[Lexicog] Classifying compounds

[Kenneth Keyes]

Dear Mike, thanks for the detailed explanation! Ken

> -----Original Message-----
> From: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com 
> [mailto:lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Mike Maxwell
> Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2005 7:37 PM
> To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [Lexicog] Classifying compounds
> 
> 
> Kenneth Keyes wrote:
> > One of the many exciting features of Fieldworks is the 
> possibility of 
> > including a more rigorous treatment of complex lexical items, among 
> > them, compounds as subentries in the lexical database. So far the 
> > developers have included "A MoEndoCentric Compound." What 
> other types 
> > of compounds are there? How do I find out? Can anyone suggest some 
> > resources to research?
> 
> I can speak to the issue of what the underlying model allows, 
> but not to when any of this will be implemented.  The 
> following is taken from the model description I wrote several 
> years ago; references are at the end.
> 
> -----------------------
> 
> The typology of compounds is based on types Spencer (1991: 
> 310ff.); some of the compounds he discusses shade into 
> idioms.  The model does not attempt to account for the 
> semantics of compounds in the compounding rule, since this is 
> largely unpredictable. Nor do we attempt to account for 
> argument linking (e.g. 'drawbridge', where 'bridge' is the 
> internal argument of 'draw').
> 
> At a general level, the model distinguishes between binary 
> branching compounds and coordinate compounds.  Most compounds 
> are binary branching, (although see the cautions in Fabb 
> (1998) section 2.3). Binary compounds which contain more than 
> two constituents must thus be built up recursively. Thus, 
> manhole cover has the structure [[man hole] cover], rather 
> than a flat structure.
> 
> Among binary compounds, the model distinguishes endocentric 
> and exocentric compounds.
> 
> In endocentric compounds (the part of the model that handles 
> this also handles incorporation), the morphosyntactic 
> properties of the head constituent determine the 
> morphosyntactic properties of the compound structure (the 
> head's morphosyntactic features "percolate").  Most English 
> compounds are of this type.
> 
> Note that the head constituent is best defined in terms of 
> the relationship between the head and the whole, rather than 
> the relationship between the two constituents; thus, the 
> English 'killjoy' is not endocentric, despite the fact that 
> 'kill' presumably selects 'joy'. See Fabb (1998: 70).
> 
> This class does not provide a way to override the percolation 
> of the head’s morphosyntactic properties to the output 
> structure, this being essentially the definition of ‘head’. 
> However, this may be too strict a limitation, in that a 
> construction might override the head properties by imposing a 
> minor modification on the morphosyntactic properties of the 
> output. For example, in languages with (true) incorporation, 
> incorporation of the direct object may or may not make the 
> resulting verb intransitive (Baker 1996: 31).  It may 
> therefore be necessary to provide for overriding the 
> percolation of features, or (better) to change the 
> subcategorization list of the head.
> 
> Endocentric compounds are inflected on their heads (Scalise 
> 1986: 124). Non-heads of endocentric compounds are usually 
> uninflected, even when the word in question is always 
> inflected in isolation. An English example is pluralia tantum 
> words like 'scissors' and 'trousers', which appear in their 
> singular forms in compounds: scissor-handle and trouser-leg 
> (example (68) in Scalise 1986: 123). Exceptions sometimes 
> occur with irregular plurals: teethmarks (but cf. toothbrush, 
> *teethbrush).
> 
> Exocentric compounds are compounds like the English 'killjoy' 
> or Spanish 'paracaidas' "parachute", in which neither 
> constituent appears to be the head.
> 
> To my knowledge, exocentric compounds are not inflected for 
> their syntactic function, although the individual members of 
> the compound may have their own inflection. For example, the 
> Spanish example of the previous paragraph is made up of a 
> preposition 'para' "for" and a feminine plural noun 'caidas' 
> "falls"; the compound itself is masculine and ambiguous for 
> number, but is not so inflected. Other Spanish examples 
> include 'lavaplatos' "dish washer", consisting of the third 
> person singular present indicative verb 'lava' "washes" and 
> the masculine plural noun 'platos' "dishes"; and 'sacamuelas' 
> "dentist", consisting of the third person singular present 
> indicative verb 'saca' "removes" and the plural noun 'muelas' 
> "teeth'.  'Lavaplatos' is masculine and ambiguous for number, 
> while 'sacamuelas' is ambiguous for both gender and number.
> 
> Coordinate compounds are compounds of which all the members 
> are heads; branching may be non-binary.  There are several 
> linguistic terms for this sort of compound, including ‘
> co-ordinate compounds’, ‘appositional compounds’, and ‘
> dvandva compounds’. An example (taken from Fabb 1998, page 
> 74; see also section 1.1.2) is the Tamil 
> vira-tira-cakacan-kal "courage, bravery and valour".  [I've 
> had to remove all the special characters in this Tamil 
> word--I had it in a Roman-style transliteration, not the 
> Tamil characters, but even that I couldn't put in this email :-(.]
> 
> References:
> 
> Baker, Mark. 1996. The Polysynthesis Parameter. Oxford 
> Studies in Comparative Syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
> 
> Fabb, Nigel. 1998. "Compounding." Pages 66-83 in Spencer and 
> Zwicky (1998).
> 
> Scalise, Sergio. 1986. Generative Morphology. Studies in 
> Generative Grammar 18. Dordrecht: Foris.
> 
> Spencer, Andrew. 1991. Morphological Theory. An Introduction 
> to Word Structure in Generative Grammar. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.)
> 
> Spencer, Andrew; and Arnold M. Zwicky (eds.). 1998. The 
> Handbook of Morphology. Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics. 
> Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
> -- 
> 	Mike Maxwell
> 	Linguistic Data Consortium
> 	maxwell at ldc.upenn.edu
> 
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