Verb-noun compounds versus synthetic compounds in English, German and Italian

4.1 English V-NCs and synonymous SCs in -er

The comparison between English V-NCs and SCs ending in -er reveals that instances where V-NCs and SCs share homophonous verbs and nouns, thus lacking lexical blocking, are extremely rare, as is to be expected within the NM framework. This rarity is evident in both historical and contemporary sources, as shown by data from the OED and the COCA. The examples in (1a) display agentive meaning:^[1]

These examples illustrate the predominance of V-NCs over SCs in both historical and modern usage. The significant disparity in frequency between the forms is clear from the COCA tokens, where V-NCs appear far more frequently than their SC counterparts. By contrast, in the last two examples, the SC precedes the corresponding V-NC.

Alongside these standard English examples, we also find two comparable modern coarse slang instances with agentive meaning in (1b), where the SC precedes the V-NC:

In both cases, frequency is limited.

The analysis of instrumental V-NCs against their SC counterparts in English reveals notable patterns:

These examples show that instrumental V-NCs are far more prevalent than their SC counterparts, although they are rarer than V-NCs with agentive meaning.

In contrast, some V-NCs exist solely as V-NCs without SC equivalents, but still distinguished into agentive (2a) and instrumental (2b):

These V-NCs do not have corresponding SC forms in either the OED or COCA, highlighting their unique status in the English lexicon. From the perspective of NM, the ambiguity of SCs and V-NCs is dispreferred because two forms correspond to a single meaning. Uniqueness, and especially biuniqueness, are preferred instead (Dressler and Kilani-Schoch 2016: 366), which suggests that either SCs or V-NCs would be developed in English. Indeed, English is the only language among the three investigated that has diachronically developed both patterns for the same meaning, yet with a clear synchronic prevalence of one over the other.

4.2 Predominance of English SCs over V-NCs

A quantitative analysis of the two patterns highlights a greater number of English SCs ending in -er compared to V-NCs. Of the overall 93 examples of English SCs collected in Mattiello and Dressler (2021, 2022), 68 display an agentive meaning, as in (3a):

Whereas 22 are instruments:

and only 3 are both agentive and instrumental:

English V-NCs total 45 examples, with a prevalence of instrumental (33, as in 4a) over agentive (12, as in 4b):

These data underscore the prevalence of SCs in the English language, particularly those with the agentive or instrumental -er ending. In NM, this dominance is explained by the iconicity between form and meaning (Dressler and Kilani-Schoch 2016). We found a predominance of agentive over instrumental meaning in SCs, but the opposite trend in V-NCs. This may be rather explained through the notion of analogy (see Section 4.9), as we often find compound families whose members share a verb base (e.g. washcloth, washday, washhouse) or, more rarely, a noun base (e.g. washday, workday). In the latter examples, the first constituent may be a verb or a converted noun (see Section 4.11), partially increasing ambiguity.

4.3 Competition and productivity

According to Gast (2008), when the noun in a compound is the semantic object of the verb (as seen in the previous examples),^[2] there exists competition between V-NCs and SCs ending in -er, though without the expected lexical blocking of one of the two patterns (see “conflicting motivations” in Dressler et al. 2014). However, the formation of V-NCs has been unproductive for some time, making the coexistence of synonymous V-NCs and SCs ending in -er rare. By contrast, there is no rivalry when the noun is the subject of the verb, as in the case of chatter + box (‘a very talkative person’).

Regarding the productivity of both patterns, Gast (2008: 270) claims that V-NCs are “particularly productive” in German (e.g., Schleifstein, Schlafzimmer, Esszimmer, Zahltag, Denkweise, Waschmaschine, Bauart, Parkverbot, Nährwert), while they occupy a “marginal position” in the lexico-grammatical system of English (e.g., cutthroat, carry cot, whetstone, scatterbrain, blowlamp, bumble-bee, checklist, drawbridge, drift ice, flick knife). He also notes that in some V-NCs, the first constituent can also function as a noun through conversion, as in call + girl (call as both verb and noun) and love + bird (love as both verb and noun). However, it is worth noting that in English V-NCs, the first constituent tends to refer to someone or something that performs the action (agent) or is used to perform it (instrument). By contrast, in German V-NCs, this is not the case. Among the German examples mentioned above, only Schleif + stein ‘whetstone’ and Wasch + maschine ‘washing machine’ are instrumental, with none being agentive, while the rest have other meanings – e.g., Ess + zimmer ‘dining room’.

