Compounds, composability, and morphological idiosyncrasy
Abstract
Working within the framework of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993, 1994), this paper offers a derivational analysis of the range of structures and the types of idiosyncrasy associated with compounding. Building on prior analysis by Harley (2009), compound structures are argued to vary according to the ways in which the head and the non-head of a compound are categorised. Specifically, if the non-head of a compound is acategorial, then the relationship between the compound head and non-head is non-decomposable. Based on data from Hebrew (Borer 2009), it is shown that this also makes the non-head inaccessible to independent syntactic-semantic operations, including coordination, and coreference with a pronoun. It is additionally shown that morphologically-conditioned allomorphy (Bobaljik 2012) may be conditioned between the compound head and a suffix, as constitutes part of a bracketing paradox (Williams 1981). Where categorisation of the head of the compound gives rise to effects of headedness, however, this allomorphy may be ‘blocked’ by the structure associated with exocentricity. The final sections of the paper consider exocentricity, and other interactions between idiosyncratic meanings and phonology, in further detail.
Acknowledgements
The current version of this work was presented in part at the 2016 Meeting of the LAGB (York), at Roots V (London, 2017), whose audiences are thanked for their valuable observations and questions. I would also like to thank the colleagues and students whose comments have been beneficial to the work in its many iterations. This includes Adam Albright, Hagit Borer, Éva Lángi, Ad Neeleman, and Andrew Nevins, and also Antonietta Bisetto, Emiliano Guevara, and Sergio Scalise, whose classes I took while as an Erasmus student in Bologna in 2006, and to who my interest in compounds can be very clearly traced. All errors, omissions, and mistakes are my own.
References
Ackema, Peter & Ad Neeleman. 2004. Beyond morphology: Interface conditions on word formation. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199267286.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Acquaviva, Paolo. 2009. Roots and lexicality in distributed morphology In Alexandra Galani, Daniel Redinger & Norman Yeo (eds.), Papers from the fifth york-essex morphology meeting, 1–21. York: York Papers in Linguistics Series 2, Issue 10.Search in Google Scholar
Allen, Margaret 1978. Morphological Investigations. PhD Dissertation, University of Connecticut.Search in Google Scholar
Anagnostopoulou, Elena & Yota Samioti. 2013. Allosemy, idioms, and their domains: Evidence from adjectival participles. In Raffaella Folli, Christina Sevdali & Robert Truswell (eds.), Syntax and its limits, 218–250. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199683239.003.0012Search in Google Scholar
Anagnostopoulou, Elena & Yota Samioti. 2014. Domains within words and their meanings: A case study. In Artemis Alexiadou, Hagit Borer & Florian Schäfer (eds.), The syntax of roots and the roots of syntax, 81–111. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199665266.003.0005Search in Google Scholar
Arad, Maya. 2003. Locality constraints on the interpretation of roots: The case of Hebrew denominal verbs. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21. 737–778.10.1023/A:1025533719905Search in Google Scholar
Arad, Maya. 2005. Roots and patterns: Hebrew morpho-syntax. Dordrecht: Springer. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 63.Search in Google Scholar
Aronoff, Mark. 1976. Word formation in generative grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Linguistic Inquiry Monographs.Search in Google Scholar
Arregi, Karlos & Andrew Nevins. 2014. A monoradical approach to some cases of disuppletion. Theoretical Linguistics 40(3–4). 311–330.10.1515/tl-2014-0014Search in Google Scholar
Baker, Mark C. 1988. Incorporation: A theory of grammatical function changing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
Beard, Robert. 1991. Decompositional composition: The semantics of scope ambiguities and “Bracketing Paradoxes.”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 9(2). 195–229.10.1007/BF00134676Search in Google Scholar
