"Un itangliano semplesso": Analisi di due campioni di parole macedonia

This dissertation examines the phenomenon of lexical blends in Italian, also known as parole macedonia (Migliorini, 1941, 1942, 1946; Thornton, 2004c), with a particular focus on the phonological, morphological, and semantic characteristics of this morphological category. Within the framework of Natural Morphology (Dressler et al., 1987), the study situates blending along a continuum of word formation processes. After reviewing English and Italian studies on blending, the dissertation proposes an operational definition as well as a structural and semantic typology of blending. Two corpora of blended words, extracted using different methodologies, are analysed using a qualitative and quantitative approach. The study highlights several features of blending in Italian, such as the way source words are split mostly on syllabic (often morphologically relevant) boundaries, the occasional fluctuations in the assignment of grammatical gender, and the predominance of right- headed subordinative blends – a trend that contrasts with the left-headedness typically found in native Italian compounding (e.g., capostazione). This research advances the understanding of blending in Italian, and of extra-grammatical morphology in general, by providing a systematic framework for analysing lexical blending as an independent word formation process in Italian.