Why can one be irritabile ‘irritable’ but can not be *divertibile ‘amuse+able’? On Italian -bile adjectives from psychological verbs

Abstract

The paper proposes to set out the domain of application of the adjective forming Italian suffix -bile on the basis of the Aktionsart properties of verbs. In particular, -bile adjectives based on object-experiencer psychological verbs are discussed. It is suggested that, beyond actionality, another piece of information – culmination, concerning achievement verbs – is necessary to adequately account for the formation of these Italian adjectives. The presence / absence of the culmination feature allows to distinguish between two types of achievements, here called strong and weak achievements. It is shown that only weak achievements can constitute the domain of application of the suffix.