The confixes agro-, hydro- and phyto- in French with some aspects of the Italian language

A study on word-formation with neoclassical elements

The term confix is used for bound morphemes that are lexical but not inflectable. They are potentially productive depending on their morphosemantic motivation, whereby non-native confixes are more productive than native forms. In addition, confixes are characterized by their ability to combine with different kinds of other linguistic elements (e.g. suffixes).

André Martinet (1979) is the originator of the term, which was then taken up by Kocourek (1982) and later by Schmidt (1987).
In Romance linguistics, however, the terms confixe/confisso have not enjoyed much popularity. In particular, in French grammatical theory there is a multitude of descriptive terms for these bound morphemes, which are traditionally integrated in the framework of neoclassical compounding. Some Italian linguists, by contrast, have adopted the concept for their academic work (e.g. Adamo & Della Valle). Finally, German linguistic studies have paid a great deal of attention to the phenomenon. From there, one of the principal object of the present studies is to investigate whether and to what extend the “German” concept of confixes is applicable to French and Italian. These neoclassical elements, formerly limited to technical and specialist vocabularies, are today increasingly integrated into the common language.

The study will first and foremost focus on the semantics of the elements in question, on their reception in lexicography and on their role regarding neology. To sum up, the project is expected not only to explore linguistic findings, but also sociolinguistic aspects.