Belder, Marijke De 2011. Roots and Affixes: Eliminating lexical categories from syntax. PhD Dissertation, Utrecht University.Search in Google Scholar
Bobaljik, Jonathan David. 2012. Universals in comparative morphology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/9069.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1967. Adjectives in English: Attribution and predication. Lingua 18. 1–34.10.1016/0024-3841(67)90018-6Search in Google Scholar
Borer, Hagit. 2005. In name only, structuring sense, vol. I. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199263905.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Borer, Hagit. 2009. Compounds: The view from Hebrew. In Rochelle Lieber & Pavol Štekauer (eds.), The Oxford handbook of compounding, 782–813. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Borer, Hagit. 2014. The category of roots. In Artemis Alexiadou, Hagit Borer & Florian Schäfer (eds.), The syntax of roots and the roots of syntax, 112–148. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199665266.003.0006Search in Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1970. Remarks on nominalization. In Roderick Jacobs & Peter Rosenbaum (eds.), Readings in english transformational grammar, 184–221. Waltham, MA: Ginn.Search in Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by phase. In Michael Kenstowicz (ed.), Ken Hale: A life in language, 1–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/4056.003.0004Search in Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam & Morris Halle. 1968. The sound pattern of english. New York: Harper & Row.Search in Google Scholar
Cormack, Annabel & Neil Smith. 2005. What is coordination? Lingua 115(4). 395–418.10.1016/j.lingua.2003.09.008Search in Google Scholar
Creemers, Ava, Jan Don & Paula Fenger. 2017. Some affixes are roots, others are heads. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 36(1). 45–84.10.1007/s11049-017-9372-1Search in Google Scholar
Davies, Mark 2013. Corpus of Global Web-Based English: 1.9 billion words from speakers in 20 countries (GloWbE). http://corpus.byu.edu/glowbeSearch in Google Scholar
Dowty, David. 1988. Type raising, functional composition, and non-constituent conjunction. In Richard T. Oehrle, Emmon Bach & Deirdre Wheeler (eds.), Categorial grammars and natural language structures, 153–197. Dordrecht: Springer.10.1007/978-94-015-6878-4_7Search in Google Scholar
Embick, David. 2010. Localism versus globalism in morphology and phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Linguistic Inquiry Monographs.10.7551/mitpress/9780262014229.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Folli, Raffaella & Heidi Harley. 2005. Consuming results in Italian and English: Flavors of v. In Paula Kempchinsky & Roumyana Slabakova (eds.), Aspectual inquiries, 1–34. Dordrecht: Springer, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory.10.1007/1-4020-3033-9_5Search in Google Scholar
Hacken, Pius ten. 2009. Early Generative Approaches. In Rochelle Lieber & Pavol Štekauer (eds.), The Oxford handbook of compounding, 54–77. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Halle, Morris & Alec Marantz. 1993. Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection. In Ken Hale & Samuel Jay Keyser (eds.), The view from building 20: Essays in honor of Sylvain Bromberger, 111–176. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Halle, Morris & Alec Marantz. 1994. Some key features of distributed morphology. In Andrew Carnie, Heidi Harley & Tony Bures (eds.), Papers in phonology and morphology, 275–288. Cambridge, MA: MITWPL.Search in Google Scholar
