Uno stra-prefisso: l'evoluzione di stra- nella storia dell'italiano

The aim of this paper is to examine the Italian prefix stra-, by focusing on its diachronic evolution in the written language (from 12th century Literature to 20th century Literature). In Modern Italian, stra- (derived from the Latin adverb and preposition extra ‘outside; beyond’) is classified as belonging to the morphological category of evaluative prefixes with an augmentative function. More precisely, given that, across languages, the semantic values typically associated with evaluative morphology are small/big (‘quantitative dimension’), and good/bad (‘qualitative dimension’), stra- is considered as denoting the qualitative meaning good. Using a corpus-based analysis, I will show how since its origins stra- may express also the qualitative meaning bad, especially if it occurs with verbal bases. It will be further suggested that a diachronic reason may be invoked in order to explain why at first this prefix is used mainly with adjectives and also with verbs (although to a lesser extent), whereas it is not extended to nouns (with a few exceptions; indeed, stra- is productively applied to nouns only recently). This contradicts a well-known cross-linguistic tendency on the basis of which evaluative affixes primarily combine with the category Noun, and only afterwards with the category Adjective and the category Verb.