A manner of evaluating: Italian deverbal evaluative motion verbs

Abstract

This paper investigates the interaction between evaluative morphology and manner encoding in Italian deverbal evaluative motion verbs. Drawing on a WordNet-based classification and ItWac corpus data, it shows that evaluative suffixation preferentially selects dynamic, durative and atelic bases. Agentivity is the main factor determining interpretation: highly agentive contexts favour manner readings, typically involving discontinuous, non-uniform or spatially dispersed motion, whereas reduced agentivity promotes attenuation. Evaluative suffixes may also introduce manner components independently of the lexical semantics of the base, including with path verbs, often through event-internal pluractionality. The analysis therefore characterizes deverbal evaluative morphology as a mechanism of approximation, whereby events are represented as departing to varying degrees from prototypical category standards.