phrasal compounds and the theory of word syntax

Phrasal Compounds and the Theory of Word SyntaxAuthor(s): Richard WieseSource: Linguistic Inquiry, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Winter, 1996), pp. 183-193Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4178931 .

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SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION 183

PHRASAL COMPOUNDS AND THE

THEORY OF WORD SYNTAX

Richard Wiese Heinrich-Heine-Universitd t Dusseldorf

1 Introduction

Current theories of the lexicon adhere to one of two positions. Accord- ing to one position, the lexicon is only the repository of idiosyncratic information. That is, the lexicon lists morphemes and their unpredictable properties. According to the other position, the lexicon is the grammatical component for the formation of words. That is, the lexicon comprises the necessary rules and/or principles that define well- formed words of a language.

I will consider the strongest form of the latter view, which main- tains that all word formation is done in the lexicon. This position is the lexicalist view of word formation, proposed by authors such as Lapointe (1980), Selkirk (1982), and Di Sciullo and Williams (1987).1 A corollary to the claim that word formation is lexical is the strong lexicalist hypothesis stated, in one of its possible versions, in (1).

(1) Strong lexicalist hypothesis Regularities for the WORD do not overlap with the regularities of the domain PHRASE.

One way of giving formal expression to this hypothesis is to formulate different sets of principles for the structures involved for words and phrases. Crucially, X-bar levels extend upward from X? in phrasal syntax, and downward in word syntax. X? categories are the only elements that are common to both words and phrases. Also, nonheads in phrases (complements or modifiers) are phrases themselves, whereas in words they are lexical elements. As a consequence of this conception, phrasal syntax has nothing to say about the interual structure of words.

The existence of phrasal compounds, as introduced below, is com- monly regarded as a severe problem for the strong lexicalist hypothesis. In this squib I will argue that this problem is only apparent. In spite of all appearances to the contrary, phrasal compounds do not provide any evidence that phrasal syntax has access to the intemal structure of words.

2 Phrasal Compounds

Phrasal compounds have been mentioned widely in the recent literature on word formation (for some discussion, see Botha 1981, Selkirk 1982, Kiparsky 1982, Sproat 1985). Most explicitly, they have been used

The present work was developed while I had the opportunity to be a visiting scholar at the Forschungsschwerpunkt Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (FAS) in Berlin. I thank many members of this institution, Chris Golston, Paul Kiparsky, and an anonymous reviewer for Linguistic Inquiry for valuable discussions.

' According to intermediate points of view, word formation is partly lexical and partly syntactic; see, among other works, Anderson 1992. For Di Sciullo and Williams, the lexicon is reserved for the listing of idiosyncratic information about morphemes and other unpredictable units. Nevertheless, their position is lexicalist in the sense used here.



184 SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION

by Lieber (1988, 1992) as evidence for the nonseparation of word syntax and phrasal syntax, and thereby as arguments against the strong lexicalist hypothesis. In (2) I present a sample of relevant examples, also demonstrating that this type of compounding is not restricted to a single language.2

(2) a. English a pipe-and-slipper husband a slept-all-day look over-the-fence gossip God-is-dead theology an off-the-rack dress a connect-the-dots puzzle

b. Afrikaans Charles-en-Di sindroom 'Charles-and-Di syndrome' op'n-ry nests 'in-a-row nests'

c. Dutch lach-of-ik-schiet humor 'laugh-or-I-shoot humor' blijf-van-mijn-lijf huis 'stay-away-from-my-body house'

d. German CP: die Wer-war-das-Frage

'the who-was-it question' NP: die Muskel-fur-Muskel-Methode

'the muscle-for-muscle method' AP: der 'Fit-statt-fett'-Buirowettbewerb

'the fit-over-fat office contest' PP: der Zwischen-den-Zeilen-Widerstand

'the between-the-lines opposition' NP: die Gift-in-der-Limonade-Szene

'the poison-in-the-lemonade scene' DP: Ein-Kerl-wie-ich-Visagen

'a-guy-like-me faces' VP: In-den-Mund-nehm-Spiel

'take-into-the-mouth game' IP: der Von-Alubert-gekuBt-worden-zu-sein-

Alptraum 'the having-been-kissed-by-Alubert nightmare'

