Abstract
Category change and recategorization processes have received renewed attention in recent years. In this paper, we focus on the shift from noun to adjective on the basis of a corpus-based study of the Dutch lexical item luxe ‘luxury; luxurious’. What is particularly interesting about this case is that in some contexts luxe combines nominal and adjectival properties (e.g. een erg luxe hotel ‘a very luxury/luxurious hotel’) and displays some intersective gradience. We will investigate to what extent luxe exhibits the typical profile of an adjective in present-day Dutch by applying a specific set of synchronic criteria, in addition to a diachronic analysis of the data, and by taking into account regional variation between Belgian and Netherlandic Dutch. This detailed data analysis will allow us to examine which type of recategorization process is responsible for the N>A shift. Since the category change is not formally marked, we will examine whether we are dealing with a case of conversion (a regular morphological process of category change) or syntactic transposition (the ad hoc use of a lexical item in a syntactic context typical of another category). We will conclude that this particular type of change cannot be correctly attributed to either conversion or syntactic transposition and that a new type of category change should be considered responsible for this case and similar ones, i.e. “morphological transposition”. This process takes place within attributive compounds and is followed by a process of debonding and further context expansion.
Acknowledgements
Kristel Van Goethem is a Research Associate of the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique and thanks the F.R.S.-FNRS for support of her research project “Language innovation through constructionalization: A multiple source account of category change in French and Dutch.”. Nikos Koutsoukos gratefully acknowledges the support of the “MOVE-IN Louvain Incoming Post-doctoral Fellowship,” co-funded by the Marie Curie Actions of the European Commission’.
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© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Original Article
- Coordinating nominal compounds: Universal vs. areal tendencies
- Grammaticalization of subject agreement on evidence from Italo–Romance
- Frequency and serial order
- On the phonemic status of nasalized /h̃/ in Modern Zuberoan Basque
- “Morphological transposition” as the onset of recategorization: The case of luxe in Dutch
- The morphologization of negation constructions in Nalca (Mek, Tanah Papua), or, how nothing easily moves to the middle of a word
- Sonority distance and similarity avoidance effects in Moroccan Judeo-Spanish
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Original Article
- Coordinating nominal compounds: Universal vs. areal tendencies
- Grammaticalization of subject agreement on evidence from Italo–Romance
- Frequency and serial order
- On the phonemic status of nasalized /h̃/ in Modern Zuberoan Basque
- “Morphological transposition” as the onset of recategorization: The case of luxe in Dutch
- The morphologization of negation constructions in Nalca (Mek, Tanah Papua), or, how nothing easily moves to the middle of a word
- Sonority distance and similarity avoidance effects in Moroccan Judeo-Spanish