The Syntactic Domain of Content
Editors
Rothman, J
Grinstead, J
Becker, M
Schwartz, B
Series
Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 54
Volume
54
Pagination
205 - 247 (42)
Publisher
Publisher URL
ISBN-17
978 90 272 5316 3
Location
Journal
Generative Linguistics and Acquisition: Studies in honor of Nina M. Hyams
Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 54
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
A main motivation for relegating Word Formation to the lexicon is the fact that its output is often non-compositional. The present article, however, presents a serious challenge to the presumed contradiction between non-compositionality and syntactic combinatorial processes. The investigation of N–N Constructs in Hebrew shows that equally syntactically complex expressions nonetheless interact differently with non-compositionality. Crucially, it is the syntactic differences between these expressions that give rise to distinct Content properties, with non-compositionality correlating not with syntactic structure as such, but with the absence of functional structure. The emerging syntactic domain of ‘word’ Content in turn allows the language learner to make informed decisions on where to look for non-compositionality and to draw the appropriate structural conclusions from its presence
Authors
BORER, HCollections
- Linguistics [225]