Italian Multiword Adverbs: distributional features and functional properties. A corpus based analysis

This research proposes a theoretical and descriptive study of a set of Italian Multiword Adverbs extracted from a corpus; the corpus-based investigation has been driven simultaneously considering the interaction of distributional and functional properties of selected Multiword Adverbs. In particular, the research deals with prepositional phrases covering an adverbial function and showing a particularly high degree of cohesion between their constituents (Multiword Adverbs-PP), such as: di solito 'usually', a occhio e croce 'more or less', per filo e per segno 'chapter and verse'. The quantitative corpus analysis reveals that this analytical resource is particularly exploited in Italian. The investigation aims at achieving two main objectives. Firstly, the computational analysis reveals to which extent the distribution of Multiword Adverbs-PP may vary depending on their functional properties. Thirdly, the corpus-based investigation gives evidence of subcategories, according to the distributional properties as well as to the functional values of sets of Multiword Adverbs-PP.