Harley, Heidi. 2006. The morphology of nominalizations and the syntax of vP. In Anastasia Giannakidou & Monika Rathert (eds.), Quantification, definiteness, and nominalization, 321–343. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Harley, Heidi. 2009. Compounding in distributed morphology. In Rochelle Lieber & Pavol Štekauer (eds.), The Oxford handbook of compounding, 129–144. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Harley, Heidi. 2014. On the identity of roots. Theoretical Linguistics 40(3–4). 225–276.10.1515/tl-2014-0010Search in Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul. 1973. “Elsewhere” in Phonology. In Stephen R. Anderson & Paul Kiparsky (eds.), A festschrift for Morris Halle, 93–106. New York: Holt: Rinehart and Winston.Search in Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul. 1983. Word-formation and the lexicon. In Frances Ingemann (ed.), Proceedings of the 1982 Mid- America linguistics conference, 3–29. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas.Search in Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul. 1985. Some consequences of lexical phonology. Phonology Yearbook 2. 85–138.10.1017/S0952675700000397Search in Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul. 1997. Remarks on denominal verbs. In Alex Alsina, Joan Bresnan & Peter Sells (eds.), Complex Predicates, 473–499. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Search in Google Scholar
Lees, Robert B. 1960. The grammar of English nominalizations. Bloomington/Den Haag: Indiana University Press/Mouton.Search in Google Scholar
Levi, Judith N. 1978. The syntax and semantics of complex nominals. New York: Academic Press.Search in Google Scholar
Lowenstamm, Jean. 2014. Derivational affixes as roots. In Artemis Alexiadou, Hagit Borer & Florian Schäfer (eds.), The syntax of roots and the roots of syntax, 230–258. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199665266.003.0011Search in Google Scholar
Marantz, Alec. 1997. No escape from syntax: Don’t try morphological analysis in the privacy of your own lexicon. In Alexis Dimitriadis, Laura Siegel, Clarissa Surek-Clark & Alexander Williams (eds.), Proceedings of the 21st annual Penn linguistics colloquium, vol. 4, 201–225. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics.Search in Google Scholar
Marantz, Alec 2001. Words. Manuscript, MIT.Search in Google Scholar
Marantz, Alec. 2013. Locality domains for contextual allomorphy across the interfaces. In Ora Matushansky & Alec Marantz (eds.), Distributed morphology today, 95–115. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/9780262019675.003.0006Search in Google Scholar
Marvin, Tatjana 2002. Topics in the Stress and Syntax of Words. PhD Dissertation, MIT.Search in Google Scholar
Moskal, Beata. 2015. Limits on allomorphy: A case study in nominal suppletion. Linguistic Inquiry 46(2). 363–376.10.1162/LING_a_00185Search in Google Scholar
Moskal, Beata & Peter W Smith. 2016. Towards a theory without adjacency : Suppletion constrained by accessibility. Morphology 26. 295–312.10.1007/s11525-015-9275-ySearch in Google Scholar
Neeleman, Ad & Krista Szendrői. 2007. Radical pro drop and the morphology of pronouns. Linguistic Inquiry 38(4). 671–714.10.1162/ling.2007.38.4.671Search in Google Scholar
Nevins, Andrew 2016. Lectures on postsyntactic morphology. Manuscript, UCL. Lingbuzz 002587.Search in Google Scholar
Newell, Heather. 2005. Bracketing paradoxes and particle verbs: A late adjunction analysis. In Sylvia Blaho, Luis Vicente & Erik Schoorlemmer (eds.), Proceedings of Console XIII, 249–271. Leiden: SOLE, University of Leiden.Search in Google Scholar
Newell, Heather 2017. English lexical levels are not lexical, but phonological. Manuscript, UQAM. Lingbuzz 003898.Search in Google Scholar
Newell, Heather 2018. There are no bracketing paradoxes, or how to be a modular grammarian. Handout from presentation at GLOW 2018, Budapest. Lingbuzz 003964.10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.589Search in Google Scholar
Partee, Barbara H. & Mats Rooth. 1982. Generalized conjunction and type ambiguity. In Paul Portner & Barbara H. Partee (eds.), Formal semantics: The essential readings, 334–356. Oxford/Malden,MA: Wiley Blackwell.10.1002/9780470758335.ch14Search in Google Scholar
Patel-Grosz, P & P Grosz. 2010. On the typology of donkeys: Two types of anaphora resolution. In Martin Prinzhorn, Viola Schmitt & Sarah Zobel (eds.), Proceedings of Sinn Und Bedeutung 14, 339–355. University of Vienna.Search in Google Scholar
Peitsara, Kirsti. 2006. MAN-compounds in English. In R. W. McConchie, Olga Timofeeva, Heli Tissari & Tanja Säily (eds.), Selected proceedings of the 2005 symposium on new approaches in English Historical Lexis (HEL-LEX), 113–122. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla.Search in Google Scholar
