Root merger in Chinese compounds*

Abstract

Working on the computation of roots in Chinese compounds, this paper presents six major differences between the merger of roots in compound formation and the merger of elements in phrase structure formation: the existence of exocentric structures, the freedom of projectivity, the disappearance of subcategorization, the double licensing of formal features, the effect of Lexical Integrity in movement, and such an effect in pronominalization. All of these differences are accounted for by the hypothesis that roots do not have syntactic features. Moreover, this paper studies a case of merger level underspecification in languages that allow nouns and verbs to occur without any inflection: in the absence of a syntactic context, an isolated string of two elements can be ambiguous between the root-merger that eventually gives rise to a verb and the merger of a verb and its object that gives rise to a VP.

Chinese as a natural experiment

“…Thus despite the evidence for polymorphemic lexical units in Mandarin, the distinction between morphemes and words remains notoriously fuzzy (Myers, 2006;Packard, 2000). One oft-cited example is 擔心 dan1xin1 'worry (about)' (Huang, 1984;Zhang, 2007), literally 'carry heart' . This sometimes acts like an exocentric compound, since the internal "object" does not block the taking of a syntactic object, as in 他很擔心你 ta1 hen3 dan1xin1 ni3 'He is very worried about you' (literally 'he very carry-heart you').…”

Lexical integrity and suspended affixation in two types of denominal predicates in Korean

“…Therefore, while Roots may have morphologically relevant internal structure, whatever structure there may be internal to a Root will by definition be invisible to syntax. 14 While there is much fruitful research regarding Roots in DM, the result that is central to our analysis is that a Root does not possess syntactically parsable features (Borer 2005a;b;Zhang 2007;Wiltschko 2009;Embick 2010;de Belder & van Craenenbroeck 2015, etc.). This is the first crucial component of the proposed account.…”

“…The only way that something put together by such an impoverished Merge operation can come to be active in core syntax is if the complex unit obtains syntactic features by combining with a lexicalizing functional head. Zhang (2007) adopts an approach along these lines when she distinguishes between Root-Root compounds and compounds involving lexicalized Roots (Words) in Mandarin Chinese. Another way to allow structural complexity within Roots is proposed in de Belder & van Craenenbroeck (2015), who assume that anything, including those with complex internal structure derived by regular Merge, can become a Root, by being inserted in a Root position.…”

Tópicos em composição: estrutura, formação e acento

“…FÁBREGAS, 2005;ZHANG, 2007;HARLEY, 2009;MINUSSI, 2011;NTHELITEOS, 2013 54 ) 55 , não encontramos uma explicação abrangente, preocupada com a composição de modo amplo o suficiente para entender seus mecanismos básicos, salvo, em certa medida, a proposta em (ii).…”

“…Essa solução é, evidentemente, a menos adequada dentre as três, já que diminui metodologicamente o poder explicativo da teoria ao postular um Merge que ocorre apenas no nível da formação das palavras, com vias a garantir que sua formação continue sendo gerada pela sintaxe. Como vimos na divisão de trabalhos elaborada por Borer (1998), um modelo não-lexicalista deve evidenciar que as mesmas operações sintáticas são capazes de formar palavras e não postular operações adicionais que ocorram apenas em casos isolados -tal como fez Zhang (2007). Se a solução (98a) for realmente plausível, é necessário que apontemos construções sentenciais em que um Merge cego também se aplique.…”