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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Morphology

Introduction.

Early 20th Century
Late 20th Century
Edited Collections
Reference Resources
Bibliographies
Descriptions of Individual Languages and Families
Words and Lexemes
Word Formation
Inflectional Categories
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Autonomous Morphology
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Lexicalist Morphology
Natural Morphology
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Cognitive Grammar
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Morphology by Mark Aronoff LAST REVIEWED: 28 October 2011 LAST MODIFIED: 28 October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0001

Morphology, the study of forms, is the branch of linguistics that deals with the internal structure of complex words. The term was first used in linguistics by August Schleicher in 1859. Linguists distinguish between simple words, such as soon , which have no internal structure apart from sound, and complex words, such as sooner , which can be analyzed into meaningful parts (in this case soon and the English comparative suffix –er ). Morphology addresses the latter. The world’s languages differ greatly in the complexity of their morphology. At one extreme, such languages as Vietnamese have very few ways to form complex words, while at the other, languages such as Chukchi (spoken in Siberia) may have very long words, constructed by adding many affixes one after another, that are equivalent in meaning to entire sentences. Languages also differ in the devices that are used to form complex words and the functions that this complexity serves. The study of morphology is one of the oldest branches of linguistics. The oldest known linguistic work, Panini’s grammar of Sanskrit, consisted entirely of morphology, and the classical Greek, Latin, and Semitic grammarians also concerned themselves largely with morphology. In modern-day linguistics, which began in the 19th century, morphology is one of the core areas of grammar, along with phonetics, phonology, syntax, and semantics/pragmatics.

Foundational Works

The tradition of research and theory in morphology is different from that of many other areas of linguistics in its continuity. Works that were written a century or more ago raised issues that remain relevant to this day. The modern study of linguistic morphology dates to the early 1970s, but the beginnings of linguistic morphology lie much earlier. Important foundational works throughout the past century are still available and are important reading for understanding how the field has evolved. There was a gap in the early period of generative grammar during which morphology was not regarded as a separate field of inquiry. Accordingly, the references below are divided into two distinct subsections surrounding this gap: the Early 20th Century and Late 20th Century .

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The Oxford Handbook of Morphological Theory

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1 Introduction: Theory and Theories in Morphology

Jenny Audring is Lecturer at Leiden University, the Netherlands. She has worked on Germanic morphology and morphosyntax, from a typological perspective.

Francesca Masini is Assistant Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Bologna, Italy. Her research interests include morphology and the lexicon, semantics and constructionist approaches to language.

Published: 08 January 2019
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This opening chapter provides an overview of the aims, structure, and contents of the volume. It ties together the individual chapters by identifying common themes that run through the various theories of morphology presented in the volume. These are the place of morphology in the architecture of language, the degree to which it is independent from other components of the grammar, the basic units of morphological analysis, and the relation between morphology on the one hand and syntax, semantics, phonology, and the lexicon on the other. A brief summary of the literature on types of morphological theories helps the reader to become oriented to the landscape of frameworks. The chapter closes with an overview of the three parts of the volume and the individual chapters in each part.

1.1 Welcome

Morphology , the grammar of words, has proved a rich and fertile ground for theoretical research. As a result, we are faced with a bewilderingly complex landscape of morphological terms, concepts, hypotheses, models, and frameworks. Within this plurality, linguists of different persuasions have often remained ignorant of each other’s work. Formalist and functionalist theories have run on mutually isolated tracks; theoretical approaches have not connected to insights from typology, psycholinguistics, and other fields—and vice versa. The research community is divided about basic matters, such as the central units of morphological description or the nature of morphological features and processes. Moreover, the proliferation of theories goes hand in hand with an increasing internal diversification, sometimes to the point where foundational principles slip out of sight.