Unlike Russian toponyms, such as Vladi + vostok and Vladi + kavkaz (lit. ‘dominate the East/Caucasus’), neither English nor German V-NCs include imperative forms. A comparable phenomenon, however, can be found in Austrian jokes, where phrasal place names that are homophonous with imperatives are humorously reinterpreted as commands. For instance, Melk/Spitz an der Donau are reimagined as “Milk/Sharpen on the Danube!”.

However, Marchand (1969) notes that such compounds often carry a pejorative connotation. For instance, killjoy was first attested in the OED in 1976 with the sense ‘one who or that which destroys joy or pleasure; one who throws a gloom over social enjoyment’. While the pattern as a synthetic compound (i.e., joy-killer) is not explicitly dated in the OED, its inclusion as a compound of joy suggests that its negative connotation may be less relevant, as the emphasis lies in its membership in the joy-X family. Structurally comparable German agentive V-NCs are also often pejorative, e.g., Wende + hals ‘turncoat, lit. turn + neck’.

In general, lexical blocking occurs between conceivable synonymous words. For example, the English word ghost + ly blocks the conceivably competing derivations ghost + y and ghost + ish. Alternatively, competition may lead to a difference in connotational meaning, as in woman + ish versus woman + ly, or in denotational meaning, as at least partially seen in court + eous versus court + ly (e.g., when combined with love or elegance).

The opacity of V-NCs obstructs their formation in English and German, where the transparency of SCs in -er is instead favoured. Their morphosemantic transparency accounts for their productivity. This aligns with the predictions of NM, which posits a universal preference for morphosemantic transparency over opacity.

4.4 German V-NCs and SCs in -e(r)

In German, V-NCs are very rare and generally unproductive: e.g.,

The personal name Fürchte + gott ‘fear God’, comparable to Ancient Greek Tim.ó+theos ‘venerate God’.

In German, there are no synonymous V-NCs and SCs ending in -er (see Section 4.1). Moreover, the formation of SCs ending in -er is productive, while SCs ending in -e are not productive (Gaeta and Zeldes 2017), an example being in (5b):

German instances of productive SCs in -er include both agentive (6a) and instrumental meaning (6b):

Both meanings are present in Eis + brech + er, as in its English translation ice + break + er. According to NM, N+ V + er compounds are more productive because they are morphosemantically more transparent than V-N compounds.

4.5 Italian V-NCs

Italian V-NCs are highly productive, as in other Romance languages, and can even be recursive. For example, porta + stuzzica + denti ‘toothpick container’, lit. ‘hold + pick + teeth’ is a common formation (Grossmann and Rainer 2004; Ricca 2015). These compounds cover a wide semantic spectrum, including, in order of frequency:

1. Instrument N: apri+scatol-e ‘can-opener’, lit. ‘open+can+s’;

2. Agent N: porta+letter-e ‘postman’, lit. ‘carry+letter+s’;

3. Event N: bacia+mano ‘hand-kissing’, lit. ‘kiss+hand’;

4. Location N: sparti+acqu-e ‘water divide’, lit. ‘separate+water+s’ (examples from Ricca 2010: 238).

Additionally, there are adjectival V-NCs, such as Qualifying A (mozza + fiato, ‘breathtaking’, lit. ‘cut + breath’) and Relational A (spara + neve, ‘snow cannon’, lit. ‘shoot + snow’). However, for the present research, only nominal compounds are of interest (see also Ricca 2005 for adjectival V-NCs).

Our data show that the dependent noun often appears in plural form, with no inflectional change in the compound plural (e.g., un attaccapanni ‘a coat rack’ → due attaccapanni ‘two coat racks’). In our sample, 50 % of compounds include a plural noun as the second constituent:

The noun may even be stimulated and therefore translated from English, as in:

This demonstrates the productivity of this pattern in Italian.

Instrumental V-NCs are the most common type in Italian, comprising 84 % of examples, including:

Additionally, agentive V-NCs make up 15 % of the dataset, most of which feature a plural second constituent:

These compounds are rarely pejorative, with a few exceptions:

The morphosemantic opacity of Italian V-NCs such as guastafeste explains their rarity from a NM viewpoint (Dressler and Kilani-Schoch 2016: 363), because transparency is favoured and preferred over partial or total opacity.

