Article published in:
Morphology and its InterfacesEdited by Alexandra Galani, Glyn Hicks and George Tsoulas
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 178] 2011
► pp. 137–168
At the boundary of morphology and syntax
Noun noun constructions in English
Melanie J. Bell | Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics, University of Cambridge
A widely held view of noun noun constructions (NNs) in English is that some are compound nouns while others are noun phrases (e.g. Quirk et al. 1985: 1332, Biber et al. 1999: 589, Giegerich 2004). This chapter shows that a syntactic analysis of NNs necessitates the postulation of a cross linguistically exceptional phrase type, whereas a morphological analysis requires only the normal West Germanic processes of word formation. It therefore argues with Levi (1978: 66–74) and Olsen (2000), that these constructions are all compound words. The criteria of stress and lexical integrity, sometimes taken to indicate a dual origin, are shown to be unreliable. Furthermore, the analysis proposed here is in keeping with recent work by Plag et al. (2007, 2008) and Lappe & Plag (2007), who argue that stress is assigned to NNs on the basis of analogy with previously experienced forms.
Published online: 17 August 2011
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.178.08bel
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.178.08bel
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