limited in number and have not shown any productivity in compounding in this domain of use. 2. The Adjectival (noun complements included) components of these compounds are semantically linked to locus and instrumental use. Web-, user-, and cyber- are the only productive complements and serve to place the head noun in the context of the domain of use: i.e. cyber battaglia = a battle by means of the web/in virtual space 167 web surfing = surfing by means of the web/on the web The purpose of such compounds is to place the head in the appropriate context of use: computer, online, and electronic. This connotative set is added to the base meaning of the typically unmarked head, for example, battaglia. We can conclude that Italian on the Internet uses a limited set of compound types that serve to contextualize a given set of unmarked nouns. The compounds serve to give specifying knowledge, with regard to the Internet as instrument or locus, predominantly to nouns but also to a very small number of adjectives. Though Allan (2001) proposes that compounding may be infinite, Colarusso (lecture, February 2nd, 2010 McMaster University) contends that this is not the case. The productivity of compounding greatly depends on the underlying argument structure of the head. In the case of Italian Internet terminology, the argument structures are limited to locus and instrument. Verbs are must be inflected for a locus marker and therefore in the compound web-battaglia we can assume that one has to fight somewhere. Similarly, in the compound Web surfing, locus serves as argument of the verb surfare (the head here is restricted to this domain and is therefore marked). Adjunct structure (3 max) there are actions that are adjunct to verbs. Though surfing in Italian is categorized as a noun, its -ing ending marks it as an entity expressing verbal action. This aspect of the noun is carried over from English and forms part of the underlying semantic information with regard to the aspect that the morphology expresses. 168 5.2.2 Verb Phrases/Syntagms The verb phrases (syntagms) observed in the data are of the following two types48: i.) [V(fare)+ N]v ii.) [V(fare)+ N-ing]v The verb fare (to make, to do) is the most productive verb in syntagmatic constructions in Italian on the Internet. The only other verb appearing in similar paradigms is effettuare which means fare in a higher register of use. We can say that fare, compared to effettuare, is therefore less marked and has a less specific connotation. In chapter four it was noted that fare “may be used as an activity, as a state or as a telic predicate” (Bertinetto and Noccetti 2006, 19); fare is used only as a dynamic verb in the syntagmatic verb phrases found in the data. It appears that the use of gerundive nouns like blogging in the syntagm fare blogging are associated with activities that are dynamic. Italian on the Internet makes full use of an already existing, and productive, structure used in every-day native expressions such as fare la spesa (to shop for groceries), fare la doccia (to take a shower), fare il 48 I have not included similar verb phrases containing articles (e.g. [V(fare)+ art.+ N]v, [V(fare) +art.+ N-ing]v) because these are considered variants. The article is often omitted in Italian in these constructions once the verb phrase becomes engrained in the language and the relationship between the verb and its direct object stronger. 169 bucato (to do laundry). This same structure has been used in other domains of use to accommodate foreign terms in expressions such as: fare (lo) shopping, fare (il) footing, and fare sport49. The telic role associated with fare is very much in line with the connotative core vocabulary of Italian on the Internet. It is to be expected then that a function word of this sort, used to perform dynamic activities, might play such a central role. The verb fare (transitive) in the verb phrases below requires two core syntactic arguments: subject and object and allows several oblique arguments. Its third core semantic argument, locative, is often inferred through domain of use. Though fare on its own has has two semantic arguments: agent and patient, the verb phrase fare blogging has but one: agent. It is important to consider the verb phrases as whole units of meaning. As such, we observe that the syntactic and argument structures are simplified. The following chart illustrates the semantic and syntactic verb arguments of the most commonly used verb phrases (syntagms) in Italian on the Internet: Syntagm Core Argument/ Oblique Syntactic Semantic Argument Argument (prepositions) (required) 1. fare blogging subject/ agent locative/instrumental (su/con) 2. fare scrolling subject/ agent locative/instrumental (su/in/con) 49 See footnote 1. The omission of the article in some expressions is idiomatic. Internet Italian tends to omit the article for economy. The omission may also be relevant to its high frequency of use. 170 Syntagm Core Argument/ Oblique Syntactic Semantic Argument Argument (prepositions) (required) 