Nominal compounds and other N-N combinations: A typological study of a sample of Pama-Nyungan languages

Abstract:

This study investigates nominal compounds and related N-N combinations in a sample of twenty-four
Pama-Nyungan languages (Australia) from a typological perspective.
A survey of typological literature on compounding (section 2) shows that it is difficult to formulate
a precise definition of ‘compound’ that can be applied to a wide range of languages. It is possible,
however, to set up some parameters for each individual language that allow a category of ‘compounds’
to be distinguished from phrasal combinations of lexemes. Phonologically, compounds may exhibit
boundary phenomena, linking morphemes, and/or specialized stress patterns. Morphosyntactically, their
elements resist separation by other morphemes and compounds may carry compound-specific cranberry
morphs. Semantically, compounds function as names: they are prone to lexicalization, they have a
tendency to become idiomatic and they have a non-referential dependent (non-head) element.
In section 4, a concept ‘complex nominal head’ is set up, which allows for a study of nominal
compounds in the context of other ‘non-phrasal’ N-N combinations in the sample (which is described in
section 3). Section 5 provides an overview – based on the parameters introduced in section 2 – of the
phonological, morphosyntactic and semantic properties characterizing these constructions. Finally,
section 6 of this study gives an idea of how different languages in the sample can distinguish between
different types of ‘complex nominal heads’, and where compounds fit in.