This volume hopes to contribute to a greater unity in the field by providing a comprehensive and systematic exposition of morphological theory and theories. We have aimed to make it a helpful resource for those working within a specific framework and looking for a critical and up-to-date account of other models, as well as a comprehensive guide for those wishing to acquaint themselves with theoretical work in morphology, perhaps coming from other domains in linguistics or from related fields such as computer science or psychology. The book is intended to be informative and inspiring, and a lasting contribution to the field. We also hope that—in times of increasing scepticism towards theory, in morphology as in other areas of linguistics—it will serve to showcase the richness and value of theoretical thinking and modelling, and will encourage new advances in theoretical work.

1.1.1 About the volume

This volume stands in the long tradition of Oxford Handbooks in Linguistics and complements other recent volumes, in particular The Oxford Handbook of Inflection (Baerman 2015 ), The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology (Lieber and Štekauer 2014 ), The Oxford Handbook of Compounding (Lieber and Štekauer 2009b ), and The Oxford Handbook of the Word (Taylor 2015 ). It is kin to The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis (Heine and Narrog, second edition 2015 ) by focusing on linguistic approaches more than on linguistic facts, although a wide variety of data is addressed.

The closest relative to the present volume is Stewart ( 2016 ) on contemporary morphological theories. However, our book is an edited volume rather than a monograph, and the scholars working in the various frameworks are speaking in their own voice. In addition to the eminent contributors expected in a volume of this kind, many of our authors are up-and-coming linguists with a fresh look on classic and novel issues.

While the field is too diverse for a reference work to be exhaustive, we have attempted to cover a representative range of theories and have made a point of including very recent models, such as Canonical Typology, Construction Morphology, and Relational Morphology. Moreover, Part III of the volume connects morphological theory with various linguistic subfields, identifying the broader challenges and opening the dialogue where it is often lacking.

1.2 Morphological theories

Despite the evident, and often drastic, differences between theoretical approaches, the theories in this volume are united in the questions they seek to answer. This section briefly reviews a selection of time-honoured issues that have shaped the theoretical landscape over the years and that reappear in different guises in basically every theory.

1.2.1 What is the goal of morphology theory?

Morphology is the grammar of words. This includes the form and structure of words, their meaning, the relations between words, and the ways new (complex) words are formed. Depending on one’s views of what a theory of grammar should accomplish, the goal of morphological theory is either to account for all existing words or for all potential words of a language. As Aronoff famously stated in 1976 (17–18): ‘the simplest task of a morphology, the least we demand of it, is the enumeration of the class of possible words of a language’. Whether this goal has been attained by any of the theories on the market, or can be attained at all, is a matter of debate, since the working area of morphological theory is not easily delimited. For one thing, the word is notoriously hard to define (Haspelmath 2011 , see also Arkadiev and Klamer, Chapter 21 this volume). Moreover, the field of morphology runs into other linguistic subfields, with fluid boundaries and shared responsibilities.

1.2.2 Where is morphology?

Morphology is famously called ‘the Poland of linguistics’ (Spencer and Zwicky 1998 : 1), surrounded by neighbouring fields eager to claim the territory for themselves. Many theories, some of them represented in this volume, model the structure and behaviour of words in syntax and/or in phonology (e.g. Distributed Morphology, see Siddiqi, Chapter 8 this volume, or Optimality Theory, see Downing, Chapter 10 this volume). The countermovement is gathered under the term of lexicalism (Montermini, Chapter 7 this volume) and the motto ‘morphology by itself’ (Aronoff 1994 ), arguing that morphology needs to be recognized as a module, layer, or level of description of its own because it has unique, irreducible properties. Lexicalist approaches ask questions such as the following:

What properties are unique to morphology?

How does morphology interface with other types of linguistic structure?

The issue of interfaces, of course, only arises if morphology is granted its own identity, distinct from other areas of grammar. However, views on interfacing differ greatly depending on whether morphology is understood in a broad sense or a narrow sense.

In a broad sense, morphology spans the entire bottom row of Figure 1.1 (adapted from Jackendoff and Audring, Chapter 19 this volume). This row is the domain of the word. Morphology then contrasts and interfaces with the upper row, syntax, the phrasal domain (cf. § 1.2.4 ). The horizontal arrows within the bottom row—connecting morphosyntax, morphophonology, and morphosemantics—represent morphology-internal links, since a word contains all these types of information.