CP: der Aber-da-hort-sich-doch-gleich-alles-auf- Blick 'the this-puts-a-stop-to-everything look'

2 I have drawn most of the examples from the discussions in the literature, such as Brogyanyi 1980, Botha 1981:73ff., Toman 1983, Lieber 1988, 1992, Leser 1990. I have normalized the somewhat erratic spelling of phrasal compounds by hyphenating all of the phrases.




e. Mandarin Chinese bai-hua-ql-f'ang yiundong 'hundred-flowers-simultaneously-blossom movement'

The German compounds in (2d) are labeled with approximate categories for their nonhead elements. The point is not the correctness of the labels, but the wide range of possible phrases in these compounds. Owing to the examples in (2), Lieber proposes to modify the word syntax of compounds in such a way that both the structures specified in (3) are possible. Both words (Y?) and maximal phrases (Ymax) are admitted as nonheads in compounds.

(3) X?

yfO/max) x X

The arguments that such compounds exist are indeed compelling. First, stress patterns are exactly as expected for phrases and for compounds: the embedded phrases bear the stress patterns exhibited by the same phrases in isolation, and the whole compound displays the stress pattern of (most) compounds, namely, with main stress on the initial part. This is indicated for a minimal pair of two German phrasal compounds in (4). Note that the position of the main stress varies according to its position in the phrase in isolation.3 In other words, the virtual identity of the embedded expressions' stress patterns to the stress patterns of the phrases in isolation argues for the phrasal nature of the embedded expressions.

3 1 2 4 1 3 2 0 (4) a. Wer war das? die Wer-war-das-Frage

'Who was it?' 'the who-was-it question' 2 3 1 3 4 1 2 0

b. Wer war was? die Wer-war-was-Frage 'Who was what?' 'the who-was-what question'

Second, as Lieber (1988, 1992) also notes, the interpretation of phrasal compounds parallels that of compounds in general. The rough characterization that "A compound X Y refers to a Y that is further specified by X" holds for phrasal compounds just as well as for most other compounds.

There is thus no reason to assume that phrasal compounds are not what their name suggests: compounds with phrases in nonhead position. Although it may be correct to note (Sproat 1992:248) that not all of the so-called phrasal compounds enumerated by Lieber are actually compounds, a large number of such compounds do exist. The range of examples in (2) also speaks against the speculation (see Scal- ise 1984, Wunderlich 1986, Burstein 1992) that the phrases found are

3I use SPE notation for stress for brevity's sake alone. Note that the corresponding English pair, as in the translation, is identical to the German pair with respect to the preservation of the stress pattern.




restricted to lexicalized items-a fact that, if true, would make a lexical treatment of phrasal compounds more plausible. Although lexicalized phrases are often found in the phrase position of phrasal compounds, this is not necessarily the case and does not seem to be a structural condition. (See section 4 for a proposed alternative explanation.)

Seen in this light, the problem for the lexicalist position is obvious, and there seem to be two escape routes. One would be to dupli- cate the whole of phrasal syntax in the lexicon. Lexical Phonology (Kiparsky 1982), within a theory otherwise known for its strict separation of lexical and postlexical (syntactic) domains, admits "recursion" from the syntax back into lexical compounding in order to admit phrasal compounds. This solution not only would be uneconomical, but also would go, at least, against the spirit of the lexicalist hypothesis. The other obvious solution is to assume that compound-internal phrases can be generated by the rules of regular syntax, because word formation is syntax. This is the position taken by Sproat (1985) and Lieber (1988, 1992). The lexicon then is reduced to being the repository of morphemes and other bits of idiosyncratic information on lex- emes. In this model, a generalized X-bar syntax is assumed to range over phrases as well as complex words, as sketched in (3). Other syntactic principles are also assumed to be valid for both words and phrases.

