I composti nominali del tedesco in ottica testuale: composti usualizzati vs. composti occasionali

The present contribution aims to highlight the possible difficulties that DaF learners may encounter while decoding nominal compounds. More specifically, the paper further explores the interpretative challenges learners typically face when interpreting lexicalized and occasional compounds. It will be shown that while correctly decoding the meaning of lexicalized compounds can be quite challenging—if not extremely complex—in some cases, occasional compounds are usually easier to interpret, as they are typically accompanied by disambiguating contextual information, which is necessary also for expert speakers in order to access their meaning.