Types of linguistic structure and the place of morphology

However, morphology can also be understood in a narrower sense. Words carry sound and meaning. In addition, they may have a third level of structure, which Figure 1.1 calls ‘morphosyntax’, marked in bold. This level of structure houses all properties that cannot be subsumed under phonology or lexical semantics. 1 This includes grammatical features, such as case, gender, or tense, as well as properties such as inflectional class, the heartland of ‘morphology by itself’. In some theoretical models, this layer also encodes the building blocks of words: roots, stems, and affixes. Morphology, as understood in this narrower sense, contrasts and interfaces with word phonology and word meaning.

Many controversies in morphological theory follow from explicit or implicit disagreements about the nature and place of morphology in the grammar. While most theories accept morphology in the broader sense, as the part of language that handles words, some deny the existence of a dedicated layer of morphological structure in the narrower sense (e.g. Cognitive Grammar, see Langacker, Chapter 17 this volume).

Additional complications arise from the various conceptions of morphological processes . Theories differ in whether they assume different rules for the grammar of words and the grammar of phrases. Also, a division between morphological rules on the one hand and the input/output of such rules on the other can lead theories to posit a morphology–lexicon interface. This contrasts with theories that place morphology in the (equivalent of the) lexicon, for example Word Grammar (Gisborne, Chapter 16 this volume), Construction Morphology (Masini and Audring, Chapter 18 this volume), and Relational Morphology (Jackendoff and Audring, Chapter 19 this volume).

1.2.3 Basic units and processes

What are the units that morphological theory handles? Again, we see widespread and fierce disagreement. Two prominent camps have arisen around the word-based and the morpheme-based views, arguing for the word and the morpheme, respectively, as the basic unit of morphological structure. The debate is often framed in principled terms (see e.g. Anderson, Chapter 2 this volume, or Stump, Chapter 4 this volume), but sometimes invokes more specific concerns, such as which entity comes closest to a stable and transparent 1:1 relation between form and meaning (see e.g. Langacker and Gaeta, Chapters 17 and 12 this volume, respectively). A complicating factor is the notorious difficulty to define either the word or the morpheme in a consistent and cross-linguistically applicable way. However, in view of the controversy surrounding the morpheme in particular, it is worth noting that the term is used widely and freely in descriptive linguistics as well as in psycho- and neurolinguistics, where it is found to be of value (see e.g. Schiller and Verdonschot, Chapter 28 this volume).

The chapters in the present volume show surprisingly little debate about the lexeme , which is a central unit in a variety of influential theories (e.g. Stump, Chapter 14 this volume). This notion is related to the difference between inflection and derivation, which itself is not easy to draw. While most theories make a point of distinguishing inflection and derivation/word-formation—some clearly specializing in one or the other—the nature of the difference is disputed, especially as to whether it is gradual or categorial (sometimes intermediate distinctions are made, such as between inherent and contextual inflection, Booij 1996 ). The issues scale up to the difference between morphology and syntax, and more generally between the grammar and the lexicon, since inflection is generally believed to be more relevant to syntax and on the whole ‘more grammatical’ than derivation. Within word-formation, certain types of compounds and lexicalized multi-word units further blur the boundaries between morphological and syntactic structures (see Arkadiev and Klamer, Chapter 21 this volume).

A further basic difference between frameworks is how they conceive of the relation between the units of morphological analysis and the processes that handle them. While units and processes are tightly wedded in many theories, with rules for specific affixes or individual feature structures, in others they are clearly separated. An example for the latter type is Minimalism (Fábregas, Chapter 9 this volume), some variants of which rely on a single general operation, Merge .

Other differences between theories are found in the way classes, features, and other properties are encoded. Some theories also seek to encode relations, from syntagmatic relations such as valency or agreement to paradigmatic relations such as those found in inflectional morphology.