3 Phrasal Compounds and the Mixing of Sign Systems

This line of argumentation crucially rests on the assumption that phrasal syntax and word syntax must be parts of one and the same system, for the reason that instantiations of the former are found within constructions from the latter domain. However, consider the bilingual phrasal compounds in (5).

(5) a. die No-future-Jugendlichen 'the no-future youngsters' eine Make-love-not-war-Bewegung 'a make-love-not-war movement' die Just-in-time-Garantie 'the just-in-time guarantee'

b. diese Rien-ne-va-plus-Behauptung 'this rien-ne-va-plus claim' ihre C'est-la-vie-Haltung 'her c'est-la-vie attitude'

c. pasar-patois expression 'marketplace-dialect (Malay) expression (English)' pau-ka-leow deal wrap-it-up (Hokien) deal (English)'

si-ba-kow goondu 'four-eye-monkey (Hokien) stupid (Malay) (= a be- spectacled young person)' jiang-huayu campaign 'speak-Mandarin (Chinese) campaign (English)'




In (5a) a German compound contains an English phrase; similarly, a French phrase occurs in a German compound in (Sb), and (Sc) displays various combinations of Malay, Chinese (dialects), and English.4 In other words, these phrasal compounds are bilingual, and the range of pairings of languages displayed especially in (Sc) indicates that the combinatory possibilities are restricted only by the (assumed) knowledge of languages possessed by speakers and listeners within a community.

The range of acceptable phrasal compounds is even larger than the bilingual examples in (5) suggest. It is quite possible (though hard to represent on paper) to have a compound in which the nonhead element is a nonverbal gesture, such as a gesture of despair, contempt, or insult. (6a) gives a schematized example from German, in which the nonverbal gesture could, for example, be a shrug of the shoulders (meaning 'I don't care'). There is no reason to believe that other languages do not allow the same crossmodal compounds. In (6b) another type of crossmodal compound (taken from Fanselow 1990) is illustrated, which has written, nonalphabetic signs in nonhead position.

(6) a. seine [nonverbal gesture]-Haltung 'his [nonverbal gesture] attitude'

b. das @-Zeichen 'the @-sign' die #-Taste 'the #-key'

The response to this expanded range of phrasal compounds draw- ing from several languages and sign systems could hardly be that the grammars of English, French, Gernan, Chinese, and so on, are not separated, but integrated into one all-inclusive system that even in- cludes the system of nonverbal gestures and special keyboard charac- ters. Such a reaction would make statements about the grammars of individual languages (and sign systems in general) impossible. Also, the range of possible bilingual phrasal compounds seems to be restricted, not by any structural factors, but by pragmatic factors (acci- dental knowledge of languages) alone. Furthermore, there is no reason to assume that monolingual phrasal compounds (those illustrated in (2)) are different from the bilingual ones in (5) or (6). The existence of phrasal compounds thus cannot be used as an argument that the phrasal syntax and the word syntax of a language are nondistinct. This argument would lead to the absurd conclusion that all sign systems, linguistic and nonlinguistic, form one integrated whole, and that it does not make sense to study and formulate the structural principles of any single such system.

4 I owe the latter examples to Eileen Sung.




4 Toward a Linguistics of Quotation

What is it, then, that makes phrasal compounds, including the bilingual ones, possible? The preceding section has demonstrated that virtually any instance of the Saussurean sign, a pairing of an outer form with a content, can appear in the nonhead position of a compound. One mechanism to transport signs of one system into those of another system is quotation. In quotation, material from one domain (the quoted expression) is used and embedded in some other domain (the matrix expression).

As noted by Partee (1973), quoted expressions both contribute to the meaning of the matrix expression and contain an aforementioned expression.5 Quotation is thus an act of both using and mentioning a (verbal or nonverbal) sign. In its most restricted sense, quotation means the repetition of an utterance made by some other speaker, but it re- quires only a minimal abstraction and extension to allow a wider domain of application, such as quoting a (spoken or written) word of a language, or a particular style of speaking.

