Complex Word-Formation and the Morphology-Syntax Interface Susanna Padrosa Trias PhD Dissertation Supervisors: Dr Anna Bartra Kaufmann Dr Jaume Mateu Fontanals Tutor: Dr Montserrat Capdevila Batet Departament de Filologia Anglesa i de Germanística Facultat de Filosofia i Lletres Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona May 2010 1 2 To my parents, Josep and Mª Dolors, To my husband, David, and to our son, Dídac, For all they mean to me. 3 4 Table of Contents Table of Contents i Acknowledgments v Abstract vii List of Tables ix List of Abbreviations x Chapter 1. The Morphology-Syntax Interface 1 1.1 Jackendoff’s (1990, 1997, 2002) tripartite parallel model 1 1.2 Looking inside the syntactic component 15 1.2.1 Morphology and syntax: one component or two? 15 1.3 Compounds in morphology 24 1.3.1 Ackema & Neeleman’s (2004) competition model 24 1.3.1.1 English 28 1.3.1.2 Catalan and Spanish 37 1.4 Compounds in syntax 46 1.4.1 Distributed Morphology (DM): the essentials 47 1.4.2 Compounds in DM: Harley (2004, 2008b) 59 1.4.2.1 Assumptions 59 1.4.2.2 Synthetic modifier compounds 60 1.4.2.3 Synthetic argument compounds 64 1.4.3 Discussion: debatable questions in DM 71 1.5 Conclusions 79 Chapter 2. Germanic and Romance compounding: the case of English and Catalan 82 2.1 Some remarks on the notion of ‘head’ 82 2.1.1 Heads in morphology 83 2.1.2 Against heads in morphology 89 2.1.2.1 Zwicky (1985) 90 i 2.1.2.2 Bauer (1990) 91 2.1.2.3 Anderson (1992) 92 2.2 What are compounds and how to classify them 96 2.2.1 The raw material of compounds 96 2.2.2 Which is the classification of compounds? 109 2.3 English and Catalan compounding 129 2.3.1 English 132 2.3.1.1 Nominal compounds 134 2.3.1.2 Verbal compounds 155 2.3.1.3 Adjectival compounds 168 2.3.2 Catalan 180 2.3.2.1 Nominal compounds 184 2.3.2.2 Verbal compounds 220 2.3.2.3 Adjectival compounds 231 2.4 Discussion and conclusion 245 Chapter 3. The Morphosyntactic Interface and the Compounding Parameter 249 3.1 The Compounding Parameter 249 3.1.1 English 259 3.1.2 Catalan 259 3.1.3 Other language families 260 3.1.4 Discussion 263 3.2 Breaking down the Compounding Parameter 277 3.2.1 Some remarks on resultatives 277 3.2.1.1 Kratzer (2005) 277 3.2.1.2 Mateu (2000, 2010) 284 3.2.2 On NN compounds: English vs. Catalan 293 3.3 Conclusions 300 ii Chapter 4. Conclusions 302 References 306 iii iv Acknowledgments It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to thank the many people who have contributed to this dissertation in some way, although inevitably some names might be left out. My first debt is to my supervisors, Anna Bartra and Jaume Mateu, who have been a source of knowledge and inspiration, a model to follow, and the perfect friends in a long journey. I also thank them for meeting deadlines, providing me with relevant references, allowing me to pursue my own ideas, sometimes divergent from theirs, and for trusting in me during all these years until the dissertation has reached an end. I have also benefited from two research stays, the first of which was at University College London, where the topic of this dissertation was decided, mainly due to Ad Neeleman’s enthusiasm for morphology. I thank Ad for discussing parts of this dissertation. My second research stay was at the University of Edinburgh, where I owe special thanks to Peter Ackema - who hosted me in the Department of Linguistics and English Language during my stay - for his hospitality. I am also grateful to Peter for providing me with generous comments at various stages in my work. Much of the material of this dissertation has been presented in conferences like the Colloquium on Generative Grammar 16, 17 and 19, held in Madrid, Girona and Vitoria respectively; Forum de Morphologie / « Décembrettes », held in Toulouse; and Incontro di Grammatica Generativa 33, held in Bologna. I would like to thank the audiences for comments and suggestions. Some names can be singled out: Víctor Acedo, Peter Ackema, Antonietta Bisetto, Geert Booij, Hagit Borer, Carmen Scherer, Antonio Fábregas, Susana Huidobro, Chiara Melloni, Fabio Montermini, Ad Neeleman, Paco Ordoñez , and Sergio Scalise. I would also like to thank the audiences from the LyCC Colloquium Series in Madrid (CSIC). Special thanks to Violeta Demonte, Olga Fernández Soriano, Nino Grillo, and Carlos Piera. I have also benefited from the seminars organised by the Centre for Theoretical Linguistics at UAB and the members who constitute them: Eulàlia Bonet, Josep Maria Brucart, Teresa Cabré, Verónica Castillo, M. Teresa Espinal, Elías Gallardo, Ángel J. Gallego, Gemma Gómez, Yurena Gutiérrez, M. Lluïsa Hernanz, Wojtek Lewandowski, Angelina Markova, Núria Martí, Silvia Martínez, Joan Mascaró, Ía Navarro, Carme Picallo, Pilar Prieto, Cristina Real, Gemma Rigau, Ester Sánchez, Xico Torres, Maria del Mar Vanrell, and Xavier Villalba. For various reasons, I