Compounds

INTRODUCTION
Compounds represent the interface between morphology and syntax Example: truck driver - truck seems to be an argument of the (stem) verb drive synthetic compound (also called verbal compound) Syntax can be thought of as the concatenation of words to phrases, whereas compounding is the concatenation of words to form other words Problem: there is no clear way of distinguishing between compound words and phrases (i.e. the notion of word is not unambiguously defined) Root compounds (also called primary compounds) on the other hand are clearly restricted to word formation. Examples: blackbird (compound) vs. black bird (nominal phrase)

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Compounds
SYNTAX-LIKE BASIC PROPERTIES
1. Recursiveness:
a. student film b. student film society c. student film society committee d. student film society committee scandal e. student film society committee scandal inquiry

2. Constituent Structure:

[student [film society]] = film society for students [[student film] society] = society for student films

meaning depends on internal constituent structure (semantic interpretation of the various readings can be compositional as is typical of sentences)

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Compounds
SYNTAX-LIKE RELATIONS BETWEEN COMPOUND ELEMENTS I
3. Relations between compound elements may resemble the relations between the constituents of a sentence A. Head-Modifier Relations: one element functions as the head (endocentric compound)
- both in [student [film society]] and [[student film] society] society is the head (i.e. it is always a kind of society) - most English compounds are of this type - the modifier element has the function of attributing a property to the head

the compound has no head (exocentric compound)

- only few examples exist in English: pickpocket, lazybones, cut-throat - predicate and argument-type elements, but neither is head - also called bahuvrihi compounds (taken from Sanskrit)

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Compounds
SYNTAX-LIKE RELATIONS BETWEEN COMPOUND ELEMENTS II
B. Predicate-Argument Relations: one element can be analyzed as the object of the other
- in the few exocentric compounds of English this is often the case: pickpocket pick the pocket; cut-throat cut the throat - in endocentric synthetic compounds very clear predicate-argument relations occur truck driver drive the truck the modifier acts an object to the verb-like predicate head

C. Appositional Relations:
the compound elements are just adjacent to each other, without any further dependency between them - example: Austria-Hungary, mother-child (as in mother-child relationship) - similar to syntactic phrases of the type Mr Miller, the baker - appositional compounds are also called dvandva compounds (again from Sanskrit)

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Compounds
WORD CATEGORIES IN COMPOUNDING
In different languages there are differences in the types of categories that are allowed to be compounded
English permits a great variety of noun-headed compounds, but also allows adjectives and verbs (to a lesser extent) Vietnamese (Thompson 1965): left-headed synthetic compounds: l ay vo lm viec marry work (> take + wife) (> do + work)

Vietnamese compounds all have the structure of syntactic phrases Are they true compounds (i.e. the result of a morphological process) or lexicalized phrases like English jack-in-the-box or forget-me-not?

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Compounds
COMPOUNDING IN FRENCH
French has a compound system that seems to be the opposite of that of English. It is more like the lexicalization of syntax than the result of proper morphological processes.
words formed from syntactic phrases (including function words and inflections): examples: les hors duvre, le cessez-le-feu, la mise-au-point

left-headed synthetic compounds (verb followed by object): examples: le porte-parole, le pince-nez the only somewhat common type of Noun-Noun compound is compositional example: homme-grenouille (plural: hommes-grenouilles with both parts inflected)

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Compounds
WORD-LIKE PROPERTIES I
1. Lexicalization: - like simple words compounds may undergo a semantic drift, such that their meaning
becomes non-compositional or completely idiosyncratic
Example: penknife - originally knife for cutting quills

2. Paradigmatic gaps:
- there are inexplicable, purely idiosyncratic lexical gaps in compounding systems
Example: rainfall, snowfall - *hailfall, *sleetfall

3. Non-referentiality:
- the non-heads of compounds never refer to specific objects
Example: in student film society one cannot refer to a specific student or film

- the non-heads of compounds are not inflected

Example: *pickedpocket cannot be used for an ex-pickpocket or one of his victims

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Compounds
WORD-LIKE PROPERTIES II
4. Morphological integrity:
- elements of (compound) words cannot be split up by other words or phrases

5. Loss of status:
- elements of lexicalized compounds may be used so frequently they lose their status as independent words and become clitics/affixes (e.g. postpositions inflectional affixes, adverbial modifiers prefixes)
Example: In Russian verbal prefix developed from prepositions ba to run ja vba f kmnatu I in-ran into room

These prefixes have developed idiosyncratic meanings removed from the original prepositions. za as a prefix can mean behind, beyond, after, because of, on behalf of As a prefix it means behind with some verbs, but with others it may have the meaning of inception, preparatory activity, wrapping up, doing to excess, and even purely grammatically the perfective aspect

