POSITION-BOUND AND/OR

RELATION-BOUND? THE

PRODUCTIVITY OF NOUNS AS

CONSTITUENTS OF COMPOUNDS.

Elizaveta Tarasova

Victoria University of Wellington

PhD Candidate

N+N COMPOUNDS

house mouse, thought police and library book

NOT hatchback

NOT singer-songwriter

WHY ARE COMPOUNDS INTERESTING FOR

LINGUISTS?

bear + paw = bear paw (bear HAS paws)

bear + scare = bear scare (? bear HAS scare)

citizen army vs. liberation army

security police vs. city police

shoe box vs. cardboard box

Baayen (2010):

the constituents of lexicalized compounds are

position-bound, i.e. they have a tendency for being

used either as a head or as a modifier more often.

Maguire, Wisniewski & Storms (2010):

nouns are used equally productively in the modifier

and head roles.

MAGUIRE, WISNIEWSKI & STORMS (2010)

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The question about the morphological

productivity of constituents comprising a

compound

The question of whether the productivity of a

compound constituent on the morphological level

coincides with the productivity of the semantic

relation realized in the constituent family.

METHOD

100 nouns served as the basis for collecting a

corpus of constituent word families.

197 constituent word families comprising 7,332

compounds extracted from Davies (2004-) BNC.

The semantic relations between the elements of

the collected compounds analysed according to

Levi’s (1978) classification.

LEVI (1978) CLASSIFICATION OF RDPS

Meaning RDP Examples

N1 CAUSE N2 CAUSE1 Sex scandal

N2 CAUSE N1 CAUSE2 Tear gas

N1 HAVE N2 POSSESSION1 Lemon peel

N2 HAVE N1 POSSESSION2 Cameraphone

N1 MAKE N2 COMPOSITION1 Snowball

N2 MAKE N1 COMPOSITION2 Computer industry

N2 USE N1 INSTRUMENT2 Steam iron

N2 BE N1 ESSIVE2 Island state

N2 IS IN N1 LOCATION2 Field mouse

N2 IS FOR N1 PURPOSE2 Arms budget

N2 IS FROM N1 SOURCE1 Business profit

N2 IS ABOUT N1 TOPIC2 Tax law

HYPOTHESES

(1) A constituent of an N+N compound is used

more often in one position (modifier or head)

than the other.

(2) The constituent’s preference for one position

correlates with a tendency of its being used

in the same way semantically within the

constituent’s modifier or head paradigm, i.e.

there is a connection between the family size

and the constituent’s concentration on one

semantic relation.

DISTRIBUTION OF FAMILY SIZES

constituent minimum maximum mean standard

deviation

N1 0 83 31.79 20.47

N2 0 116 45.95 30.26

STATISTICS FOR HYPOTHESIS (1)

Model coefficients for linear model showing the

relationship between N1 and N2 family sizes.

N1 = 98, Adjusted R2 = 0.3796

Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)

Intercept 3.43574 0.42932 8.003 2.65e-12 ***

logFamSizeN1 1.07457 0.32638 3.292 0.00139 **

(logFamSizeN1)2 -0.30143 0.06094 -4.946 3.17e-06 ***

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FAMILY SIZES

logFamSizeN1

logF

amS

izeN

2

1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5

2.5

3.0

3.5

4.0

4.5

HYPOTHESIS (2)

There is a connection between the family size and

the constituent’s concentration on one semantic

relation, i.e. the more productive a constituent is

in one position, the more likely it is to

demonstrate a preference for one semantic

relation.

The semantic content of a concept strongly

influences the way it is used in conceptual

combinations

e.g. ˂substance – artifact˃ → MADE OF

artifact MADE OF substance

box

frame

doll, etc.

plastic

wood

chocolate, etc.

SIMILAR MODIFIERS AND HEADS COMBINE

IN SIMILAR WAYS

Pairings of modifiers and heads are not

distributed randomly but fall into a number of

regular semantic patterns which reflect

productive semantic relationships

In the course of processing the meaning of a

compound, we utilize our inner statistical

knowledge, which is based on our previous

language experience

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE CURRENT

RESEARCH

The semantics of the concept can be an

influential factor for predicting the way the

constituent is likely to be used in a compound

If there is a connection between the semantics of

the noun concept and its productivity in one

position, then we should be able to see this

connection in the way this concept combines with

other concepts to form N+N combinations

The knowledge about how a given constituent

contributes to the overall meaning should be part

of the statistical knowledge

The semantics of the head noun serves as the

schema whose properties are responsible for

attracting certain modifiers based on the slots

that are more available for filling

For modifiers our previous linguistic and non-

linguistic experience of the modifying word is of

primary importance

HYPOTHESIS (2)

(2a) The constituent should demonstrate a

preference for certain relations, or even one

particular relation, over other relations.

