On the syntactic category of Akan compounds

2009

The paper addresses the question of the correspondence between constituent order in compounds and in syntax. While a strictly synchronic perspective does not lead us to any significant generalization as ascertained by Bauer (Language typology and language universals, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin 2001), adopting a diachronic point of view allows us to formulate the question in general terms by making reference to the logical problem of what is the transition permitted from a certain synchronic stage to another. On the basis of a large language sample, it is shown that constituent order in compounds heavily relies on syntax. This must be understood in the terms of a diachronic universal reflecting Hawkins’ (Word order universals, Academic Press, New York 1983) Double Acquisition Hypothesis. For this specific property of compounds, morphology does not seem to be autonomous from syntax, albeit the relation between morphology and syntax must be thought of as a multi-faceted one.

Revista Letras, 2007

On-line Proceedings of the Fifth …, 2007

2007

Word formation patterns can be seen as abstract schemas that generalize over sets of existing complex words with a systematic correlation between form and meaning. These schemas also specify how new complex words can be created. For instance, the word formation process for deverbal nouns in -er in English and Dutch can be represented as follows :

Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, 2019

We present a syntactic account of the derivation of two types of attributive nominal compounds in Spanish, Russian and Greek. These include right-headed "root" compounds, which exhibit more "word"-like properties and single stress domains, and left-headed "semi-phrasal" compounds with more phrasal properties and independent stress domains for the two compound members. We propose that both compound structures are formed on a small clause predicate phrase, with their different properties derived from the merger of the predicate member of the small clause as a root or as a larger nominal unit with additional functional projections. The proposed structures provide an explanation of observed lexical integrity effects, as well as specific predictions of patterns of compound formation crosslinguistically. 1. Introduction. A hotly debated issue is to what extent morphological principles are independent from the syntactic ones. There is no agreement on how and why differences between "words," "phrases," and other units proposed to exist in-between these two categories arise. Syntactic approaches to word-formation such as Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993, Marantz 1997 and related work), antisymmetry (Kayne 1994, Koopman and Szabolcsi 2000) and more recently nanosyntax (Starke 2009) derive morphosyntactic properties of different units from the derivational path of their formation. For instance, Marantz (2001) proposes a difference between units created via combinations of functional heads with roots vs. those created at higher levels. In this work, we show additional evidence for this distinction from compound structure. This evidence comes from two distinct types of attributive compounds in Spanish, Russian, and Greek that show several common asymmetries. We will predict these asymmetries in a syntactic analysis in which a distinction is made between compounds that involve merging of roots vs. those that involve merging of larger structures. We adopt a modified Distributed Morphology/antisymmetric framework and propose that the specific compounds discussed in this paper are relative clauses with an internal small clause structure realized as a Relator Phrase (DenDikken 2006). The semantic and formal head of a compound is the subject of the small clause, and the predicate member can merge either as a root or a larger structure (e.g., nP, numP). These two types of options create two types of compounds with distinct properties summarized in Section 2. Thus, compound-distinctive properties, as well as their differences from full syntactic phrases are derived from basic assumptions about syntactic structure and operations which have been developed to account for "purely" syntactic phenomena (phrasal movement, predicate inversion, licensing, quantization, and so on). We also discuss how this account predicts the existence of lexical integrity effects which are usually taken to support a distinction between words and phrases. On our account existence of such effects is

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Oxford University Press. , 2020

Subordinate and synthetic represent well-attested modes of compounding across languages. Although the two classes exhibit some structural and interpretative analogies cross-linguistically, they denote distinct phenomena and entail different parameters of classification. Specifically, subordinate makes reference to the grammatical relation between the compound members, which hold a syntactic dependency (i.e., head-argument) relation; synthetic makes reference to the synthesis or concomitance of two processes (i.e., compounding and derivation). Therefore, while the former term implies the presence of a syntactic relation realized at the word level, the latter has strictly morphological implications and does not directly hinge on the nature of the relation between the compound members. Typical examples of subordinate compounds are [V+N]N formations like pickpocket, a class which is scarcely productive in English but largely attested in most Romance and many other languages (e.g., Italian lavapiatti 'wash-dishes, dishwater'). Other instances of subordinate compounds are of the type [V+N]V, differing from the pickpocket type since the output is a verb, as in Chinese dài-găng 'wait for-post, wait for a job'. The presence of a verb, however, is not compulsory since possible instances of subordinate compounds can be found among [N+N]N, [A+N]A, and [P+N]N/A compounds, among others: The consistent feature across subordinate compounds is the complementation relation holding between the constituents, whereby one of the two fills in an argumental slot of the other constituent. For instance, the N tetto 'roof' complements P in the Italian compound senza-tetto 'without-roof, homeless person', and the N stazione 'station' is the internal argument of the relational noun capo in capo-stazione 'chief-station, station-master'. Synthetic compounds can envisage a subordination relation, as in truck driv-er/-ing, where truck is the internal argument of driver (or driving), so that they are often viewed as the prototypical subordinates. However, subordination does not feature in all synthetic compounds whose members can hold a modification/attribution relation, as in short-legged and three-dimensional: In these cases, the adjective (or numeral) is not an argument but a modifier of the other constituent. The hallmark of a synthetic compound is the presence of a derivational affix having scope over a compound/complex form, though being linearly attached and forming an established (or possible) word with one