6. Phonological processes:
- there are many phonological processes that apply to compounds but not to phrases
Example: stress assignment for phrases Nuclear Stress Rule (accent on rightmost constituent) stress assignment for compounds Compound Stress Rule (left member of compound)
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Compounds
COMPOUNDING IN TURKISH
Turkish has a particularly rich system of compounding:
A. Lexicalized concatenation of words:
ba bakan rta kl byjyk ann krk ajak syt bjaz li ak dal bast jrt svr vrdm dmaz p svdi
N+N N+N A+N A+N N+A N+A N+V N+V V+V Onom. + V head + minister middle + school great + mother forty + foot milk + white his-hand + open branch + it pressed land + loving I-hit + it doesnt feel plop + he-has-fallen-in-love Prime Minister middle school grandmother centipede milk white generous fine large cherry patriot thick-skinned impressionable

- this type of compounding is not overly productive in Turkish - often non-compositional, idiosyncratic meanings with non-referential components - single stress like simple words
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Compounds
TURKISH COMPOUNDS: IZAFET CONSTRUCTION
B. Izafet Construction
- the so-called Izafet Construction corresponds more closely to English compounding. - it is signalled by possessive affixes - there are two types of izafet: definite and indefinite 1. Indefinite Izafet Form: Noun + Noun-poss (3rd Pers. Sg. possessive agreement marker: - (after consonants) / -s (after vowels)) jatak da-s kl bal:- giliz tarih-I 2. Definite Izafet Form: Noun-gen + Noun-poss (genitive suffix: -n (after consonants) / -nn (after vowels)) zman-n rapr- tmbl-n tkrlklr- hafta-nn gynlr-
of-expert + his-report of-car + its-wheels of-week + its-days expert report car wheels weekdays bed + its-room sword + its-fish Englishman + his-history bedroom swordfish English history

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Compounds
DEFINITE VS. INDEFINITE IZAFET I
- the relation between compound elements in the indefinite izafet is not really one of possession, but rather attributive between Head and Modifier, resembling English compounds realized by simple concatenation - the definitive izafet resembles the English genitive NP constructions Nouns Noun or Noun of the Noun Indefinite Izafet rhan ism-
Orhan its-name the name Orhan

Definite Izafet rhan-n ism-

of-Orhan his-name Orhans name

ban kz-
shepherd his-girl/daughter the shepherd girl first element used non-referentially

ban-n kz-
of-shepherd his-girl/daughter the shepherds daughter first element used referentially

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Compounds
DEFINITE VS. INDEFINITE IZAFET II
- more concatenative compound-like features of the indefinite izafet: lexicalization (frozen)
bin ba- dniz alt-
thousand + its-head sea + its-underside (army) major submarine

- in these examples the possessive affix no longer behaves like an affix and may be followed by the plural suffix (which normally precedes it): binbalar majors It can also take an extra possessive suffix: binbas his major

the head of an indefinite izafet cannot be modified syntactically

stanbl amilr-
Istanbul + its-mosques Istanbul mosques

stanbl-n tarihi amilr-

of-Istanbul + historic + its-mosques Istanbuls historic mosques (*Istanbul historic mosques)

If the head gets modified, then the non-head must become a genitive definite izafet

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Compounds

DEFINITE VS. INDEFINITE IZAFET III

Recursion Indefinite izafets exhibit two types of recursion:
a. right-branching structure in which the noun on the left modifies the constituent on its right: [N [N [N N-Poss] ]] mhrijt halk parti-s republic people its-party These compounds cannot be ambiguous: [Republican [Peoples Party] vs. *[Republican Peoples] Party] b. left-branching structure in which an izafet serves as the non-head of another izafet: [[[N N-poss] N-poss] N-poss] tyrk dil- drgi-s Turk his-language its-journal Turkish Language Journal Republican Peoples Party

[tyrk [dil krm-]] Turk language its-society

[[tyrk dil-] drgi-s] Turk his-language its-journal

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Compounds
DEFINITE VS. INDEFINITE IZAFET IV
The definite izafet exhibits recursion to the left:
of-Ford of-its-family its-car Fords familys car or the car of the family of Ford

frd-n al-s-nn araba-s

It is possible to have indefinite izafets inside definite ones:

frd-n al araba-s
of-Ford family its-car the family car of Ford

frd al-s-nn araba-s

Ford of-its-family its-car the car of the Ford family or the Ford familys car

- only the definite izafet behaves like a syntactically formed phrasal construction reminiscent of English Toms hat or the hat of Tom - the indefinite izafet is closer to a Germanic right-branching compound: the non-head loses its referentiality and becomes simply a modifier of the head, losing many of its syntactic properties
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Compounds
ROOT COMPOUNDS: FORMATION FROM CONCATENATED WORDS
Discussion of basic claims and assumptions about root compounding in English that have influenced research