1.2.4 Morphology and syntax

Theories of morphology can be differentiated by the way they model the relation between morphology and syntax. Does the grammar of words involve its own module, with rules and representations distinct from the rules and representations of phrasal grammar? All extremes can be found: from assuming no difference at all (e.g. in Distributed Morphology, see Siddiqi, Chapter 8 this volume) to a strictly modular view in which morphology is encapsulated from syntax (e.g. in LFG/HPSG, see Nordlinger and Sadler, Chapter 11 this volume). For theories such as Construction Morphology (Masini and Audring, Chapter 18 this volume) or Relational Morphology (Jackendoff and Audring, Chapter 19 this volume), the difference lies not in the processes—morphological versus syntactic rules—but in the categories: morphology has stems and affixes, while syntax does not, and syntax has phrasal categories such as NPs and VPs, while morphology does not.

For those theories that do assume a split between morphology and syntax, the question arises how the two components interface. An often-cited assumption is that X 0 , the syntactic word, serves as the interface. This view runs into difficulties with complex words containing phrases, as in do-it-yourselfer (the No Phrase Constraint is discussed in Montermini and Fábregas, Chapters 7 and 9 this volume, respectively).

Other related points of debate, recurring in many theories throughout the book (see Lieber, Chapter 3 this volume, for an overview), are lexical integrity— the (in)ability of syntax to look into or manipulate word structure—and the issue of headedness, disputing the equivalence of syntactic and morphological heads.

1.2.5 Morphology and semantics

Another important issue in morphological theory is the relation between meaning and form. The canonical mapping is captured in the terms isomorphy , biuniqueness , transparency , compositionality , diagrammaticity (Gaeta, Chapter 12 this volume), or ‘the concatenative ideal’ (Downing, Chapter 10 this volume): each piece of meaning should correspond uniquely to a piece of form, and added meaning should go hand in hand with added form. A lot of what makes morphological theory interesting and hard has to do with divergences from this ideal.

The issue is pertinent to the divide between word-basedness and morpheme-basedness. Are there privileged units in which the relation between form and function is clearest or maximally stable? And if so, is the word or the morpheme a better candidate?

Violations of biuniqueness come in many guises. Well-studied phenomena are polysemy, homophony, and syncretism (cases of one form with several meanings), allomorphy, periphrasis, multiple or extended exponence (cases of one meaning expressed by several alternative or combined forms), plus a range of specifically paradigmatic mismatches, such as suppletion, overabundance, heteroclisis, and deponency (Stump, Chapters 4 and 14 ; see also Arkadiev and Klamer, Chapter 21 , and Ralli, Chapter 24 , all in this volume). In addition, complex words can display semantic non-compositionality, with unpredictable meanings showing up in individual words or as subregularities in clusters of words. While many theories set such quirks aside as lexicalizations, others make a point of including them, for example Construction Morphology (Masini and Audring, Chapter 18 this volume).

1.2.6 Morphology and phonology

The interplay of morphology and phonology is another much-debated issue. Many theories in the generative tradition (e.g. Minimalism and Distributed Morphology, see Siddiqi, Chapter 8 , and Fábregas, Chapter 9 ) model phonology as a spell-out component at the end of a syntactic derivational chain. This means that phonological information cannot play a role in the morphological operations themselves. Other theories (e.g. LFG and HPSG, see Nordlinger and Sadler, Chapter 11 this volume) argue that all information, including phonology, has to be available at the same time.

The most-researched interface phenomenon between morphology and phonology, however, is allomorphy, and almost every theory has something to say about it. The most pressing question with regard to allomorphy is whether variants of stems or affixes are computed from some underlying form or are listed and selected from memory. This brings us to the final major issue: the relation between morphology and the lexicon.