Anuario del Seminario de Filología Vasca "Julio de Urquijo", 1997

Languages

In this work, we investigate a special type of CS below word level, which is observed in mixed compound words. In particular, we discuss mixed Italian–German compounds; this combination is particularly interesting since, in the two languages, the process of compounding follows different rules for what concerns the position of the head, as well as gender and number inflection. An Acceptability Judgment Task was administered to some bilingual speakers, who assessed the acceptability of mixed compounds inserted in both German and Italian clauses. Our conclusion is that it is possible to have mixed compounds, though this option is severely constrained, especially because of the different word order parameters exhibited by the two languages.

Language and Linguistics Compass, 2010

Word formation patterns can be seen as abstract schemas that generalize over sets of existing complex words with a systematic correlation between form and meaning. These schemas also specify how new complex words can be created. For instance, the word formation process for deverbal nouns in -er in English and Dutch can be represented as follows :

This paper discusses the derivational morphology of the Akan language with particular focus on verbal nominalization through affixation (particularly prefixation). There are two ways through which this nominalization process can be realized in the Asante-Twi dialect of Akan. These are direct verb stem/base nominalization and nominalization after reduplication. The main difference between the two nominalization processes is shown to be that while in the former process, the nominal prefixes adjoin the verb stem directly to derive nominals, in the latter process, the same prefixation process also applies but after the reduplication process. I first discuss direct verb nominalization through prefixation and follow it up with the discussion of the nominalization process that takes place after reduplication has applied. We observe that in the case of the latter process, sometimes the nominal prefix adjoins another prefix; the reduplicative prefix, as studied by Dolphyne (1988), McCarthy and Prince (1995), Abakah (2004), etc. therefore, giving us the morphological structure: Affix1 + Affix2 + Stem/Base. The paper argues that in the direct verbal nominalization, whereas nominal prefixation has to apply first before nominal suffixation in the Asante-Twi dialect so that the former forms a constituent with the stem/base, in the reduplicated stem, the Affix2 (i.e. the reduplicative prefix) has to adjoin first the stem/base before the Affix1, which is the nominal prefix. A swap in the order/level of prefixation between Affix1 and Affix2 renders the output form ill-formed, a case for Siegel’s ([1974] 1979) Level Ordering Hypothesis. Following Siegel (idem), the reduplicative prefix, which does not cause a change in lexical category in Akan, is treated as a Class/Level 2 Prefix while the nominal prefix, which changes the lexical category of the stem and/or the reduplicated form, is a Class/Level 1 affix. In the end, this paper proposes a common template structure to account for affixation in nominalization of verbs in Akan by conflating what looks like two similar morphological structures for both nominalization of stem/base verbs and reduplicated forms, as follows: Affix1 ± (Affix2) + Stem/Base ± (Affix3) in that order.

The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces, 2007

According to the traditional view, the relation between morphology and syntax is the following: while morphology builds up word forms-typically by combining roots with other roots and with affixes, but also by applying other operations to them, syntax takes fully inflected words as input and combines them into phrases and sentences. The division of labour between morphology and syntax is thus perfect: morphology only operates below the word level whereas syntax only operates above the word level.

University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in …, 2007

2022

Our goal is to develop a semantic theory that is equally suitable for the lexical material (words) and for the larger constructions (sentences) put together from these. In 2.1 we begin with the system of lexical categories that are in generative grammar routinely used as preterminals mediating between syntax and the lexicon. Morphology is discussed in 2.2, where subdirect composition is introduced. This notion is further developed in 2.3, where the geometric view is expanded from the standard word vectors and the voronoids introduced in Chapter 1 to include non-vectorial elements that express binary relations. These eigenspace techniques receive further use in 2.4, where some crucial relational devices of syntactic theory, thematic relations, deep cases, and kārakas are addressed. How much of syntax can be reconstructed with these is discussed in 2.5. 2.1 Lexical categories and subcategories Whether a universal system of lexical categories exists is still a widely debated question. Bloomfield, 1933, and more recently Kaufman, 2009 argued that certain languages like Tagalog have only one category. But the notion that there are at least three major categories that are universal, nouns, verbs, and adjectives, has been broadly defended (Baker, 2003; Chung, 2012; Haspelmath, 2021). 4lang subdivides verbs into two categories: intransitive U and transitive V; retaining the standard N for noun; A for adjective; and also uses D for aDverb; and G for Grammatical formative. While this rough categorization has proven useful for seeking bindings in the original 4 and in other languages, there is no theoretical claim associated to these categories, nei