Romanica Olomucensia 2025, 37(1):41-59 | DOI: 10.5507/ro.2025.003

Movimento reale, metaforico e fittizio nei proverbi italiani: l'influenza dei componenti semantici di Traiettoria e Maniera

Nicola Florio ORCID...
Universidad de Salamanca, Spain

L'obiettivo di questo articolo è presentare l'analisi dell'espressione del movimento nella lingua italiana effettuata sulla base del corpus di proverbi compilato da Lapucci nel Dizionario dei proverbi italiani, al fine di osservare l'influenza dei componenti semantici di Traiettoria e Maniera lessicalizzati nei verbi stessi quando si descrivono eventi di movimento reale, metaforico e fittizio. Con l'approccio della Linguistica dei Corpora, per questo studio sono stati analizzati più di 25.000 proverbi italiani, tra cui sono stati selezionati solo quelli composti da verbi di movimento. Gli oltre duemila proverbi identificati sono stati classificati in base al verbo di movimento principale e raggruppati in base al tipo di movimento espresso e ai componenti semantici lessicalizzati nella radice verbale. La selezione dei proverbi è stata studiata in profondità per estrarre dati statistici sulla frequenza d'uso di ogni verbo di movimento, sulla varietà semantica in termini di tipologie di movimento espresse, sui componenti semantici lessicalizzati nella radice verbale e sulla produttività di ogni verbo nella costruzione di eventi di movimento reali, metaforici o fittizi. Lo studio esaustivo effettuato dimostra che la lingua italiana ha un'ampia varietà di verbi di movimento, che non solo forniscono dettagli sulla Traiettoria, ma anche sulla Maniera in cui avviene il movimento, e i dati ottenuti ci portano a pensare che i componenti semantici di Traiettoria e Maniera lessicalizzati nella radice verbale giochino un ruolo rilevante nel movimento reale, metaforico e fittizio espresso nei proverbi.

Parole-chiave: italiano; proverbi; movimento; lessicalizzazione; Traiettoria; Maniera

Literal, metaphorical, and fictive motion in Italian proverbs: the influence of Path and Manner semantic components

The purpose of this paper is to present a corpus-based study carried out to analyse the expression of motion in the Italian language through the compilation of Italian proverbs gathered by Lapucci in his Dizionario dei proverbi italiani, aiming to examine the influence of Path and Manner semantic components conflated in the verbs for the description of literal, metaphorical, and fictive motion. Based on a Corpus Linguistics approach, for this study more than 25,000 Italian proverbs were analysed, and only those containing motion verbs were selected. More than 2,000 Italian proverbs were identified and classified according to their main motion verb and then grouped by the type of motion expressed and the semantic components conflated in the verb root. The compilation of Italian proverbs was studied in depth in order to obtain statistical data about the frequency of use of each motion verb, semantic variety in terms of different types of motion expressed, the semantic components conflated in the verb root, and the productivity of each verb for the construction of literal, metaphorical, or fictive motion events. The extensive study that was carried out confirms that the Italian language offers a wide variety of motion verbs that include not only details about Path but also about the Manner in which motion is performed, and the data that was collected suggests that the semantic components of Path and Manner conflated in the verb root play a relevant role in literal, metaphorical, and fictive motion expressed in Italian proverbs.

Keywords: Italian; proverbs; motion; lexicalisation; Path; Manner

Received: November 6, 2023; Revised: April 5, 2024; Accepted: June 18, 2024; Published: July 5, 2025  Show citation

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Florio N. Literal, metaphorical, and fictive motion in Italian proverbs: the influence of Path and Manner semantic components. Romanica Olomucensia. 2025;37(1):41-59. doi: 10.5507/ro.2025.003.
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