A further observation is that any sign can apparently be quoted. As a linguistic object, used within an utterance or matrix expression in general, it can be regarded as being dominated by a highly under- specified linguistic category, which can be arbitrarily set to either a word (if quotation occurs within a compound) or a maximal phrase. There does not seem to be a need to assign a part-of-speech category such as N, V, or A to the dominating lexical category. As nonheads, the phrases do not project their features onto their embedding structures.

To summarize, although Lieber's proposal allows structures like the one in (7a), the present proposal leads to structures like (7b), with the quoted phrase embedded in a lexical category. The inner structure of the NP (or any other phrase) is structurally invisible or encapsulated. (The quotation marks are meant as preliminary indicators of this fact.) Accordingly, no feature percolation from the phrase to its dominating category (or vice versa) is possible. However, the content of the NP contributes to the meaning of the compound just as any other prehead modifier would.

(7) a. X? b. X?

NP XO yo X?

"NP"

The quotation analysis also accounts for other properties of phrasal compounds. Phrasal nonheads must refer to something that is

I Partee (1973:412) presents examples such as The sign says "George Washington slept here," but I don't believe he really ever did. The connection of he and did to the quotation would be inexplicable if the quotation were only an instance of mentioning.




quoteworthy, and a quoted sign will normally have a certain amount of (informational) completeness. This is sufficient to explain the much- noted fact that phrases within phrasal compounds are normally maximal phrases. Other conditions that have been proposed are too strong. Burstein (1992:54) claims that phrasal nonheads must be idiomatic expressions, and cites phrasal compounds like those in (8) as being unacceptable. However, under an interpretation in which the initial phrases are quotations, these compounds appear perfectly acceptable.

(8) along-the-wall ivy beside-the-river vineyards

This sketch of a description for phrasal compounds is completely general in that it applies to all kinds of phrasal compounds, as exempli- fied in (2), (5), and (6). It also predicts that no structural conditions exist for phrasal compounds beyond those valid for normal compounds. Any quotable sign should be able to occur in nonhead position of compounds. The analysis furthermore implies that a word-syntactic structure (of whatever kind) is sufficient for all compounds, including phrasal compounds.

Paul Kiparsky (personal communication) has suggested that En- glish compounds such as parks commission might also be phrasal compounds. As this squib has amply demonstrated, virtually any material can appear in nonhead position. If verifiable, the present proposal accounts for the much-discussed irregularity of phrases like parks commission in displaying the compound-intemal regular plural affix -s (cf. mice-infested with *rats-infested). If taken as a phrase, the plural form parks would not be a problem as an initial element in a compound. In any case, compounds of this exceptional type include some that are obviously phrasal: chemical weapons attack, last orders call. There is in fact evidence from child language that compounds of the type parks commission might indeed be phrasal compounds. Alegre and Gordon (1995) found in a study that children aged three to five were willing to accept compounds with the structure [[red rats] eater], but not compounds with the structure [red [rats eater]]. In contrast, compounds with singular nouns in nonhead position (red rat eater) were consistently interpreted as involving a red eater, that is, as having the structure [red [rat eater]]. That is, a plural suffix induces a phrasal reading ([red rats]), whereas singular forms are preferentially treated as lexical compounds (modified further by an adjective).6

From the analysis of compound-intemal phrases as quotations we can even understand why the phrases are frequently, though not necessarily, lexicalized items. To be quotable, an utterance must be particularly noteworthy-a salient piece of verbal behavior shared by a significant number of members of a linguistic community. The more

6 In their paper Alegre and Gordon assume compounds to be lexical or to contain a syntactic phrase. The latter compounds are built by recursion from the syntax into the lexical component.




lexicalized phrases fulfill this condition, the more likely they are to be found in phrasal compounds.