am also indebted to Artemis Alexiadou, Mark Baker, Reka Benczes, Reineke Bok-Bennema, Cristina Buenafuentes, Gretel De Cuyper, Anne v Dagnac, Heidi Harley, Richard Kayne, Brenda Laca, Beth Levin, Alec Marantz, Makiko Mukai, Amelia Rus, Peter Svenonius, and Mireille Tremblay. Thanks also to Catherine Dickie, Elspeth Edelstein, Jonathan MacDonald and Andrew Woodard for providing me with native speakers’ judgments. From the Department de Filologia Anglesa i de Germanística at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, I am grateful to Montserrat Capdevila (my tutor), Hortènsia Curell, Michael Kennedy, Mireia Llinàs, Alan D. Reeves, and Maria Josep Solé, all of them being points of reference in my undergraduate studies. I also want to thank Soledad Varela, Mireia Llinàs, Peter Ackema, Gemma Rigau and Lluïsa Gràcia for being interested in my work and for accepting to be members of the dissertation committee. My last words of gratitude are for my family, especially my parents, Josep and Mª Dolors, who taught me all the important things about life; my brothers and sisters, Dolo, Miquel, Josep, Montse, Elisabet and Carolina, and their partners, for being there when I needed them; my nephews and nieces, Adrià, Marc, Joel, Júlia, Carolina, Arnau, and Guillem, for making me forget I was in the middle of writing this up with their fascinating little stories; my husband’s family, Josep, Maria and Mari, for supporting me; my husband, David, for so many good things I cannot enumerate in a short list, and our son, Dídac, who albeit not physically visible at the beginning of the writing-up has accompanied me these last few months. Gràcies! [This research was partially supported by the projects HUM2006-13295-C02-01 and HUM2006-13295-C02-02 (Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia/FEDER) and 2005SGR- 00753 (Generalitat de Catalunya)]. Susanna Padrosa Trias Banyoles, May 2010 vi Abstract The goal of this dissertation is to study a specific type of complex word-formation, namely compounding, and its relation to the morphology-syntax interface, with the ultimate aim of gaining a better understanding of the phenomenon. Different aspects of compounding are explored in this work, of which the main questions addressed in each chapter are outlined below. The first chapter presents some evidence for the plausibility of a theory of grammar in which word syntax and phrasal syntax (which will be referred to as morphology and syntax respectively) are two distinct modules within a bigger syntactic module (cf. Jackendoff 1990, 1997, 2002, Ackema & Neeleman 2004), as well as evidence for the generation of compounds within word syntax/morphology. A morphological account of compounding, based on Ackema & Neeleman’s (2004) morphosyntactic competition theory, is explored, tested with some English and Romance (Catalan and Spanish) compounds and contrasted with Harley’s (2004, 2008b) syntactic analysis of compounds, based on Distributed Morphology (cf. Halle & Marantz 1993, Marantz 1997a, b, 2001, 2007, a.o.). The data examined in this chapter favour the morphologically-based account over the syntactically-based account of compound formation. For example, the former account can explain contrasts like *to meat-eat and to computer-generate, while the latter cannot. The second chapter starts by establishing the existence of heads in morphology and showing their crucial role in the classification of compounds. Then, the nature of the compounding elements in English and Catalan is examined, which is followed by a brief overview of some compound classifications. The most promising classification is that of Bisetto & Scalise (2005), according to which there are three overarching macro- types of compounds: subordinate, attributive, and coordinate, each being subdivided into endocentric and exocentric types. Another level of analysis is added to their original classification and the resulting scheme is applied when carrying out an exhaustive study of compounding in English and Catalan. Although initially adopted, Bisetto & Scalise‘s tripartite classification changes substantially in the course of the chapter. The three macro-types of compounds are reduced to one compounding type, based on a head vs. non-head relation, from which the different interpretations arise (subordinate, attributive). The existence of coordinate compounds and exocentric compounds is argued against. vii The third chapter first explores Snyder’s Compounding Parameter (Snyder 1995, 1996, 2001, 2002). After identifying which complex predicates must count as relevant to the parameter, its workings are considered in a few languages. The validity of the Compounding Parameter is questioned. It is concluded that a strict application of the compounding/complex-predicate parameter cannot be maintained nor can the alleged dependence of complex predicates on NN compounding.