Affiliation:
1. Faculty of Cultural Studies, University of Kochi, Kochi 788-8515, Japan
Abstract
The aim of this study is to experimentally capture the semantic, syntactic, and phonological properties of recursive compounds in English. We asked 22 native speakers of English to judge the semantic, syntactic, and phonological properties of 20 recursive compounds that are inherently ambiguous in interpretation (e.g., university entrance exam). We found variations among the participants in each of these three basic aspects. For semantic interpretation, there was a tendency among the participants to prefer left-branching interpretation (‘an exam for university entrance’) over right-branching interpretation (‘an entrance exam in a university’). Using a lexical integrity effect for the syntactic tests, it was found that certain recursive compounds allow for coordination inside. Phonologically, speaker variation was observed in whether and how recursive compounds were pronounced, with 16 participants obeying the Lexical Category Prominence Rule.
Reference54 articles.
1. Hierarchical NN compounds in a cross-linguistic perspective;Arcodia;Rivista di Linguistica,2009
2. Baker, Mark C. (2003). Lexical Categories, Cambridge University Press.
3. Bauer, Laurie (1978). The Grammar of Nominal Compounding: With Special Reference to Danish, English and French, Odense University.
4. When is a sequence of two nouns a compound in English?;Bauer;English Language and Linguistics,1998
5. Lieber, Rochelle, and Štekauer, Pavol (2009). Handbook of Compounding, Oxford University Press.