3. fare chat subject/ agent locative/instrumental (su/con) 4. fare click subject/ agent locative/instrumental (su/con) 5. fare login subject/ agent/ locative/instrumental (su/con) It is clear from the data that Italian lexicalizes central function terms to create verb phrases with much regularity. However, since the verb phrases are intransitive, they are cumbersome in that they require prepositions to link them syntactically to other elements in a proposition. These verb phrases also have another limitation since they have limited voice operations. Passivization is limited and therefore adjectives cannot be fully formed from these syntagms. For example, the passivization of fare click would produce the ill-formed passive construction below: i.e. passive construction: fare click (active) = *fatto click (passive) adjectival use of past participle: * ‘È fattissimo click’ vs ‘È (stato) cliccatissimo’ Passivization is necessary for these terms to become fully embedded into the Italian language thus lending to the creation of adjectives since these are most commonly formed from past participles through the passive voice of the verb. Italian on the Internet must produce passive forms to make these terms truly Italian. To do so, it must produce these forms from transitive and not intransitive verbs. 171 5.2.3 General Patterns and Stages of Lexicalization The most frequent terms in the data to undergo lexicalization are the following nouns denoting the functions: blog, chat, click and log. Frequency of Occurrence in the Corpus (Percentage of Corpus) BLOG...... 189 (3.996%); BLOGGER...... 51 (1.078%) CHAT...... 98 (2.072%) CLICK...... 26 (0.550%); CLIC...... 22 (0.318%) LOG...... 5 (0.106%); LOGIN...... 6 (0.127%) In the lattices below, the circles with the thickest outline represent the core borrowed term that is postulated to have first arrived into the recipient language. The second group is contained in the circles with the thinner black outline represent terms that are commonly used in the journalistic sources of the corpus. The third group of terms contained within the dotted circles comprises terms found on blog sites and in forums. As such, this third 172 group is representative of more spontaneous, unedited speech acts. According to Vizmuller-Zocco, it seems that “the greatest challenge facing the theorist is the relationship between possible and actually occuring derivatives. It is likely that sociolinguistic factors such as conventionality and style as well as diachronic developments constrain the formation of one specific form rather than another” (Vizmuller-Zocco 1985, 309). By using this third category from a separate corpus of blogs and forums, we can explore the patterns taken when the speaker is less hindered by the conventions of journalistic writing. 173 The third group expresses the most dynamic and most embedded manifestations of the original borrowed terms. Each of the four cases illustrated here follows a strikingly similar pattern of lexicalization taking full advantage of Italian’s highly productive derivational morphology. The lexicalist hypothesis puts forth the assumption that word formation (and therefore derivational) rules are integrated in the lexicon, capturing most closely the process of suffixation (Booij 1977; Scalise 1980, etc.). Once a borrowed term becomes part of a verbal syntagm (verb phrase) such as fare chat, chat takes on an underlying semantic marker as an action (function term), it is activated. This means that its valence, that is to say, its capacity to unite or interact with other elements of grammar, is increased. It as at this point that suffixation can take place to create full verb forms using the most common first conjugation infinitive ending -are to form the verbs bloggare, chattare, cliccare, and loggarsi. Regardless of the foreign representation of the term, the referent is understood and becomes an integral part of the Italian lexicon, reacting accordingly to meet the needs of its users. We learn terms by context: “words mean only as their use in sentences is conditioned to sensory stimuli, verbal or otherwise” (Quine 1960: 17). However, as previously stated in chapter two, it is the acceptance of that word into a speech community, demonstrated by its frequency, that gives the word its meaning and leads to its 174 productivity. Rey-Debove states that “L’usage d’un signe déclenche la signification, ou production de sens. Une telle affirmation présuppose qu’un signe linguistique peut exister sans fonctionner, ce que nous mettons en doute” (Rey-Debove 1971, 90)50. I contend that the term only exists to speakers once it is used and the more it is used, the more it means to its users. This is evidenced by the fact that the highest frequency terms are the most fully lexicalized. Greater use of a term gives it more currency. Simply stated, the more valuable the term is, the more likely the user is to apply it in new grammatical circumstances (grammaticalization). Therefore, the terms gain greater valency through their use. In the case of