Do well, do good: fare bene, benino, benone, benissimo. Italian lexicography in disarray

Abstract

When Italian bene‘good/well'occurs post-verbally with fare ‘ do' , several constructs with remarkably different argument frames are involved. This paper deals with three of them: (a) Il latte fa bene ai bambini ‘ Milk is good for children ' ; (b ) Fa bene il suo lavoro ‘ She does her job well' , and (c) Faresti bene a non dire niente ‘ You would do well to say nothing about it ' . We discuss dictionary discrepancies concerning the lexical category of bene in (a), which we take to be a noun predicate , and draw a distinction between the adverbial uses in (b) and (c).