(2b) This tendency should be stronger the larger

the constituent family is.

INSTANTIATIONS RATIO

The measure that is computed as the ratio of the

number of different semantic relations that a

given constituent realizes in its family and the

number of occurrences of the most frequent

relation in this family.

The smaller the Instantiations Ratio, the more

concentrated on one semantic relation the

compound constituent is.

heart + N compounds

future + N compounds

Diff. Relations Most Frequent Inst. Ratio

7 13 0.5384

Diff. Relations Most Frequent Inst. Ratio

4 77 0.051

STATISTICS FOR HYPOTHESIS (2)

Model coefficients for linear model showing the relationship between family size N1

and instantiations of relations ratio for N1. N1 = 98, Adjusted R2 = 0.1624

Model coefficients for linear model showing the relationship between family size N2

and instantiations of relations ratio for N2. N2 = 99, Adjusted R2 = 0.1934.

Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)

Intercept 0.31094 0.13664 2.276 0.0251

logFamSizeN1 -0.18121 0.04071 -4.451 2.31e-05

Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)

Intercept 0.21709 0.16684 1.301 0.196

logFamSizeN2 -0.22460 0.04538 -4.949 3.14e-06

WHICH CONSTITUENT IS MORE

IMPORTANT?

The constituent whose semantics is more

important for the meaning of the compound

should demonstrate consistency in realizing the

same relation in the constituent family and this

relation should be predictable from the semantic

content of the constituent concept.

E.G. COMMUNITY

“a group of individuals, plants and animals that live

in the same place or have a particular characteristic

in common” (OED)

Implied propositions

a community

consists of

members

who/what makes

the community?

(people, plants,

animals, etc.)

these

members live

in a certain

area/place

Where is the

community

located? (city,

village, area,

etc.)

The constituent that realizes this information

more consistently should be expected to be more

important for a compound to receive the reading

it receives

How to check that?

We can pick all N+N combinations where the

constituent is used and analyse the semantic

relations

INDIVIDUAL CONSTITUENT FAMILIES

The relation most frequently realized in head

families is always connected with the core

semantic content of the word.

The relational information does not seem to be so

dependent on the semantics of the modifier.

E.G. POLICE

the civil force of a state, responsible for the

prevention and detection of crime and the

maintenance of public order (Oxford online)

Key content – PURPOSE

or NEGATIVE PURPOSE

police + N – POSSESSION ×

e.g. police culture, police violence

N + police – (NEG) PURPOSE √ e.g. riot police, transport police

WHICH CONSTITUENT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE

RELATIONAL READING OF A COMPOUND?

The semantic relation consistently realized in head

families is directly connected with the semantic

content of the head noun

The semantics of the modifier is altered, the

semantics of the head is preserved

e.g. health centre community centre

centre (building)

WHICH CONSTITUENT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE

RELATIONAL READING OF A COMPOUND?

health service health food

health ?

(what we know about health)

SUMMARY

There is a connection between the productive use

of a compound constituent in one position and

productive use of the semantic relation, which

can be considered evidence of interaction between

the levels of structural and semantic

representation in compounds

There seems to be a direct connection between

the semantic content of the head noun and the

relation reading of a compound

The information that the modifier contributes to

the meaning of an N+N structure is peripheral to

the semantic content of the modifier concept

CONCLUSION

These findings may challenge the claim about the

leading role of the modifier in defining the

relational reading a compound receives and the

semantic weight of the modifier in an N+N

sequence.

Although there is no denying that the modifier

concept changes the meaning of the head concept,

the change of meaning of the semantic relation

seems to be connected with the semantics of the

head.

REFERENCES

Baayen, R.H. 2010. The directed compound graph of English. An exploration of lexical connectivity and its processing consequences. In S. Olsen (ed.), New impulses in word-formation (Linguistische Berichte Sonderheft 17), Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag. 383-402.

Davies, M. 2004-. BYU-BNC. (Based on the British National Corpus from Oxford University Press). Available online at http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/.

Levi, J. 1978. The Syntax and Semantics of Complex Nominals. New York: Academic Press Inc.

Maguire, P., Wisniewski, E.J. & Storms, G. 2010. A corpus study of semantic patterns in compounding. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 6(1), 49-73.