borrowings, the term does not exist until it is used. The stages of lexicalization can be illustrated in the following flow on the next page. In the chart, we observe that stage seven allows for yet a further derivational step: the creation of the superlative absolute which can also be nominalized. As discussed in 5.1.2, passivization is necessary for these terms to become full members of the Italian language allowing steps seven and beyond to take place Italian on the Internet must produce passive forms from transitive constructions such as chattare as this would not be possible if the verb remains intransitive: fare chat. There is one intransitive verb among the transitive verbs discussed in this section however, it is essential to point out that its frequency in substantive form is substantially lower than are the frequencies of blog, chat, and click. The reflexive verb loggarsi expresses the reflexive meaning of to log (oneself) in. It is apparent that through its frequent use in context, first as fare login, and then as loggarsi, the inherent argument structure of the term is understood and the term is adapted accordingly to reflect the same information though its derivational forms. 50 “The use of a sign unleashes meaning or the production of sense. A claim such as this presupposes that a linguistic sign can exist without functioning, which we doubt.” (Rey-Debove, 90) [My translation]. 175 I will elaborate on this in the next section (5.2). In sum, it is essential to note that although everyday Italian has a great number of English borrowings that have formed part of everyday language use such as fare shopping and fare footing. However, such terms have never moved beyond step three. Italian on the Internet is certainly an unusual situation meriting attention for the rapid adaptation of the Italian language to foreign elements. Dardano asserts that “a communicative and cultural situation which is so different causes adaptation phenomena to be accentuated; folk etymology and hybrid forms are developed to a greater extent. The various outcomes Anglicisms have in different sociolinguistic contexts call to the attention of the scholar interesting problems in the area of semantics and the formation of mixed lexes” (1986, 251). The lexicalization of core terms as evidenced by the occurrences in 176 the data is indeed an accentuated phenomenon that, so far, is unique to Italian on the Internet and is a prime example of the phenomena of linguistic banalisation. 5.3 Semantic Aspects of Italian on the Internet 5.3.1 Competing Terms: Nouns and Noun Phrases As mentioned in chapter four, our data yielded a number of competing terms. With regard to the dominant Italian terms we observed the example of background and sfondo. These two terms are synonymous in meaning but not perfect semantic equivalents (synonymy is discussed in 4.3). We argued that in Standard Italian, background is a specific type of sfondo since the latter has a much broader denotative and connotative set and that sfondo is merely a hypernym of This Euler diagram above shows that A (borrowed terms background. The difference then between the two terms can be from English) is a subset of B (Italian synonyms) and illustrated in the following manner: conversely B is a superset of A. sfondo > Dn{a,b,c}, Cn {x,y,z...} background > Dn{a}, Cn{x} Therefore, background,which has a more restricted connotative set {x}is a special type of sfondo which has a broader connotative set {x,y,z...}. Similarly, the remaining dominant Italian terms sito, pagina, conto, cartella, navigatore, and collegamento (B) also can be considered hypernyms of site, page, account, file, browser, and link (A) respectively. Hence we can say that, with regard to the choice of the speaker of the borrowed term we observe in Italian on the Internet that the 177 following is true: B ⊃ A. The selection of a native term over an Italian term is reasonable if the context in which the term is uttered is understood to the hearer, or in other words, one does not have to use the term with the greater connotative set to be understood since the connotative set refers to the domain in which the term is used. The terms streaming, hotspot, spam, and email have Italian synonyms which have all been created by compounding having as their Italian counterparts respectively: diffusione di audiovisivi, area sensibile, posta spazzatura, and posta elettronica. These terms had no preexisting counterparts in the Italian language and were thus created to fill a lexical gap. posta spazzatura > Dn{a}, Cn{x} spam > Dn{a}, Cn{x,y,z...