Query Details
| Query Subject: |
Romance and German Verb + Noun Compounds
|
|
| Author: | Andreas Gather | |
| Submitter Email: | click here to access email | |
| Linguistic LingField(s): |
Language Documentation
|
|
| Language Family: |
Armenian
Amerindian Pidgin |
|
| Query: |
Dear Linguists,
I'm working on the morphological structure of Romance Verb + Noun Compounds (henceforth VNCs) of the type fr. 'ouvre-bote', it. 'asciugamano', span. 'abrelatas', port. 'limpavidros', cat. 'obrellaunes' etc. This type of compounding seems to be fully productive in all Romance languages with the exception of Roumanian. (a) Clearly, in the overwhelming majority of the cases, the noun has to be analyzed as satisfying the theme-role of the verbal constituent or, to put it differently, as functioning as the direct object of the verb. The semantic notion of theme and the syntactic notion of direct object overlap to a very large extent, but perhaps are not fully co-extensive (a point not directly relevant to my queries). What complicates matters, is the fact that there are some VNCs which do not fit the outlined pattern and where the nominal constituent does not function as the direct object/theme of the verb. What I have in mind here, are not so much the well-known and highly lexicalized cases as it. 'marciapiede', 'batticuore' or (perhaps) fr. 'croque-monsieur', where the noun seems to function as the subject of the verb, or compounds like span. 'girasol'/fr. 'tourne-soleil'/it. 'girasole', where the noun likewise does not bear a theme-role, but more recent and fully transparent formations reported in the relevant literature, as, for instance, fr. 'garde-boue' ('something that protects someone from splashes'), span. 'protege-esquinas' ('something that protects children against (sharp) edges' and NOT 'something that protects edges') or fr. 'protge-pluie' (in the sense of 'umbrella', i.e. 'something that protects from rain'). In the light of such examples and the well-known partly or fully lexicalised cases, some linguists, especially in the German speaking area, have argued for a general word formation rule, covering all these cases and leaving the exact relation between verb and noun underspecified and to be inferred from pragmatics and language use. To my mind, this is not a viable solution because it does not allow for an explanation of the fact that the theme/direct object examples by far outnumber the other cases and that especially interpretations of the noun constituent as the external argument are completely rejected by native speakers (at least in neologisms and cases where the semantics is still truely compositional). I think that cases where the noun does not bear the theme-role should better be thought of as belonging to the periphery of a more restricted word formation rule, which only has to handle the core cases. But perhaps those cases that I term 'peripheral' are more widespread than I think. The corpora of examples that I studied and reactions of native speakers that I tested, however, do not point in such a direction. If, nevertheless, someone has reasons to think that I underestimate the role of ''non-canonical'' examples, I would be glad if she/he would let me know. (b) In some way related to the above problem is the question of whether VNCs are subject to genuine morphological principles or whether they can (and should) be handled by syntactic principles. The striking correspondence between the basic Romance word order in the syntax and the sequencing of verb + object in the VNCs has always been noticed and often been alluded to in the context of the emergence of these compounds in early Romance or late Latin, while they are practically absent from classical Latin with a supposedly different basic sentence pattern. Many of the Romance VNCs correspond to German or English synthetic compounds of the type 'truck driver', 'thirst quencher' and 'skyscraper'. At least for German, the hypothesis that these compounds reflect syntactic structure can be upheld; the English case is much more controversial (as can be seen by the syntactic movement analysis proposed by Lieber (1992) and some of the reactions it provoked). But note that even in German and English there are at least superficially similar compounds like 'chain smoker' oder 'daydreamer', which do not correspond to the general pattern with the non-head satisfying an argument of the (de)verbal head and which do not reflect syntactic relations. In the relevant literature, these compounds, however, are (as far as I know) treated separately from the more common and semantically