1.2.7 Morphology and the lexicon

Morphology is a part of grammar, and many theories make a principled distinction between the grammar and the lexicon. However, morphology is the grammar of words, and words live in the lexicon. This means that we have to ask whether morphology happens in the lexicon or whether the lexicon and the morphology are different domains, connected via an interface. Terminology is muddled here, and we often find different understandings of the same term, or different terms for the same notion. For example, Distributed Morphology has a vocabulary, which corresponds to the lexicon in other theories. Earlier generative theories distinguish a lexicon of morphemes and a dictionary of words (see ten Hacken, Chapter 6 this volume).

The distinction between lexicon and grammar is intimately related to the division of labour between storage and computation. This issue is especially pertinent to the chapters in Part III of this volume that discuss morphology in first and second language acquisition (Blom, Chapter 25 , and Archibald and Libben, Chapter 26 ), in psycho- and neurolinguistics (Gagné and Spalding, Chapter 27 , and Schiller and Verdonschot, Chapter 28 ), and in computational modelling (Pirrelli, Chapter 29 ). However, it is also relevant to morphological theory itself, which has to decide on the format of lexical representations and on the kinds of items assumed to be in the mental lexicon. Again, this is an area where word-based and morpheme-based theories clash. While the former expect the smallest entries in the lexicon to be word-sized (Blevins, Ackerman, and Malouf, Chapter 13 this volume, and Gisborne, Chapter 16 this volume), the latter posit entries for morphemes or even smaller structures (Siddiqi, Chapter 8 this volume). The crux is the modelling of regularly inflected word forms. Such forms are predictable enough to be handled by grammar, yet some degree of listed knowledge is necessary to choose the right form among alternatives, for example if the language has inflectional classes (Blevins, Ackerman, and Malouf, Chapter 13 this volume). Generally, models differ in the degree to which they embrace or reject redundancy in areas that can be handled both by lexical storage and by grammatical computation.

Last but not least, a major and problematic issue is productivity , the capacity to generate new complex forms with a particular structure. In contrast to syntax, where full productivity is commonly seen as the norm, morphology—especially derivational morphology—is rampant with semi-productive or unproductive patterns (see Hüning, Chapter 23 this volume). An important challenge for morphological theories lies in the modelling of such limited productivity. Theories that emphasize the generative capacity of the system commonly evoke constraints or filters that block non-existing forms (see e.g. Chapters 10 and 8 by Downing and by Siddiqi, respectively); others argue for built-in limitations in the system itself (Jackendoff and Audring, Chapter 19 this volume). A considerable degree of agreement is found in the modelling of blocking , where a well-formed but non-existing complex word (say, stealer ) is impeded by an existing form with the same meaning ( thief ). Almost all theories that have something to say about blocking invoke a principle by which the specific properties of the listed form block the application of a more general rule.

1.2.8 Taxonomies of theories

In the linguistic literature we find various attempts to classify morphological theories. Two of them are repeatedly cited in the present volume. The earliest is Hockett’s ( 1954 ) ‘Two Models of Grammatical Description’, which distinguishes Item-and-Process from Item-and-Arrangement types of theories. Blevins, Ackerman, and Malouf (Chapter 13 this volume) explain the difference between the two morphemic models, contrasting them with their own Word-and-Paradigm approach.

The second classification is Stump’s ( 2001 ) well-known distinction of lexical versus inferential and incremental versus realizational theories, giving us a four-way taxonomy, which is laid out in Stump’s chapter ‘Theoretical issues in inflection’ (Chapter 4 this volume). Various theories presented in Part II of the volume explicitly position themselves on this grid.

A very recent classification is proposed in Stewart’s ( 2016 ) book, which sorts morphological theories along each of five axes, explicitly incorporating one of Stump’s classifications:

morpheme-based vs. word-/lexeme-based

formalist vs. functionalist

in-grammar vs. in-lexicon

phonological formalism vs. syntactic formalism

incremental vs. realizational.

As some of the theories discussed by Stewart converge with those in the present volume, the reader is encouraged to consult the monograph for details.

