For an evolutionary lexical morphology of Sicilian

Abstract

This paper presents the first results of a research on the analysis of the word formation of Sicilian from a historical-diachronic perspective. To this end, the study started from the observation of the word formation processes of Sicilian from the consultation of the Vocabolario storico-etimologico del siciliano (VSES) by Alberto Varvaro (2014). The investigation made it possible to distinguish within the historically highly stratified Sicilian lexicon (selecting them among the structurally complex words): heritage lexemes, derived directly from Latin and in Latin already formed, exogenous lexemes, morphologically analyzable already in the source language, and Sicilian neoformations. To the present speaker, complex heritage lexemes and complex exogenous lexemes may appear, in some cases, transparent - where the internal structure is recognizable - and therefore examinable by 'Rules of Formation’, in other cases, semi-transparent or opaque, and therefore examinable by 'Rules of Analysis'; neoformations, on the other hand, are always perfectly transparent, and therefore examinable by 'Rules of Formation'. Taking into account the typology of the corpus under analysis (the entries of a dictionary) that allows the calculation of the frequency of abstract forms (lexemes), the type frequency (or numerosity) of affixes and formative patterns is focused on in the contribution. Finally, through morphological analysis some etymological data are discussed and reinterpreted with more satisfactory etymologies.