Headedness as an epiphenomenon: Case studies on compounding and blending in German

This paper demonstrates how statements like “compounds are right-headed in Ger-
man” can be interpreted in a paradigmatic approach to morphology in terms of
word-formation relations between lexical units, without presupposing word struc-
tures with “head constituents”. Using the theoretical framework of the Pattern-
and-Restriction Theory (Nolda 2013, 2018), it is shown in four case studies that
right-headedness applies in German not only to compounds, but in principle also
to blends – a domain where “head constituents” are notoriously difficult to ascer-
tain. Headedness properties such as being a word-formation product which is cat-
egorially and/or semantically determined by its last basis are identified solely on
the basis of word-formation relations and the involved formation patterns. In a
paradigmatic approach of this kind, headedness emerges as an epiphenomenon of
the word-formation relations between lexical units in a linguistic system.