5 Conclusion and Residual Problems

The existence of bilingual phrasal compounds strongly argues against a treatment that interprets phrases and compounds as stemming from a single system of rules, principles, or parameters. Rather, a mechanism such as quotation must be held responsible for the existence of phrasal compounds.7 Therefore, phrasal compounds cannot be used as evidence against the strong lexicalist hypothesis, or against any theory that claims word formation is distinct from the formation of phrases (syntax in the restricted sense). Lieber's (1988:219) conclusion that "we can eliminate most (all?) morphology-specific principles" re- ceives no support from the facts of phrasal compounding, unless one is also willing to eliminate all principles that are specific to a single language or even to verbal language as such.

In this squib I have argued that phrasal compounds cannot decide between lexical and nonlexical analyses of compounds. Certainly, a number of questions and issues remain on the agenda, and the debate between proponents of lexical and nonlexical treatments of word formation is not yet closed. Affixation, for example, cannot be purely lexical, because of the well-known fact that some affixes, such as the English genitive suffix, are phrasal affixes taking a phrasal modifier, as in (9).

(9) the Queen of England's hat a friend of mine's book Halle and Vergnaud's argument

These examples, as well as others from diverse languages (see, e.g., Pulleyblank and Akinlabi 1988 on Yoruba), demonstrate that the connection between affixes and lexical categories is not a necessary one. Affixes can be found, although probably in the marked case, in connection with phrasal categories.

An interesting additional aspect of phrasal compounds is the problem of Case assignment. Lieber (1988) notes that in phrasal compounds, the phrase cannot be a complement of the verb embedded in the following head noun. That is, looking at lexical and phrasal compounds, and at nonheads that are either complements or adjuncts, we find, according to Lieber, the distribution tabulated in (10).8

7 Given the assumed universality of quotation, we can then derive the prediction that all languages that allow compounding also allow phrasal compounding. Brogyanyi (1980) proposes the reverse prediction: if a language allows phrasal compounding, it also allows compounding.

8 Glosses for expressions in this table: 'pizza eater', 'canteen eater', 'around-the-clock eater'.




(10) Compounds Complements Adjuncts

Lexical Pizzaesser Kantinenesser Phrasal Rund-um-die-Uhr-Esser

Lieber's account of the gap in this matrix (synthetic compounds cannot have a phrasal complement) relies on the generally accepted notion that NPs (but not nouns) need Case, which is usually assigned within phrases. Thus, she proposes that Case is not assigned within minimal phrases. A phrasal compound such as *der Jede-Pizza-Esser 'the every-pizza eater' is such a minimal phrase (X?); accordingly, the NP jede Pizza does not receive Case, which renders the construction ungrammatical.9

However, if Case is assigned in nonminimal phrases only, how do noncomplement NPs in phrasal compounds ever receive Case? That a large number of such NP-initial phrasal compounds exist is clear from the examples in (2). If Case assignment is not possible, then these should be ungrammatical as well.

The analysis sketched above, proposing quotation with its con- comitant structural encapsulation of the quoted expression, has a straightforward answer to this question: the quoted NPs may or may not have Case, but this fact is irrelevant for word-internal syntax (and thereby grammaticality). First, principles of Case theory are inapplica- ble word-internally. For this reason, lack of Case assignment would not make word-internal NPs ungrammatical. Second, structural features of a quoted NP cannot be made visible on the level of the matrix expression. Finally, it is a fact that quoted NPs can be found with various (morphological) cases under otherwise identical circumstances; see (11). The phrase in (1 la) is in the nominative case, the phrase in (1 lb) in the accusative case.

(11) a. Ein-Kerl-wie-ich-Visagen '[a-guy-like-me]NOM faces'

b. Einen-Kerl-wie-mich-Visagen '[a-guy-like-me]ACC faces'

This possibility provides an additional argument both for the claim that Case (or non-Case) in phrasal compounds is independent of syntactic principles and for the quotation analysis. As emphasized above, all complete phrases can in principle be quoted, with Case (if present) included.

9 A number of informants including myself do not find the starred item truly ill formed. It remains to be clarified whether the proposed gap is a real one. If it is not, the problem of Case assignment to NPs within compounds must still be solved.




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phrasal compounds and the theory of word syntax

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