Pesetsky, David. 1985. Morphology and logical form. Linguistic Inquiry 16(2). 193–246.Search in Google Scholar
Pinker, Steven & Alan Prince. 1988. On language and connectionism: Analysis of a parallel distributed processing model of language acquisition. Cognition 28. 73–193.10.7551/mitpress/2103.003.0003Search in Google Scholar
Raffelsiefen, Renate. 1999. Phonological constraints on English word formation. In Geert Booij & Jaap van Marle (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1998, 225–287. Dordrecht: Springer.10.1007/978-94-017-3720-3_10Search in Google Scholar
Ritter, Elizabeth. 1988. A head-movement approach to construct-state noun phrases. Linguistics 26(3). 909–929.10.1515/ling.1988.26.6.909Search in Google Scholar
Scalise, Sergio & Antonietta Bisetto. 2009. The classification of compounds. In Rochelle Lieber & Pavol Štekauer (eds.), The Oxford handbook of compounding, 34–53. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Siegel, Dorothy 1974. Topics in English Morphology. PhD Dissertation, MIT.Search in Google Scholar
Snyder, William. 2016. Compound word formation. In Jeffrey Lidz, William Snyder & Joe Pater (eds.), The Oxford handbook of developmental linguistics, 89–110. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199601264.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Spencer, Andrew. 1988. Bracketing paradoxes and the English Lexicon. Language 62(4). 663–682.10.2307/414563Search in Google Scholar
Sproat, Richard. 1984. On bracketing paradoxes. In Margaret Speas & Richard Sproat (eds.), Papers from the January 1984 MIT Workshop in Morphology (MITWPL7), 110–130. Cambridge, MA: MIT Working Papers in Linguistics.Search in Google Scholar
Sproat, Richard 1985. On deriving the lexicon. PhD Dissertation, MIT.Search in Google Scholar
Svenonius, Peter. 2008. Russian prefixes are phrasal. In Gerhild Zybatow, Luka Szucsich, Uwe Junghanns & Roland Meyer (eds.), Formal description of Slavic languages, 526–537. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Search in Google Scholar
Weerman, Fred & Jacqueline Evers-Vermeul. 2002. Pronouns and case. Lingua 112(4). 301–338.10.1016/S0024-3841(01)00049-3Search in Google Scholar
Wennerstrom, Ann. 1993. Focus on the prefix: Evidence for word-internal prosodic words. Phonology 10(2). 309–324.10.1017/S0952675700000075Search in Google Scholar
Williams, Edwin. 1981. On the notions “Lexically related” and “Head of a word.”. Linguistic Inquiry 12(2). 245–274.Search in Google Scholar
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- editorial
- Introduction: Roots in context
- research-article
- Roots don’t select, categorial heads do: lexical-selection of PPs may vary by category
- How do you smile along a path?
- Roots, their structure and consequences for derivational timing
- Selecting roots: the view from compounding
- Roots into functional nodes: Exploring locality and semi-lexicality
- Inchoatives in causative clothing
- Compounds, composability, and morphological idiosyncrasy
- Constraining long-distance allomorphy
- (Non-)Intersective adjectives and root suppletion
- Agreeing in number: Verbal plural suppletion and reduplication
- Changing shape according to strength: Evidence from root allomorphy in Greek
- New reasons to root for the Semitic root from Mehri and Neo-Aramaic
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- editorial
- Introduction: Roots in context
- research-article
- Roots don’t select, categorial heads do: lexical-selection of PPs may vary by category
- How do you smile along a path?
- Roots, their structure and consequences for derivational timing
- Selecting roots: the view from compounding
- Roots into functional nodes: Exploring locality and semi-lexicality
- Inchoatives in causative clothing
- Compounds, composability, and morphological idiosyncrasy
- Constraining long-distance allomorphy
- (Non-)Intersective adjectives and root suppletion
- Agreeing in number: Verbal plural suppletion and reduplication
- Changing shape according to strength: Evidence from root allomorphy in Greek
- New reasons to root for the Semitic root from Mehri and Neo-Aramaic
