R: (Nominal) juxtaposition

[Paolo Ramat]

Dear Masha,
the problem you are interested in is very intriguing. You have first to
solve the question whether compounds are juxtapositions or not.
Is <ferry boat> a juxtap.? And what about <railway>? In both cases there are
no overt segmental markers for relating the two nominals to each other. But
then you have in ancient IE lgs. compounds such as Lat. <hom-i-cida> and Gk.
<kyd-i-aneira> "giving glory [kydos] to the men" , where -i- does not belong
to the nominal stem ans seems to be a compounding marker. Yet, they are
considered compounds on a par with Gk. <hippo-dromos> etc. where the first
noun is represented by the bare stem (N.B.:secondary stress on hippo'- main
stress on -dro'mos!).
According to your criteria the latter would be juxtap., while the formers
wouldn't --though the first criterion (two nominals in contiguity ) is
respected. Traditionally a distinction is in fact done between real
compounds (: <hippo-dromos>) and "apparent(/near)compounds" (:
<Dios-kouroi> --also called 'unechte Komposita'). The term 'juxtaposition'
is sometime used for the latter type (see Germ. <Woerterbuch>
vs.<Wortbildung>).

Best wishes; see you in Tirrenia!
Paolo

-----Messaggio originale-----
Da: Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm <tamm at LING.SU.SE>
A: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG <LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
Data: sabato 29 aprile 2000 19.55
Oggetto: (Nominal) juxtaposition


>Dear colleagues! I am in urgent need of info on juxtaposition. What I
>need in particular are
> - 1. a good definition of what is/ can be meant by juxtaposition,
> - 2. references to literature which provides definitions of
>juxtaposition and /or takes juxtaposition as a theoretically
>interesting phenomenon, apart from the discussions of juxtaposition
>for the expression of inalienable possession and iconicity (e.g.,
>Haiman, Nichols etc.) and Mithun's paper (1988) on coordination.
>
>I am mostly interested in juxtaposition involving two nominals.
>
>  My own preliminary definition is as follows:
>
>"We find instances of nominal juxtaposition when
> - there are two nominals in contiguity with each other
> - the whole combination is a syntactic construction
> - there is no overt segmental marker for
>relating the two nominals to
> each other
> - wheras intonation and word order are crucial
>A nominal here refers to a noun, a noun with various modifiers or a
>noun phrase (for the moment leaving aside all the problems with parts
>of speech). In such cases we can talk about constructions involving
>nominal juxtaposition. E.g., the pseudopartitive NP "en kopp kaffe"
>in Swedish involves nominal juxtaposition, whereas its English
>counterpart "a cup of tea" does not".
>
>I do get a few problems here:
> - first, constructions which I'd like to call
>"juxtapositional" may involve case agreement between the two nominals
>- thus, in some languages both "a cup" and "tea" are always put in
>the same case in what otherwise looks exactly like the Swedish
>construction above.(For Swedish this problem does not arise, since
>there are no morphological cases left). When adnominal adjectives and
>their heads agree in case, we would hardly like to call this an
>instance of juxtaposition...
> second, I am fairly elusive on intonation, partly because I
>don't know how to deal with it. In quite a number of languages, a
>combination of two nominals in a particular construction type is
>accompanied by various tone process. Would we still want to call
>these cases instances of juxtaposition?
>
>Extremely grateful for any assistance,
>
>
>Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm
>Dept. of linguistics Vaesterled 166
>Stockholm University, 106 91, Stockholm , Sweden
> 167 72, Bromma, Sweden
>8-16 26 20 8-26 90 91
>http://www.ling.su.se/staff/tamm
>