A. Compounds are formed from concatenated words, e.g. houseboat

There is general agreement that root compounds are directly generated in the base and not constructed out of structurally distinct underlying forms by means of syntactic rules. - a true compound made up of two elements is assumed to be stressed on the first constituent as opposed to stress assignment in phrases - problem: some expressions take compound stress, while others which are apparently identical in structure take phrasal stress: Forty Second Street vs. Fifth Avenue trade war vs. Second World War - generally, compound stress is assigned by the Compound Stress Rule

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Compounds
COMPOUND STRESS RULE
root compounds have nonphrasal stress patterns
[AB]: greenhouse, textbook, filing cabinet [[AB]C]: blackboard eraser, greenhouse effect, house-warming party [A[BC]]: government working party, office filing cabinet [[AB][CD]]: Labour party finance committee [[A[BC]]D]: home word-processing equipment

predictable by the Compound Prominence Rule:

in a pair of sister elements the second one is stronger, if and only if it branches (simplified representation)
S W S W S S W W S S W W

labour party finance committee

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Compounds
ROOT COMPOUNDS: NEO-CLASSICAL COMPOUNDS
B. Compounds are formed from concatenated (bound) stems, e.g. erythrocyte
- controversial as free compounding of bound stems is incompatible with a straightforward interpretation of word-based morphology - in theories based on phrase structure grammars ("psg") like Selkirk (1982), Williams (1981) or Di Sciullo and Williams (1987) such compounds can be generated thanks to the introduction of categories below the word that correspond to these bound roots (Selkirk) or stems (Di Sciullo/Williams)
- Di Sciullo/Williams generate a compound of the form [Word Word] with each Word node rewritten as Stem - Selkirk designates the stem (which she calls Root) as a recursive category, introducing a phrase structure ("ps") rule: Root Root Root Word Word Stem erythro Word Stem cyte
(Di Sciullo/Williams)

Word Root Root erythro Root cyte

(Selkirk)

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Compounds
MORE CLAIMS ABOUT ROOT COMPOUNDING
C. Endocentric compounds are always rightheaded
- Righthand Head Rule (Williams 1981): All words are headed and the head is the rightmost element - true for English compounds but not for the Vietnamese and French examples seen earlier analyzing left-headed regular compounding as the lexicalization of syntactic structure would preserve this claim, as such lexicalization would not be a morphological process at all

D. Compounds do not include phrases, e.g. *black-as-coal bird, *slightly-used-car salesman

- this is widely accepted as true, although there are counterexamples such as car-of-the-month competition or American history teacher (only in the interpretation [[American history] teacher]) - in other languages, e.g.. Dutch and Afrikaans, these kinds of compounds are said to be quite frequent

E. Only irregular inflection is found in compounds, e.g. teeth-marks but *nails-marks

- this behavior can be explained by Lexical Morphology (irregular inflection happens before compounding, regular inflection afterwards) - apparent counter-examples like systems analyst require the assumption of a loop
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Compounds
ROOT COMPOUNDS: CATEGORIES INVOLVED
F. All major word categories participate in compounding, minor categories (function words) do not
- while all major categories are involved, there are restrictions to the possible configurations - nouns are the most productive class of possible heads:
N N: housewife, penknife, dressing gown (lexicalized) salad dressing, party frock, shopping list A N: blackbird, well-wisher, happy hour (lexicalized) postal order, nervous system, medical officer P N: overcoat, outhouse, inroad (lexicalized) down trend, underpass V N: swearword, rattlesnake

- adjectives/adverbs can head compound with nouns, prepositions or other adjectives, but not verbs
N A: trigger-happy, world-weary, earth-shattering, bird-brained (lexicalized) water soluble, girl crazy, class-conscious A A: rough-cut, well-formed, good-looking (lexicalized) icy cold, dark blue P A: ongoing, inborn, off-white (lexicalized) over-explicit, underripe

