Query Details
| Query Subject: |
Linking elements in compounds
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| Author: | Andrea Krott | |
| Submitter Email: | click here to access email | |
| Linguistic LingField(s): |
Morphology
Syntax |
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| Query: |
I am working on linking morphemes in Dutch nominal compounds and I am
searching for other languages revealing a similar phenomenon. The only languages I know about are Dutch, German, and Danish. Here is a description of what linking morphemes in Dutch are: There are two main linking morphemes in Dutch: -s- and -en-. They appear between the two constituents of a nominal compound. examples: boekenkast (standard orthography) boek-en-kast (morpheme breakdown) book-LINK-shelf ''book shelf'' regeringsvorm (standard orthography) regering-s-vorm (morpheme breakdown) government-LINK-type 'type of government' Historically, linking morphemes in Dutch are old genitive singular suffixes or nominative plural suffixes. Syncronically, the linking -s- often cannot be interpreted as a plural or genitive suffix of the first constituent (e.g., 'regerings' is not the correct plural form for 'regering'). It is also questionable whether the -s- still bares any semantic information. On the other hand, the linking -en- only occurs after nouns which syncronically form their plural with -en, and there is evidence that -en- still bares the plural meaning. In Dutch linking morphemes are productively used in novel compounds. People mostly agree on which linking morpheme to use in a novel compound. Although, they have a flexible sense of what is ''correct'' (unlike inflectional morphology). I would be thankful for any information about any language with any kind of linking elements in compounds (not only in nominal compounds). Andrea __________________________________________ Andrea Krott M.A. Interfaculty Research Unit for Language and Speech & Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Wundtlaan 1 PB 310, 6500 AH Nijmegen The Netherlands E-mail: akrott@mpi.nl |
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| LL Issue: | 10.1233 | |
| Date posted: | 21-Aug-1999 | |
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