Le locuzioni preposizionali. Struttura lessicale e gradi di lessicalizzazione

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present a general account of a particular type of Italian multiword lexical items, i.e. prepositional locutions such as a causa di, di fronte a, al di fuori di, al termine di. First a detailed analysis of the lexical composition of prepositional locutions is carried out, then various syntactic tests are performed in order to assess the lexicalization degree of these structures, and finally a lexicalization scale is proposed on which prepositional locutions can be ordered from the most word-like to the most phrase-like.