The productivity of the Italian pattern of V-NCs has been extensively demonstrated by Ricca (2010), who, through corpus data analysis, compared the weight of this process against competing derivational strategies (e.g. batti + panni ‘carpet beater’, lit. ‘beat + cloth + es’, vs. batti + mento ‘beat + ing’). Interestingly, Ricca (2010) also found a large number of hapaxes in a corpus of La Repubblica, further illustrating the pattern’s profitability in forming novel words.

Ricca (2010: 244) also notes that “VN compounds show a massive preference for bisyllabic verb bases”. This is confirmed by our data, with 86 % of examples containing a disyllabic verb base. However, this preference does not hold for English and German, whose verbs typically do not end in thematic vowels, as most Italian verbs do (e.g. Italian pel-a+patate vs. English potato + peeler and German Kartoffel + schäler).

4.6 Morphosemantic transparency/opacity of English and German V-NCs

English and German V-NCs tend to be less morphosemantically transparent – or more opaque – than SCs. Several factors contribute to this opacity:

1. Pejorative Connotation: The negative connotation of many V-NCs (especially in English) contributes to their metaphorical interpretation and morphosemantic opacity.

2. Cultural Shift: Over time, cultural changes can increase the opacity of V-NCs, as seen in examples like break + fast (meaning ‘end abstinence from food’) and dare + devil. Similarly, the German Wage + hals (‘foolhardy’, lit. ‘risk (the) neck’) lost its morphosemantic transparency after the practice of beheading ceased.

3. Metaphorical Opacity: Many V-NCs exhibit metaphorical opacity, such as turn + coat (equivalent to German Wende + hals, lit. ‘turn + neck’, and Italian volta + gabbana), spoil + sport, tell + tale, and German Wage + hals. In contrast, some V-NCs remain relatively transparent, like kill + joy and pick + pocket. The German compounds discussed in Section § 4.4 are morphosemantically opaque due to metaphor, with the exception of proper names such as Fürchte + gott lit. ‘fear + God’ (cf. Gott + lieb ‘dear to God’ and its quasi-synonyms Gott + hold, Gott + fried, lit. ‘God peaceful’, and the family name Got + helf, lit. ‘God helps’).

4. Language Contact: Borrowings from other languages can also affect transparency. For instance, French passe + temps, lit. ‘pass time’, became English pastime, and French coupe + gorge was translated into English cut + throat. In some cases, complete opacification occurs, as with French couvre + feu (lit. ‘cover + fire’), which became English curfew, resulting in the loss of morphological boundaries.^[5]

These factors highlight the varying degrees of transparency and opacity in V-NCs across English and German. Needless to say, opacity is dispreferred in NM as compared to transparency. Thus, the morphosemantic opacity of breakfast and the actual loss of the morphological boundary in curfew make them dispreferred and marked choices within naturalness theory.

4.7 Morphosemantic transparency/opacity of English SCs

In general, English SCs ending in -er tend to be more transparent than V-NCs. This aligns with the discrepancy between the presence of agentive meaning and the absence of agentive form, which results in anti-iconic subtraction in V-NCs – a factor contributing to their dispreferred status in NM.

SCs can function as either agentive (e.g., ball + player) or instrumental nouns (e.g., back + scratcher). Sometimes the same compound formation can be both agentive (referring to a person) and instrumental (referring to an object). For example, beachcomber metaphorically means either ‘a drifter or vagrant who lives on or spends a lot of time at the seashore, often scavenging for items to sell or looking for casual work’ or ‘a long wave that rolls onto the shore’. Among a total of 93 SCs in -er, only a small subset demonstrates morphosemantic opacity:

Overall, SCs are less opaque than V-NCs. For example, taleteller is relatively transparent, as it functions exclusively as an agentive noun meaning ‘a person who tells false stories or gossips’ (cf. the German translation Geschichten + erzähl + er ‘story teller, someone who tells stories that are not true’). By contrast, telltale exhibits greater opacity because it serves both agentive and instrumental functions. It can refer to ‘a person who idly or maliciously discloses information about another’s private affairs or behaviour’ or to ‘a thing which reveals or discloses something, esp. something not intended to be made known; a revealing gesture, symptom, etc.’. This ambiguity, where one form conveys two distinct meanings, as seen in telltale, is generally disfavored within NM.

