How marginal are phrasal compounds? Generalized insertion, expressivity, and I/Q-interaction

Abstract

For several reasons, phrasal compounds like I-told-you-so attitude are a typical case of a marginal type of word-formation: (i) integration of a phrase into the word should not be allowed (violation of the No Phrase Constraint), (ii) lexical integrity is weakened (violation of the Principle of Lexical Integrity), (iii) they display an expressive flavour typical of marginal morphology. Using the mixed model of Ackema and Neeleman (2004) that allows for insertion from phrasal syntax into word syntax (Generalized Insertion) it is shown that phrasal compounds are by no means marginal from a purely theoretical point of view. However, the expressivity of marginal compounds has to be explained. Drawing on experimental data, it is shown that ad hoc phrasal compounds are understandable and witty to a high degree. These results are explained within the Presumptive Meanings approach of Levinson (2000) that develops the notion of Generalized Conversational Implicature (GCI). It is shown that the expressivity of ad hoc phrasal compounds stems from a word-level conflict between observing the I-principle (that favours the enrichment of underdetermined structures) on the one hand, and the Q-principle (that requires maximal information) on the other.

References

“…This does not come as a surprise and has been found in other Germanic languages as well as e.g. in German (Meibauer 2003(Meibauer , 2007.…”

“…In section three the distribution of PCs is investigated in terms of the demographic and textual features mentioned above. Meibauer's (2003Meibauer's ( , 2007 interesting observations concerning the morphopragmatic character of PCs will be taken into account here. Section four introduces a new analysis in the framework of Jackendoff's model of Parallel Architecture (PA).…”

“…This analysis will allow us to gain further insights into the question of why PCs are built at all by speakers/writers and why they are sometimes preferred over other options. Since in my opinion this relates to their morphopragmatic character, or if you will, their expressive flavour, I will discuss Meibauer's (2007) empirical study in this context and compare his results with mine. I will further discuss his approach based on his study of German PCs CAROLA TRIPS…”

“…Botha 1980, Lieber 1988, Lawrenz 1996, only one study of German PCs has particularly dealt with the question of why this type of compound is produced in the first place. Meibauer (2007) sees PCs as a marked phenomenon that can be explained if their expressive character is taken into account. Let us consider example (16) from above: the sentence shows a high degree of lexical density, expressed by compounds like media tendency and women singersongwriters, and finally the PC "gee whiz, gosh, women are now making it" syndrome.…”

Prosody and branching direction of phrasal compounds

“…"We love Anne Diamond" Party (ii) a. peach campaign b. labor party 3 It is interesting that German uses a hyphen between the phrasal modifier and the head noun in phrasal compounds while English, Dutch and Afrikaans do not (cf. Wiese 1996, Meibauer 2007). I will not discuss this matter here and leave it for future research.…”