A manner of evaluating: Italian deverbal evaluative motion verbs

Abstract

This study investigates the semantic-functional intersection of evaluation and manner in Italian deverbal evaluative verbs (DEVs), with a specific focus on motion events. Adopting a WordNet-based classification and drawing from the ItWac corpus, the research shows that the process of evaluative suffixation is governed by specific actional constraints, revealing a marked selectional preference for atelic, dynamic, and durative activity bases. The analysis reveals that agentivity acts as the crucial determinant for semantic interpretation: high-agentive contexts foster manner readings, characterized by disengaged, non-uniform, or spatially scattered motion, whereas reduced agentivity shifts the morphological output toward attenuation. Furthermore, the study highlights that suffixes autonomously contribute manner components, even to path-based verbs, often encoding event-internal pluractionality. Ultimately, these DEVs function as mechanisms of approximation, enabling speakers to linguistically grade the deviation of specific events from prototypical category standards.