LING 323 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Part Of Speech, Showboat, Doghouse
3 Feb 2019
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Morphologically complex words can be thought of as having hierarchical structures. Hierarchical structures is quite evident in compound words. Compound - complex lexeme that can be thought of as consisting of two or more basic lexemes. Lexemes that are joined together are called compound members. N+n compounds are extremely productive in english, but v+n is not. Many polysynthetic languages allow compounds that are not productive in other languages. Compounds consist of combined lexeme stems, not inflected forms. Pure stem: a stem that is not identical to any member of the inflectional paradigm. A stem without any inflection, used in compounding. Can be clearly demonstrated in german (page 139) In english, the first compound usually member modifies and determines the meaning of the second compound member, so it is the dependent; the second compound member is usually the semantic head. I. e. lipstick is a special kind of stick and not a special kind of lip.