Another factor which determines opacity is pejorative usage. Pejorative meanings appear in only a few English SCs:

The relative scarcity of SCs in -er displaying a pejorative sense can be explained within NM by their morphosemantic opacity, which is generally dispreferred. Similarly, the German compound Blutsauger ‘bloodsucker’ carries metaphorical and pejorative meaning. However, the general trend indicates that English SCs in -er – even when pejorative – are typically clearer and more straightforward than their V-NC counterparts, which tend to exhibit greater morphosemantic opacity.

4.8 Transparency/opacity of Italian V-NCs

Italian V-NCs exhibit varying degrees of transparency and opacity, often influenced by metaphor and metonymy. Morphosemantic opacity via metaphor is illustrated in both agentive examples (12a) and instrumental examples (12b). Of the Italian agentive V-NCs illustrated in (12a), 9 (out of 18 examples) display metaphorical meaning:

Italian metaphorical V-NCs with an instrumental meaning correspond to 10 (out of 100 examples):

Morphosemantic opacity via metonymy is finally illustrated by the example in (12c), referring to ‘a document issued by competent civil authority granting permission to the person named in it to travel in or out of a country or authenticating his right to protection while abroad’, with an absent head:

The word originates from French passe-porte [1500], meaning ‘authorization to travel through a country’, derived from Old French passeport, ‘authorization to pass through a port, to enter or leave a country’ (15th century) ( Online Etymology Dictionary ). In German, by contrast, the compound noun has been shortened to its first morphological constituent (der Pass), thereby obstructing access to its intended meaning due to homophony with der Pass ‘mountain pass; gait of a horse’.

4.9 The role of analogy in the formation of V-NCs and SCs

The role played by analogy in the formation of both Italian V-NCs and English SCs is evident from the similarity among analogical sets sharing either the first or the second constituent (Mattiello 2017; Mattiello and Dressler 2018). When the same morphological element appears in the same position with the same semantic meaning, the combination of analogy and a productive compounding rule can significantly increase the frequency of such constituents. This often leads to higher type frequency in corpora and greater morphosemantic transparency.

As for pattern restrictions, Ricca (2015: 696) highlights a cross-Romance tendency for compounds to favour “short” verb bases, with what counts as “short” varying by language due to phonotactic differences: bisyllabic in Italian and Spanish, and monosyllabic in French. Supporting this, Rainer (1993) and Ricca (2010) find that around 75–80 % of Italian compounds use bisyllabic verb bases, while Villoing (2009) reports a similar 80 % preference for monosyllabic bases in French. Ricca (2015: 697) further notes that verbal bases like It. porta- ‘carry’, reggi- ‘hold’, copri- ‘cover’ are among the most productive, giving rise to a wide range of compound names for containers, holders, and covers.

Examples of Italian analogical V-NCs displaying the same verbal constituent are:

Examples of English analogical SCs displaying the same nominal constituent (book, house) are reported in (13b):

whereas examples in (13c) display the same deverbal head breaker:

Analogy can also produce compounds after a unique model. When the same morphological element is used in the same position with the same meaning, but the compounding rule is either unproductive or fossilized, the examples often reflect only local or surface analogy (Mattiello 2017), leading to fewer and more morphosemantically opaque instances. Examples include German V-NCs:

as well as English V-NCs:

In literature, unproductive rules can be creatively employed to produce analogical occasionalistic compounds. Examples include James Joyce’s compounds in Finnegans Wake:

a few occasionalistic V-NCs coined by Gerard M. Hopkins in poetry:

and an example of creative V-NC from James Thurber:

Austrian writers, including the renowned comedy author Johann N. Nestroy, created numerous occasionalistic SCs with -er. Examples from Nestroy include: Liebe-s + mathematiker ‘love + mathematician’, Souper + zerstör + erin ‘a woman destroying the supper’, Mathilde-n + schnipf + er ‘robber of Mathilde’, and Tod + geb + er+in ‘death + giver + fem’. Compare also Der Heros + zupfer zupft den Heroen an den Hosen ‘the hero-tugger tugs heroes on their trousers’ (referring to statues of heroes), created by the Bulgarian-Austrian-British Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti.

Occasional poetic creations are motivated by poetic license, which is relatively minor when the occasionalisms merely violate the lexical norm that only existing words should be used (in order to facilitate processing by the receiver). However, poetic license can be considerably greater when an occasionalism is semantically incongruent, as in Nestroy’s Liebesmathematiker ‘love mathematician’, which lacks any analogy to compounds beginning with Liebes- or ending with -mathematiker. It is even more pronounced in the case of ungrammatical occasionalisms, such as those found in Joyce’s work (see example 13f above).