} The arrival of the English terms, which are shorter and more emblematic, have displaced these terms almost entirely in the data. Therefore, with regard to synonymy of nouns and noun phrases, we can predict two cases: 1. if B ⊃ A, then B (the most general term is selected from Italian) 2. if B = A, then A (the shortest, most emblematic term is selected from English) 5.3.2 Competing Terms: Verbs and Verb Phrases In chapter four we observed that Italian on the Internet favours the use of the verbs caricare (to upload) and scaricare (to download) to the English borrowings fare uploading/uplodare and fare downloading/downlodare respectively. I postulated that the selection of native verbs may be 178 based on a preference for the transitive verb forms which allow for greater lexicalization of a term allowing further embedding into the morphosyntax of the recipient language. As mentioned in 5.4.2, transitive constructions allow more flexibility in passivization, which in turn allows for the creation of adjectives formed from past participles and substantives formed through the nominalization of adjectives. This was how cliccatissimi (‘most visited [site]’/’most popular [person]’) was formed from cliccare after it developed out of fare (un) click/clic. The use of the verbal syntagms (verb phrases) with fare would not allow for these neologisms in Italian (see 5.4.3). If we consider however the semantic motivations for the selection of these verbs, leaving aside their transitive nature, we can conclude that the same pattern holds as true for verbs as it does for nouns and noun phrases. The connotative sets associated with the Italian verbs scaricare and caricare are broader: scaricare (tr) > Dn{a}, Cn{x,y,z...} downlodare (tr) /fare downloding (intr) > Dn{a}, Cn{x}, caricare (tr) > Dn{a}, Cn{x,y,z...} uplodare (tr)/fare uploding (intr) > Dn{a}, Cn{x} Though the list of competing terms for verbs and verb phrases is small, we can say from the evidence that B is a superset of A and that: if B ⊃ A, then B (the most general term is selected). We have no other competing verb forms because many of the actions denoted by these verbs did not exist before the Internet era: fare blogging/bloggare, fare chat/chattare, fare click/cliccare, 179 fare login/loggarsi. An argument could be made for fare chat/chattare as it falls into the category: chiacchierare > Dn{a}, Cn{x,y,z...} chattare (intr)/fare chat (intr) > Dn{a}, Cn{x} For this we can argue that, as above, if B = A, then A (the shortest, most emblematic term is selected). Therefore, as long as it is not too cumbersome in form, the winning competing term is most often that which already exists in the recipient language and has a large connotative set. It is appropriate to note that chiacchierare is a marked verb as its unmarked counterpart is parlare. Since Italian favours the unmarked, more general term (hypernym), it is logical to conclude that this is the reasoning behind the selection of chattare. 5.3.3 Distribution of Semantic Load The connotative aspects of all of the terms explored in this study can be broken down to some very basic semantic categories. In chapter four, nouns and noun phrases were examined using Pustejovsky’s Qualia Structure. We can conclude that the core terms (nouns and noun phrases) fall into the following semantic categories: 180 Qualia Structure Italian Terms on the Internet Constitutive 1. locus (sito/site) (three types) 2. metaphor of physical object in the real world (rete/web) 3. physical object that one can experience, use, or visualize but cannot touch Formal 1. locus (two types) 2. physical object that one can experience, use, or visualize but cannot touch Telic: function 1. Instrument whereby X is performed (X= keep, communicate, or access) (one) Agentive 1. creator (only in the case of blogger, bloggista, and downloader) (two types) 2. artifact (elsewhere) Of the above categories, we can say that the two most common salient features in all terms are their telic and formal roles. The terms are either instruments and/or loci. Some terms like Web, can be both. With regard to the semantic analysis of verbs, we must remember that the most frequently used verbs in this domain are those that derive from the English borrowings blog, chat, click and log. The verb forms derived from these nouns contain the same core information as that expressed in the chart above. In 2.4.4, I asserted that, in the organization of my data, the creation of categories of terminology was based upon areas of use and outlined the following categories: i. general web functions ii. email and filesharing iii.blogging The above areas of usage are deemed most relevant to a banalized context because these categories apply to users outside the Internet technology or software design sectors. It is indeed the functional role of these terms that makes them the most relevant to everyday users of the Internet and, as the data revealed, underlines the important role of functionality (instrument) on 181 the web (locus). The greatest number of terms fall under general web functions that are comprised of the following subcategories: iii. email/mail; iv. blog and blogging It was originally proposed in chapter one that the terms were thought to have a terminogenic trait which is central to the meaning of the term. Through the analysis of nouns in chapter three, I have found that this comes from its telic (function) role. If we look at the term la chat, we see that its semantic makeup comprises: [TELIC: communicate, LOCUS: room/virtual]. As chat is a central term having many manifestations through the phenomenon of lexicalization, we can say that all manifestations of chat are borne from this central meaning. 