The Mental Lexicon - Volume 15, Issue 1, 2020

This article takes a function-to-form approach to word-formation in present-day English and argues that the ecosystem metaphor can help morphologists see competition in word-formation and its resolution in a new light. The analysis first draws correspondences between four lexical functions (transcategorial, transconceptual, evaluative, and compacting) and ten formal operations (prefixation, suffixation, compounding, blending, morphostasis, stress shift, clipping, desuffixation, initialization, and replication) and concludes that there is no across-the-board interoperation competition to encode each function, but rather a fairly complementary distribution of the operations between the four functional subsystems. Each functional subsystem is then reviewed in turn and it is shown that, again, there is no full-scale competition at this level, but rather some fairly pronounced tendencies towards complementariness, and, in one case, also towards combination. The broad division of labor within each subsystem can, remarkably, be accounted for in different terms: the conditioning is primarily semantic (with formal subconsiderations) in the transcategorial and transconceptual subsystems while it is formal in the evaluative and compacting subsystems.

The present study analyses native speaker perceptions of the differences in the semantic structure of compounds and blends to specify whether the formal differences between compounds and blends are reflected on the semantic level. Viewpoints on blending vary, with some researchers considering it to be an instance of compounding (Kubozono, 1990), while others identify blending as an interim word formation mechanism between compounding and shortening (López Rúa, 2004). The semantic characteristics of English determinative blends and N+N subordinative compounds are compared by evaluating the differences in native speakers’ perceptions of the semantic relationships between constituents of the analysed structures. The results of two web-based experiments demonstrate that readers’ interpretations of both compounds and blends differ in terms of lexical indicators of semantic relations between the elements of these units. The experimental findings indicate that language users’ interpretation of both compounds and blends includes information on semantic relationships. The differences in the effect of the semantic relations on interpretations is likely to be connected to the degree of formal transparency of these units.

We explore variation in the interpretation of attested novel compound nouns in English, especially the contribution of constituent polysemy to this diversity. Our results show that effects of polysemy are pervasive in compound interpretation, contributing both to interpretational diversity and to perceived difficulty of interpretation. The higher the uncertainty about the concept represented by the head noun, based on existing compounds with that head, the greater the diversity of interpretations across speakers and the more difficult, on average, they find it to come up with a meaning.

While morphemes are theoretically defined as linguistic units linking form and meaning, semantic effects in morphological processing are not reported consistently in the literature on derived and compound words. The lack of consistency in this line of research has often been attributed to methodological differences between studies or contextual effects. In this paper, we advance a different proposal where semantic effects emerge quite consistently if semantics is defined in a dynamic and flexible way, relying on distributional semantics approaches. In this light, we revisit morphological processing, taking a markedly cognitive perspective, as allowed by models that focus on morphology as systematic meaning transformation or that focus on the mapping between the orthographic form of words and their meanings.

English Noun+Noun compounding has garnered the attention of morphologists due to characteristics that involve its semantics (Bauer & Tarasova, 2010; Jackendoff, 2009), degree of productivity (Bauer, Beliaeva, & Tarasova, 2019; Maguire, Wisniewski, & Storms, 2010) and possible paradigmatic nature (Bagasheva, in press; Boyé & Schalchli, 2016). This article addresses the above questions from an inclusive perspective with the aim of bringing together various unsolved issues in the study of this morphological process. The experiment exploits data from the BNC Sampler and the Oxford English Dictionary, from which morphological and semantic information is extracted in order to fathom the contribution of nominal root compounding to the lexicon. The results show that the paradigmatic nature, semantics and high productivity of NN compounding are all closely interrelated, which explains certain characteristics associated to the current status of this process and its role in the enrichment of the lexicon.

There have been many attempts at classifying the semantic modification relations (ℜ) of N + N compounds but this work has not led to the acceptance of a definitive scheme, so that devising a reusable classification is a worthwhile aim. The scope of this undertaking is extended to other binominal lexemes, i.e. units that contain two thing-morphemes without explicitly stating ℜ, like prepositional units, N + relational adjective units, etc. The 25-relation taxonomy of Bourque (2014) was tested against over 15,000 binominal lexemes from 106 languages and extended to a 29-relation scheme (“Bourque2”) through the introduction of two new reversible relations. Bourque2 is then mapped onto Hatcher’s (1960) four-relation scheme (extended by the addition of a fifth relation, similarity, as “Hatcher2”). This results in a two-tier system usable at different degrees of granularities. On account of its semantic proximity to compounding, metonymy is then taken into account, following Janda’s (2011) suggestion that it plays a role in word formation; Peirsman and Geeraerts’ (2006) inventory of 23 metonymic patterns is mapped onto Bourque2, confirming the identity of metonymic and binominal modification relations. Finally, Blank’s (2003) and Koch’s (2001) work on lexical semantics justifies the addition to the scheme of a third, superordinate level which comprises the three Aristotelean principles of similarity, contiguity and contrast.

We investigate how people extend properties from head nouns to compound words. Two conflicting principles seem to be important. Concepts license inference of properties: Knowing that birds fly allows an inference that songbirds fly. On the other hand, a subcategory term like songbirds is created only when that subcategory contrasts with the general category of birds. Participants rate the extent to which properties true of all, some, or no members of the head noun category are true of a subcategory denoted by an Opaque-Transparent compound. Both categorical inference and contrast affect these judgments: Properties true of the head are less true of the compound though still generally true, while those false of the head are more true of the compound, though still generally false. We discuss how modification effects with Opaque-Transparent compounds compare to both Transparent-Transparent compounds and novel combinations.

The paper is aimed at the evaluation of whether, and if, to what degree, the psychological factor of creativity affects the interpretation of complex words. The research covered 324 students (17–18 years old) who attended (at the time of the experiment) various secondary schools in Košice, Slovakia. For the sake of evaluation, the respondents were divided into two cohorts (H-cohort and L-cohort) for each of the creativity variables, based on their high vs. low scores achieved in the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT). These variables include Elaboration, Fluency, Flexibility and Originality and two subscores, the Creative Strengths and the Composite Score. The interpretation test includes potential compound words and converted words, i.e., potential words that admit numerous potential readings. The evaluation process is primarily based on Štekauer’s theory of meaning predictability (2005), and covers four variables: the predictability rate, the objectified predictability rate, hapax legomena, and the average number of readings per informant. The results suggest that while the H-cohort is more ‘creative’ in interpreting potential words the influence of the individual variables/subscores varies substantially.