predictable cases and are not subsumed under a more strictly defined notion of 'synthetic compound'. I would appreciate very much if someone could give me information about languages that have similar types of VN- or NV-compounding and would let me know if these compounds are in line with or diverge from the basic (underlying) word order in those languages. Moreover, as I see things, a strict syntactic analysis of Romance VNCs could only be defended if cases as the above mentioned 'protege-esquinas', which do not mirror syntactic structure, are indeed to be analysed as peripheral. (I leave aside here differences between truely syntactic VPs and VNCs as far as the presence/absence of functional categories is concerned; cf. 'ouvre-bote', but 'ouvrir une/la/cette bote'/*'ouvrir bote'. Such differences may be explainable by independently motivated mechanisms.) (c) My third question concerns German VN compounds of the type 'Leuchtreklame' (lit.: 'shine sign'; 'neon sign'); 'Stechmcke' (lit.: 'sting mosquito'; 'mosquito'), 'Kriechtier'(lit.: 'creep animal'), 'Mietwagen' (lit.: 'hire car'), 'Heilpflanze' (lit.: 'heal plant'; 'medicinal plant'), 'Wibegierde' (lit. 'know desire'; 'thirst for knowledge'), 'Lesebuch' (lit.: 'read book'; 'reader'), 'Brechreiz' (lit.: 'vomit irritation'; 'nausea'), 'Waschstrasse' (lit.: 'wash street'; 'car-wash'), 'Strfaktor' (lit.: 'trouble factor'; 'disruptive factor'), 'Putzlappen' (lit.: 'clean cloth'; 'cloth'), 'Lehrbuch' (lit.: 'teach book'; 'textbook'), 'Sprechanlage' (lit.: 'speak device'; 'intercom'), 'Singvogel' (lit.: 'sing bird'; 'song-bird') etc. Similar compounds exist in English ('rattlesnake', 'playboy', 'callgirl' etc.), but are less widepread and obviously less productive than in German. The German (and English) VNCs differ fundamentally from the Romance VNCs. The latter are (at least at the phonetic surface and according to some researchers morphologically as well) exocentric, while the former are always endocentric (with the head on the right). Furthermore, in the German compounds, the actual relation between verb und noun is scarcely predictable on purely linguistic grounds - a fact that seems to offer evidence for a truely morphological analysis and to militiate against a syntactic treatment. The inherent indeterminacy of the VN-relation in the German VNCs can easily be seen from the examples given above, although in many cases the nominal constituent, which is the head of the construction, obviously satisfies the external (subject) argument of the verbal (non-head) constituent - a pattern categorically excluded in the Romance VNCs except for a few lexicalized and more or less opaque cases, where the noun functions as the subject argument of the verb (see above). The fact that German VNCs never qualify as translations of Romance VNCs might be due to the fundamental differences in headship assignment. Cases of German VNCs where the noun functions as the theme of the verb are possible (cf. 'Trinkmilch' (lit.: 'drink milk'; 'milk' (as opposed to 'evaporated milk')), 'Trinkwasser' (lit.: 'drink water'; 'drinking water')), although they do not seem to constitute the bulk of the cases. Since I'm specialised in Romance linguistics and (though a native speaker of German) I'm not too familiar with linguistic studies of German, I would be glad if someone could point out to me if there are in depth-analyses of the German VNCs (I only know of Boase-Beier/Toman (1986) and some remarks on these compounds in Toman's contribution to the Handbook of Morphological Theory). Moreover, I don't know if there already exists a comparative study of German and Romance VNCs. In case I receive enough responses, I will, of course, write a summary. Many thanks in advance Andreas Gather andreas.gather@ruhr-uni-bochum.de Address: Dr. Andreas Gather Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum Romanisches Seminar GB 8/133 Universitaetsstr. 150 44780 Bochum Germany Does any one know about recent research on specialized (i.e. science and technology) lexis based on corpus analysis? I have been looking in vain for something resembling Comrie's _The World's Major Languages_ which contains similar analyses of a wide variety of Amerind languages, a group that is missing from Comrie's book. I would be interested in finding a similar analysis of Armenian. Thanks, Dave Harris Washington, DC |
|
| LL Issue: | 9.1667 | |
| Date posted: | 23-Nov-1998 | |
|
Back |
||
|
|
||
|
Sums main page
|
||
|
About LINGUIST
|
Contact Us
|
Report Broken Link
While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents. |
|