182 5.3.4 Paradigms: The Collocation of Terms To distinguish between paradigmatic and syntagmatic relationships, Roland Barthes (1967) used the analogy of clothing. A syntagm is the combination of hat, shoes, gloves while paradigmatic is that of sandals, boots, shoes, etc. In an example offered by David Lodge, Susan Spiggle explains in more detail how this might apply to a girl wearing a T-shirt, jeans and sandals: Each paradigm contains a possible set of pieces from which she can choose only one. From the upper-body- garment paradigm (including blouses, T-shirts, sweaters), she selects one. These items share a similar structure, function, or other attribute with others in the set: they are related to one another on the basis of similarity. She selects items related by similarity from the lower-body-garment and footwear paradigms. A socially defined, shared classification system or code shapes her selections. She combines the selected signs through rules (i.e. T-shirts go with sandals, not high heels), sending a message through the ensemble - the syntagm. Selection requires her to perceive similarity and opposition among signs within the set (the paradigm), classifying them as items having the same function or structure, only one of which she needs. She can substitute, or select, a blouse for the T-shirt - conveying a different message. The combination, T-shirt–jeans–sandals, requires her to know the “rules by which garments are acceptably combined[...] The combination... is, in short, a kind of sentence” (Lodge 1977, 74). The T-shirt–jeans–sandals syntagm sends a different message at the beach than at a formal occasion. (Spiggle 1998, 159). Allan asserts a similar notion to that of Lodge and Spiggle with regard to the collocation of terms (listemes) relating this to the context (frame) in which the term used: “Though different researchers probably understand the term frame differently, the consensus is that it is the structure for information about a listeme that identifies its form and meaning and constrains its 183 collocation with other listemes. The frame creates co-occurrence conditions on listemes that replace the traditional but impracticable ‘selection restrictions’ ” (2001, 257). Through the lexicalization of core terms, Italian on the Internet establishes these roles (collocations and restrictions) very carefully using derivational morphology and gender assignment. The terms are lexicalized this way because the Italian speaker uses them systematically and therefore appropriately. The occasion of which we speak here is the Internet/the Web/virtual space. The domain of use is expressed in the connotatum of the sign. This is why we are still likely to see native Italian terms like pagina and conto where page and account exist because the former are unmarked for connotata and it is the domain of use which inherently assigns this meaning to them without the need for accompanying adjectives or specifying complements. 5.4 The Expression of Internet Italian on the Internet In chapter one I noted that, given the high frequency of borrowing from English in Italian on the Internet, it is fair to say that the boundaries of superficial contact have been crossed. I argued that, in this particular domain of use, the contact between the two languages on the Internet should be characterized as “slightly more intense”, which parallels, Stage 2 of Thomas and Kaufman’s borrowing scale (Thomason & Kaufman 1988, 120)51. With regard to the lexicon, Italian on the Internet borrows terms of an instrumental or locative nature. Function words prevail and are used to fill lexical gaps where no other term exists in the recipient language. However, when Italian does have its own term for a referent, the English borrowing will take 51 The scale of borrowing proposed by Thomason and Kaufman is as follows: Stage 1: Casual contact (lexical borrowings only); Stage 2: Slightly more intense contact (function words and slight structural borrowing); Stage 3: More intense contact (basic and non- basic vocabulary, moderate structural borrowing); Stage 4: Intense contact (heavy lexical and structural borrowing) (Adapted from Thomason and Kaufman [1988]) 184 precedence if the following two criteria are met: i.) if the form is less cumbersome; ii.) in the case of metaphor: e.g. finestra [APERTURE]. The telic function [SEE THROUGH] is the most salient feature. Since it is readily accessible in Italian to the Italian speaker, finestra and not window, is the logical choice. In terms of structural borrowing, Italian on the Internet favours right-headed compound constructions of the type [N+N]N or [Adj + N]N rather than syntagmatic contructions with the specifying preposition di. The syntax of these calques mimics that of English syntax. A prime example of this is seen in chapter four: attacchi cyber vs. cyber attacchi. The existence of the latter, and others like it, is a striking testament to the influence of English syntax on the Italian language in this domain of use. It is essential to mention that this syntactic pattern however is bound to compound constructions since cyber is not an adjective but a noun complement which cannot stand alone on the right of a copula. This slight structural borrowing offers proof that English, in this context, has had a profound effect on Italian syntax. 