Il tipo "macchina da scrivere" tra norma, competenza grammaticale e sintassi storica

In this paper, we deal with constructions featuring a noun followed by “da + infinitive”, such as macchina da scrivere and macchina da cucire. During the 20th century, such phrases were considered wrong by some grammarians; the rule that grammarians proposed instead was to replace the preposition da with the preposition per, as in macchina per scrivere and macchina per cucire. As a matter of fact, this prescription influenced at least one generation of students, as can be seen in posts and discussions found on websites and in grammar questions addressed to linguists. Historical linguists reject such a prescription, showing that constructions with da frequently are found in OldItalian texts, as in tavolo da giocare, armi da combattere, pancha da sedere, and cane da combattere. Until now, there have been no attempts to provide a linguistic explanation of the state of things. The apparent contradiction can be solved if one takes into account a syntactic re-analysis that took place within the transition from Old to Modern Italian: the syntactic role of the name preceding “da + infinitive” has no relevance in Old Italian; on the contrary, in Modern Italian, the name must correspond to the direct object of the infinitive (i.e., libro da leggere, cf. leggere il libro, but *coltello da tagliare, cf. *tagliare il coltello). Phrases like macchina da scrivere were not affected by such a restriction, as they are phrasemes, hence perceived as a unity.