- verbs can only head compounds with prepositions

P V: offload, overlook, up-stage (lexicalized) overfeed, overcook, underexploit

- prepositions cannot head any compounds

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Compounds
WORD CATEGORIES IN COMPOUNDS
Special considerations in the analysis: - distinguish genuine compounds from backformations like babysit, bartend or air-condition which are derived from other compounds like babysitter, bartender etc. - verb + particle nouns like turn-off or blow-out are also not compounds but derived by conversion from the verbs - since many words appear in homophonous noun-verb pairs one cannot always be sure which category a word belongs to, e.g., is pass in password a noun or a verb? - in the case of A N compounds it may be difficult to know whether one is dealing with a compound ([[American history] teacher]) or a phrase ([American [history teacher]]) - productivity and generality of patterns: e.g. in P V compounds formations with over- and under- are very productive, but other prepositions are less frequent and some like from, at and of do not participate at all
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Compounds
COMPOUNDING IN CONSTITUENT STRUCTURE GRAMMARS
Generative theories of word structure account for compounding in different ways: Selkirk (1982) proposes the following phrase structure grammar: N {N, A, V, P} N; A {N, A, P} A; V P V The desired structures are generated directly, but problems of bracketing paradoxes remain (e.g. bird-brained seems to be derived by idiosyncratic affixation to the N N compound bird brain, as there is no verb to brain meaning to possess a brain from which the past participle could be derived) Lieber (1980) relies on the process of feature percolation and introduces a specific Feature Percolation Convention for English compounds: Feature Percolation Convention IV
In compound words in English features from the righthand stem are percolated up to the branching node dominating the stems a. +A black
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b. +A black

+N
FPC IV

+N bird

+N bird
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Compounds
WHY COMPOUNDING?
Most of the analysis presented has been purely descriptive - there are not yet any satisfactory theory-based explanations for many phenomena like why prepositions cannot head compounds or why function words do not participate in compounds at all etc. - it is also unclear what governs the differences in root compounding between languages, e.g. in Slavic languages compounding is relatively poorly developed London taxi driver is translated into Russian either as voditel taksi iz Londona driver of-taxi from London or voditel londonskogo taksi driver Londonian taxi (relational adjective) (phrasal construction)

Slavic languages are especially rich in relational adjectives which are poorly represented in English. Even when English has such an adjective, it is often not used: Manchester telephone system vs. Mancunian telephone system

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Compounds
ENGLISH SYNTHETIC COMPOUNDS
Contrary to root compounds which are simply concatenated words, synthetic compounds are formed from deverbal heads and the non-head fulfils the function of the argument of the verb from which the head is derived
truck driver one who (regularly or habitually) drives a truck - gerunds/participles in ing also form such compounds: - passive participle are also included: Properties of synthetic compounds to be explained: 1a. How can the verbs direct internal argument be satisfied by the non-head?
truck driver drive a truck truck driving

truck driving hand-made, moth-eaten

1b. How can adjuncts, which are not objects, also act as nonheads?
fast-acting act fast pan-fried fry in a pan moth-eaten eaten by moths

It seems that the non-head must be a word that could appear immediately after the verb in a corresponding VP: quick-fried (from fry quickly) vs. *quick-driver (from drive a truck quickly)

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FURTHER PROPERTIES OF SYNTHETIC COMPOUNDS
2. Why can the non-head not function as the subject of the verb?
*child driver (meaning child who drives), * girl-swimming etc.

3. How do the heads of the compounds inherit the argument structure of the verb?
- these arguments can then be expressed by PPs within the NP as an alternative to synthetic compounding truck driver driver of trucks

4. Is synthetic compounding a lexical or a syntactic process?

- most linguists believe that all types of compounding must by definition be lexical - Lieber (1988) considers both root and synthetic compounding to be syntactic processes - some aspects of synthetic compounding could be lexical, while others are syntactic in a syntactic theory, the fact that the non-head serves as an argument of the verb can be accounted for by pre-existing syntactic principles in a lexicalist theory there is no immediate account for argument inheritance

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Compounds
ROEPER AND SIEGEL
Roeper and Siegel (1978) provided the first serious attempt to account for synthetic compounds in a modern generative framework
- attempting to represent the syntactic parallel between the compound and the corresponding VP directly by incorporating aspects of the syntactic structure into the lexical representation of the compound First Sister Principle: All verbal compounds are formed by incorporation of a word in first sister position of the verb - the compound forms are derived from the VP structure by a transformational rule in the lexicon lexical transformation Three main operations: Problems: (add en to the verb, create slot to left of verb for non-head, verb is followed by a PP complement): 1. Affix Rule -2. Subcategorization Insertion (word is inserted into the subcategorizationgrammatical theory ad-hoc addition of the Lexical Transformation Rule to slot PP): - no explanation+for why certainNP] PP [[]do not-en] [[pan]N] [[] fry + -en] [[] compounds + fry + exist: * beautifully-dancing, *good-looked, *bird-sounding 3. Compound Rule (pan moved into the compound non-head position):
[[] + fry + -ed] [[pan]N] [[pan]N + fry + -ed] fry [[] NP] PP [[] + fry + -en] [[] NP] PP