5.4.1 Italian on the Internet as a Banalised Language My original hypothesis was that Italian on the Internet would conform with the principal characteristics of banalisation defined by Galisson. As mentioned in chapter one, Galisson made the following five assertions regarding the banalised language of football terminology in the French language (392-96). These five categories will be expanded upon with a comparison of my findings: 185 5.4.1.1 Comparison of Galisson’s Banalised Language and Italian on the Internet Category Galissonʼs Description Italian on the Internet Description a) composition banalised vocabulary is a borrowed Compounds are productive and are vocabulary of the composite type characterized in the following way: (compound forms are very productive) i.) they are endocentric (A+B denotes a special kind of B): web- battaglia, cyber spazio ii.) they are adjectival (noun complements) for the most part iii.) only a few complements (meaning here: adjectival nouns) are used and these are highly productive in combination with incipient suffixes. The adjunct roles of these complements are locatives and instrumentals. b) nature and has an explicit balanced formula, has an explicit balanced formula, form which allies it with current vocabulary which allies it with current more than with technical vocabulary: vocabulary more than with i) adjectival and adverbial items that technical vocabulary: i) adjectival are rare in technical language and adverbial items that are rare in comprise one fifth of its banalised technical language are formed from vocabulary he studied; ii) verbs, which the lexicalization of core function represent only one sixth of the lexical terms through the participial inventory of technical languages make passivization of newly formed up one third of banalised vocabulary; verbs ii) verbs, which represent iii) nominal items that represent five only one sixth of the lexical sixths of technical vocabulary account inventory of technical languages for less than one half of banalised make up one third of banalised vocabulary vocabulary; iii) nominal items and verbs are just less than equal in number 186 Category Galissonʼs Description Italian on the Internet Description c) choice of banalised vocabulary retains from retains from technical vocabulary technical technical vocabulary those items terms which have the largest vocabulary and which have the largest coverage coverage ability that relate to borrowing ability; it borrows vocabulary of value function and locus and uses these from current judgments, war, business from current across most grammatical categories vocabulary vocabulary through lexicalization: i.) productivity of compound complements: Web and cyber ii.) lexicalization of nouns: blog, chat, click, log(in) d) usage in banalised vocabulary technical Technical terms are used in all volume terms have global usage contexts of Italian on the Internet (newspapers, blogs, forums). e) different banalised vocabulary proscribes the data attests to several kinds of formal redundancy, relies liberally on competing terms, many of which sensitivity synonyms, which according to Cabré were used in the same newspaper (1999) is atypical of technical articles to avoid redundancies. The languages, and uses different verb competing terms (Italian term vs. tenses systematically Borrowed term) are generally distributed in the following way: Italian term > Dn{a}, Cn {x,y,z...} Borrowed term > Dn{a}, Cn{x} Verb tenses are systematic and highly developed as explained in 5.1.3 metaphors, created from preexisteing Italian terms (rete, finestra) are employed which are generally not used in technical language (see p. 131-133, Chapman & Routledge, 2009) 187 We can conclude that Italian on the Internet is indeed a banalised language according to Galisson’s criteria. My goal in this study was to make a case for banalised language use but also to find out more about the mechanisms of language adaptation and denomination patterns. We have witnessed that this domain of language use has a minimal and very exact connotation but large and very exact denotative component. This exact denotative component is to be expected for most loans as we see in technical vocabulary elsewhere. Its terms are characterized by markedness, that is to say, a specific connotative set that refers mainly to locus of use (the Internet/the Web). Where Italian has equivalent or near equivalent terms to the borrowed terms, economy and speed is the guiding ethic. If the native form is too complex (syntagms, complements of