Carácter combinatorio y productividad en UF italianas sobre la locura basadas en metáforas de orientación y con estructura “verbo + componente preposicional + sustantivo/pronombre”

Abstract

This study investigates the productivity of Italian phraseological units (PUs) on madness based on orientational metaphors and with the structure “verb + prepositional component + noun/pronoun” (of the type essere fuori di testa). Initially, by consulting four online dictionaries, 17 expressions have been compiled. Their combinatorial nature (they represent different combinations of the same elements) and a lack of homogeneity in the lexicographical information (not all of them appear in all dictionaries) have led to assume the existence of other similar uses that have not been recorded. Therefore, following a principle of semantic-grammatical coherence, 71 combinations more have been formulated and the Italian Web 2020 corpus has been consulted to check their actual use. The consultation confirmed a frequent use of 18 of them. It was thus possible to link the productivity that characterises the examined PUs to a semantic-conceptual/grammatical motivation.