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Compounds
SELKIRK
In Selkirk (1982) morphological structure is accounted for solely by phrase structure rules. Therefore it is possible to automatically explain the identical structures of root and synthetic compounds, because both are generated directly by the same set of rules. According to Selkirk synthetic compounding takes place when the non-head of the compound satisfies the heads argument structure - examples like pan-fried are thus not synthetic, as pan is an adjunct, not an argument - heads formed from other suffixes are allowed: slum clearance, self-deception, troop deployement, trash removal, water-repellent, self-destructive, machine-readable etc. - if the verb stem of the head is not obligatorily transitive, e.g., eat, then a compound formed from it, e.g. tree eater, can be ambiguous with a synthetic reading (one who eats trees) or a root compound reading (e.g., one who eats in trees)

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Compounds
SELKIRKS RULES FOR SYNTHETIC COMPOUNDING
Grammatical Functions in Compounding: Optionally, in compounds, (i) a non-head noun may be assigned any of the grammatical functions assigned to nominal constituents in syntactic structure, and (ii) a non-head adjective may be assigned any of the grammatical functions assigned to adjectival constituents in syntactic structure Selkirk needs an extra rule to rule out compounding of subjects (*girl-swimming): Subject Restriction: The SUBJ argument of a lexical item may not be satisfied in compound structure Selkirk also needs a version of the First Sister Principle to account for the fact that it is impossible to have compounds with more than one non-head (i.e., derived from verbs with more than one obligatory argument) like *tree eater of pasta or *pasta eater in trees First Order Projection Condition: All non-SUBJ arguments of a lexical category Xi must be satisfied within the first order projection of Xi In other words, the verbs argument will be satisfied inside rather than outside the compound
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Compounds
LIEBER
Liebers (1983) approach to synthetic compounding refers to the argument structure or theta grid of the verb.
- a verbs argument structure is a kind of feature, subject to percolation - percolation is however not possible to a dominating head of a different syntactic category - the verbal component of the synthetic compound must therefore create an intermediate verbal dominating head, such that its argument structure can percolate a. * N V truck drive er N N N truck b. V V drive er N

- in b. drive governs and hence assigns a theta role to its complement synthetic compound - on the other hand a., shows the structure of a root compound, which cannot be correct, as there would be no percolation - the structure in b. leads to a bracketing paradox: [[truck drive]] er] (morphosyntactic) vs. [[truck] [driver] (morphophonological)
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Compounds
LIEBERS ARGUMENT LINKING PRINCIPLE
The fact that the non-head (e.g. truck) can be interpreted as the object of the head (e.g. drive) is made possible by Liebers stipulation of the Argument Linking Principle. Argument Linking Principle: A. B. When a verb appears in a structure as sister to a potential complement, it must be able to assign (link) all its internal arguments. If the first sister is an adjunct, the non-head must be a semantic argument (i.e., interpretable as Locative, Manner, Agentive, Instrumental, Benefactive)

The structure associated with a synthetic compound should be available to any compound formed by adding a suffix to a verb, including cases where the non-head is not an object, but an adjunct (i.e. semantic argument) a. V A strange V sound ing A hand A b. V V weave hand-woven
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en

strange-sounding
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FABB
Liebers Argument Linking Principle is very close in content to a principle in Government and Binding Syntax, the Theta Criterion, which states, among other things, that if a verb has obligatory theta roles in its theta grid, then they must be assigned to an argument position. - the sentence *Tom hits is ungrammatical because the verb to hit has an obligatory internal theta role, but no argument position in the syntactic representation to which it could assign that role - in theory the Theta Criterion could be circumvented if there were syntactic rules that changed the argument structure of a verb during the derivation, but this is prevented by the Projection Principle, which states that the theta grid of a verb is projected to all syntactic levels a rule that violates the Theta Criterion must be lexical Fabb (1984) tries to determine whether synthetic compounds are subject to such syntactic principles - affixes are lexical elements like stems or whole words and their own syntactic properties - such affixes are attached by syntactic rules (syntactic affixation) affixes which regularly license synthetic compounds (e.g. er, -ing or en) are syntactic affixes

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Compounds
FABB II
In a compound such as truck driving the verb stem drive can and must assign its internal theta role of Theme to the noun truck in order to satisfy the Theta Criterion In order to assign a theta role to an element, a verb must govern that element, i.e. it must be a sister to that element in syntactic structure. Fabb thus assumes the same constituent structure as Lieber: V V Ni truck V <Thi> drive ing

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