specification, etc.) the borrowed term will override it. In the case of nouns, their gender is often determined by their underlying Italian gloss but, at times, uses number to encode information in short (suggesting efficiency), economic forms: la chat = chatroom (room= la stanza [feminine, singular]); le chat = chatting/online conversations (a chit chat= le chiacchiere [feminine, plural]). Phonologically, borrowed terms are aberrant, ending in consonants rather than vowels. Some endings defy the phonotactic constraints of the language such as the frequently used -ing suffix and the English sigmatic plural ending which defies both the phonology of Italian and its inflectional morphology. Their English phonology makes them stand out, giving them an emblematic quality. We recall from Un Manifesto in difesa della lingua italiana Vertone’s words about lexical innovation and the acceptance of borrowings: “Italian is not a lexically rich language. It compensates however for its relative lexical shortcomings through its extraordinarily rich morphology and syntax [...] lexical purism is not important; linguistic borrowings are useful and so contamination is quite likely if the borrowing proves 188 effective. Intelligent innovations are welcome but syntax must be preserved at all costs since it is the backbone of all language”.52 Emblematic, English words are welcome as long as they contribute and Italian, as seen in this study does employ its rich morphology and syntax through the lexicalization of core terms. In conclusion, Banalised language is borne out of a unique language contact situation whereby a technical language from a foreign language is, by necessity, grafted on to a recipient language (Galisson 1978: 9). The items of acculturation are function terms which are borrowed at a rapid rate due to the quick and dynamic nature of the domain of use. The most frequent, core function terms (nouns) are those that have the greatest valency making them highly reactive to Italian morphosyntax through which they are optimized to form verbs, adjectives (through passivization) and derivative substantives. These terms are only able to embed so deeply into the Italian language due to their high frequency of use which allows them to develop an argument structure. Banalised language bridges the technical language of the lending language to the recipient language but becomes part of the recipient language at the morphological, syntactic and semantic level as evidenced by its global usage in written Italian language media gathered from the Web. I contend that a phenomenon such banalisation can only be understood at these levels through a careful examination of large amounts of data in order to ascertain the real use of the term in its true context and co-text through its frequency. The object language, Italian Internet 52 L’italiano non è una lingua lessicalmente ricca. Ma compensa la sua relativa povertà di parole con una straordinaria ricchezza di costruzioni e movenze sintattiche […] il purismo lessicale non è importante; sono utili i prestiti linguistici, possibili le contaminazioni efficaci, benvenute le innovazioni intelligenti: ma è vitale la difesa della sintassi, che è la struttura ossea di qualsiasi linguaggio3. (Un Manifesto in difesa della lingua italiana, 2006, Online, accessed September 1st, 2007 189 terminology, is truly unique and worthy of investigation because of its unprecedented extent and context of use. There is undoubtably strong evidence that the Web is a unique domain of language use that can be categorized unequivocally as a banalised context. Given the unique linguistic patterns that banalised language takes, it merits being put under the microscope in order to gain a better understanding of how terms take on the meanings they do and how they are formed. It is evident from the literature review in chapter one that very little to no attention has been given to the notion of banalised language with regard to Italian Internet terminology. However, the many studies on Romance and non Romance languages consulted for this study have offered some important insights on theoretical and methodological approaches, namely Galisson, Wexler, Sonina, and Wooldridge. 5.5 Applications and Future Work 5.5.1 Phonological and Prosodic Aspects of Italian on the Internet and Constraints on Borrowings As mentioned in this chapter, the emblematic character of much of Internet terminology in Italian is due to its phonologically aberrant (most often ending in consonants) character. The phonological form of Italian terminology on the Internet gives terms a prominent, stand out sort of quality making them highly emblematic and highly effective. Loanwords can be more or less integrated phonologically and morphologically. Much of the current literature on loanwords is devoted to studying regularities of integration as a way of gaining insight into the nature of phonological and morphological structure. We may look at phonology as a potential factor as to why some words that are not easily pronounceable in the