Turbo-composti: L’espressione morfologica dell’intensificazione per mezzo dell’elemento formativo turbo- in italiano e francese

Abstract

This paper contributes to the study of evaluative morphology by presenting an emerging morphological strategy in Italian and French that has not been investigated yet. Subjects of the analysis are Italian and French compounds containing the combining form turbo- (es. it. turboritardo, fr. turbo-baffe ‘turbo+slap ’). I ipothize that turbo-, originally exclusively used  for  the creation of specialized  terms of mechanics, has developed an evaluative meaning and started being used in everyday language to express a value linked to the functional domain of intensification. Based on  a corpus analysis, I will show the morphological, semantic and sociolinguistic features involved in the creation of the compounds in Italian and French. The aim of the study is to demonstrate the polysemic nature of turbo- and highlight the new role of compounding in the expression of intensification.