In Cognitive Linguistics, the noun-participle compound is a grammatical category with instances of different degrees of membership. The purpose of this study is to explore the categorization processes and schematic networks in noun-participle compounding. Working with the data of noun-participle compounds from COHA, we identified three types of participles: deverbal, denominal and ambicategorical. Two schemas [Nj-Vk-ed]A and [Nj-Nk-ed]A are established as generalizations of compounds of deverbal (e.g. man-made) and denominal participles (e.g. life-sized). Compounds of ambicategorical participles (e.g. snow-covered), are sanctioned by two schemas simultaneously, which give rise to ambiguous morphological readings. This study confirms the labor division between mother-daughter links and sister links in a schema network. The higher-level generalization is encoded by paradigmatically-related sister schemas, with the sister relations built on the shared structure links and a bi-directional conversion of the stem of ppl (i.e., noun-to-verb or verb-to-noun). The sister schemas as a paradigm is a more parsimonious generalization of the compounds, than the posited mother schema.