recipient language are inevitably not borrowed. One limiting factor not yet discussed is that of phonological assimilation. In 1971, 190 Gaetano Rando commented on modern Italian’s “somewhat limited capacity for phonological assimilation” and predicted that, as a result, Italian would have the “tendency to assimilate the numerous anglicisms it borrows by semantic means rather than by adaptation or by derivation” (Rando 251). However, the Web is not a spoken medium and its rapid and highly visual nature may render some models of word formation phonology difficult to apply. Proof of how terms are articulated would be necessary to draw any tangible conclusions. However, this does not preclude the value of doing an exhaustive study of lexical borrowings and neologisms in context to help determine which phonological or prosodic constraints may hinder or facilitate borrowability. 5.5.2 English Suffixation in Italian The English bound morphemes -er and -ing appear to have a relatively productive status in Italian Web Language. Viewing these morphemes in context may reveal more information about how Italian speakers interpret those forms and what meaning is assigned to them. In the present study, it was found that -ing and -er are markers of specific categories, namely expressing verbal (dynamic) action and agent respectively. It would be interesting to view these suffixes in other domains of use to see if this is always the case. 5.5.3 Diachronic Approach This study was synchronic but future study of this expression of language and the phenomenon of banalisation could benefit from a diachronic approach in order to gives us further insights on the stages of development of optimized terms such as blog, chat, click, and log(in). We can check frequencies of the verb phrases fare blog, fare chat, fare click, and fare login and compare, over 191 time, when frequencies start to get higher for their fully lexicalized equivalents: bloggare, chattare, cliccare, and loggarsi. Some challenges are expected, however, when conducting a study of this nature. I have chosen to restrict my base corpus of terms to a synchronic approach. However, now that I have ascertained from the data which terms are strongest (central terms), it would be a logical next step to conduct a diachronic study of optimized terms using the Wayback Machine53. Three or so years hence I will be able to compare relative frequencies of 2010 data with future data. 5.5.4 Second Language Teaching and Learning What is most important about this study is that it is a case of lexical innovation that embraces more complex and far-reaching aspects of the language. In the classroom it would be useful to teach students the core vocabulary needed to navigate through a domain of use such as that of the Internet because it affords them the unique opportunity to work with optimized (lexicalized) items, which will reveal to them the morphological, syntactic and semantic patterns that Italian takes. Since I contend that these patterns would not be very different (more or less productive dependent on frequency of use) in other domains of study, such as online gaming, we have a strong set of real examples, based on a few core terms that an intermediate group of students 53 “The Wayback Machine is a front end to the Internet Archive's collection of public Web pages. It includes more than 100 terabytes of date—a huge collection with huge storage requirements. The Wayback Machine provides access to this wealth of data by URLs. It is not text searchable —a user needs to know the exact URL of a particular Web page, or at least the Web site, to be able to enter the archive. Upon entering an Internet address, the Wayback Machine presents a list of dates showing when that particular page has been archived. A check on the home page for the Library of Congress finds archived pages from November 9, 1996 through yesterday. There are far fewer pages in the 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999 archives. In 2001, there was a copy from almost every other day.” (http://www.onlinemag.net/mar02/OnTheNet.htm) 192 could learn and use in a very short period of time. Therefore, the student would learn not only core vocabulary but be able to understand how the lexical inventory behaves within the grammatical system of Italian. In current trends both in North America and abroad, the approach to teaching the lexicon comprises list of separate nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions (in order of number of terms) that deal with a particular context such as going to the doctor’s office or summer vacations. When derivational and inflectional morphology are taught, they are generally taught in a separate lesson where terms and their derivatives are often in isolation to one another. This approach would be different in that it would teach the learner how to use the grammatical system of the borrowing language, using a smaller more frequent set of terms, and not just its lexical inventory. 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