4.10 Iconicity between morphosemantic and morphotactic heads

The principle of iconicity between morphosemantic and morphotactic heads can be observed in English and German suffixed compounds (SCs) with the suffix -er. In both languages, -er can denote an agentive or instrumental role, thus functioning both as morphotactic and as morphosemantic head. For example, the English ball + play + er ‘someone who plays ball’ corresponds to German Ball + spiel + er. The metaphorical ice + break + er ‘something or someone that breaks the ice’ is likewise rendered as Eis + brech + er in German. In its literal, instrumental sense, ice + break + er also remains Eis + brech + er.

By contrast, both morphosemantic and morphotactic heads are absent in V-NCs in both English and German. In Italian V-NCs, however, both types of heads may be present. For instance, in passa + porto ‘passport’, passa appears morphologically identical to the 3rd person singular present form of the verb passare. However, as discussed in the literature (cf. Rainer 2021: § 4.2), there is considerable debate about whether the verb component in such compounds should truly be analyzed as a finite verb form. We acknowledge that many scholars argue against such an interpretation, suggesting instead that the verbal element represents a non-finite or theme form rather than a syntactically licensed verb. Accordingly, the reference to pro-drop in this context does not imply that these compounds involve syntactic pro-drop constructions, which are indeed licensed by phi-feature-bearing syntactic heads and not by word-level morphology. Rather, it serves to highlight the surface morphological similarity between passa and the finite verb form in a pro-drop language. The morphotactic head is absent, in contrast, if passa is analyzed as a verbal theme, as illustrated in fini + mondo ‘end of the world’, lit. ‘finish the world’, where the form differs from the finite finisce ‘(it) finishes’ (3rd singular present).

4.11 Endocentric versus exocentric compounds

English uniquely features both V-NCs and SCs, unlike German, Italian, and most other languages. V-NCs in English may be either exocentric or endocentric. Exocentric compounds are those whose overall meaning is not a subtype of either constituent – the semantic head lies outside the compound – making their interpretation non-compositional and thus less preferred in NM. Examples include cut + purse ‘a thief who cuts purses’, cut + throat, dare + devil, kill + joy, and scatter + brain, all of which function idiomatically and are typically lexically stored rather than productively generated (cf. Bauer 2001; Rainer 2021).

Endocentric V-NCs, by contrast, are semantically transparent and refer to a subtype of the head noun. Examples such as blow + lamp, check + list, draw + bridge, flick + knife, and wash + day illustrate this pattern, each denoting a type of lamp, list, bridge, knife, or day, respectively. Due to NM’s preference for maximal morphosemantic transparency, these compounds are more productive than their exocentric counterparts.

German also exhibits both exocentric and endocentric V-NCs. However, endocentric patterns dominate in terms of productivity, frequency, and openness to new formations, showing broader structural regularity. This reflects a cross-linguistic tendency for endocentricity to be favoured in compounding (Scalise and Bisetto 2009).

Italian, by contrast, predominantly features exocentric V-NCs, often derived from historical verb-object constructions with the verb preceding the noun. Examples include asciuga + capelli ‘hairdryer’ and girasole ‘sunflower’, lit. ‘turns sun’. However, given Italian’s pro-drop nature, compounds like asciugacapelli remain fully compositional. Typically, only one of the possible agentive or instrumental readings is realized in use.

4.12 Typological properties of the three languages

The typological properties of English, German, and Italian demonstrate notable differences in their use of verb-noun compounds (V-NCs) and synthetic compounds (SCs). English uniquely features both V-NC and SC pairs, often resulting in ambiguity. Typically, the V-NC forms are attested earlier than the SC forms and synchronically prevail, in spite of their lower degree of naturalness. In Italian, V-NCs are very common due to the productivity of the pattern, whereas SCs are either non-existent or rare. An example of this rarity is protezione testimoni (lit. ‘protect + ion witness + es’) as noted by Melloni (2020). Conversely, in English, SCs are more prevalent than V-NCs.

Similar to English, German shows a preference for SCs over V-NCs. Additionally, within German V-NCs, endocentric compounds are favoured over exocentric ones. English SCs ending in -er that refer to agents are more transparent than V-NCs because the agent is explicitly indicated by the suffix -er. In contrast, Italian V-NCs are exocentric and thus more opaque, even though the phrases they derive from are transparent.