A Syntactic-Morphological Analysis of Nominal Compounds

Abstract

The present study investigates the syntactic and morphological properties of nominal synthetic compounds such as claw removal/truck driver, with the aim of identifying the optimum balance and interaction between syntax and morphology. Focusing on synthetic compounds in English extracted from a large corpus, theoretical analysis of compounding is conducted within an antilexicalism framework. Based on this analysis, the model of “well-distributed” word formation is proposed, in which (i) a compound has an underlying structure parallel to that of its clausal counterpart and accordingly their parallel thematic and semantic properties are uniformly handled in syntax, and (ii) the syntactic output, sent to morphology, is required to be constructed into a word form according to a set of morphological operations and conditions.