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Paradigms in Word Formation: Theory and applications
Edited by Alba E. Ruz, Cristina Fernández-Alcaina and Cristina Lara-Clares
[Studies in Language Companion Series 225] 2022
► pp. 99–128

Chapter 5
Paradigm families in compounding

The case of English compound nouns headed by -er deverbal nouns

| University of Silesia in Katowice

This chapter demonstrates the applicability of the notion of derivational paradigms and word-formation families to the study of compounds. Three families of English compounds are investigated which are headed by deverbal -er nominals. The semantic homogeneity of each of those compound families is assessed by analysing data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), supplemented by some lexicographic searches and web searches. This involves the examination of the polysemy of the head nouns, the implicit semantic relation between compound elements and the transparency (or opacity) of the compounds which belong to the selected compound families. Comments are provided on the use of construction schemas to generalize over the internal structure and semantic interpretation of compound families (or subfamilies).

Keywords: derivational paradigms, compound family, semantic relations, synthetic compounds, Construction Morphology
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Polysemy of deverbal -er nouns
  • 3.Semantic relationships between constituents of NN compounds
  • 4.NN compounds headed by puller
    • 4.1The range of meanings of the head noun puller
    • 4.2Semantic relationships between compound constituents: Transparency/opacity of N+puller compounds
  • 5.NN compounds headed by the noun eater
    • 5.1The range of meanings of the head noun eater
    • 5.2Semantic relationships between compound constituents: Transparency/opacity of N+eater compounds
  • 6.NN compounds headed by charmer
    • 6.1The range of meanings of the head noun charmer
    • 6.2Semantic relationships between compound constituents: Transparency/opacity of N+charmer compounds
  • 7.[N V-er] compounds and construction schemas
  • 8.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 19 September 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.225.05cet
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