Finally, Blevins’ ( 2006 ) distinction of constructive versus abstractive models is helpful due to its more nuanced take on the theoretical treatment of sub-word structures. The abstractive view, in particular, permits for a combination of word-basedness and word-internal structure, which might be an opportunity for consensus.

Generally, it should be kept in mind that theoretical frameworks can have different goals and rest on different foundational assumptions. While one theory emphasizes descriptive coverage or psychological plausibility, others stress computational implementability and/or architectural parsimony, that is, shorter descriptions and minimal machinery. Among the theories that seek parsimony, we find those that strive to minimize storage (these are clearly in the majority) and those that attempt to minimize computation. Such basic decisions have deep repercussions on the architecture of the model and on the items and processes assumed.

Finally, it should be noted that not all models presented in this book are bona fide theories of morphology. Some are in fact theories of syntax (e.g. Minimalism), and one (OT, see Downing, Chapter 10 this volume) is mainly a theory of phonology. However, each chapter illustrates the perspectives on morphology taken by these theories.

1.3 The structure of the handbook

1.3.1 part i: issues in morphology.

Part I of the volume sets the scene. It starts with a brief foray into the history of morphology with a focus on North America ( Anderson , Chapter 2 ). However, the journey begins in Switzerland, with the brothers de Saussure, Ferdinand and René, and their disagreement on the internal structure of words. While René saw complex words as concatenations of simple signs, later called morphemes, Ferdinand regarded the full word as the basic sign. To him, morphological structure emerged from inter-word relations. The morpheme-based view was perpetuated by Bloomfield ( 1933 ), who differentiated between a lexicon of primitives, on the one hand, and the rules of grammar, on the other. Full words came back into view with Matthews’ ( 1965 ), Aronoff’s ( 1976 ), and Anderson’s ( 1992 ) work, which reinstated the paradigmatic, relational perspective and found its most radical expression in Anderson’s ‘a-morphousness’ hypothesis, propagating morphology without morphemes. In addition to sketching the swing of the historical pendulum between word-based and morpheme-based models, the chapter shows the influence of Boas, Sapir, Harris, Chomsky, and Halle on the emergence of morphology as an independent domain in theoretical linguistics, and introduces some of the fundamental debates that have shaped the theoretical landscape in the following decades.

The next two chapters identify the central theoretical issues within the two morphological domains: word-formation and inflection. Lieber ’s contribution ( Chapter 3 ) on derivation and compounding also starts with a major historical divide, namely Item-and-Arrangement versus Item-and-Process types of theories (Hockett 1954 ). While the former makes morphology similar to syntax in assuming a hierarchical structure of minimal meaningful units, the latter emphasizes the importance of rules in deriving, or realizing, complex words. Here, morphology offers a variety of challenges. Do the rules of morphology have the same format as the rules of syntax? Can realizational rules, popular in modern theories of inflection, be fruitfully applied to derivation? The chapter continues with a discussion of interface issues between morphology and syntax, morphology and phonology, and morphology and semantics. It concludes with a number of hot topics such as headedness, productivity, blocking, affix ordering, bracketing paradoxes, and derivational paradigms.

In Chapter 4 , Stump discusses theoretical issues in inflection. He singles out a number of fundamental points of disagreement between theories of morphology. These are: (a) what counts as the basic unit of morphological analysis; (b) what are the structures that belong to inflection; (c) the relation between concatenative and non-concatenative morphology; (d) the relation between function and form; and (e) the difference between inflection and other types of morphology. After outlining the issues, the chapter takes a position on each of them. As the general perspective of the chapter is inferential-realizational, Stump argues for paradigms and against morphemes, for rules of exponence and implicative rules, and for a unified treatment of concatenative and non-concatenative morphology. Morphology is argued to have its own domain in the grammar, distinct from but interfacing with syntax.

1.3.2 Part II: Morphological theories

Part II consists of concise but thorough accounts of the main theoretical approaches to morphology, both formalist and functionalist/cognitive, developed during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Some chapters discuss clusters or families of models, but most are dedicated to one specific approach.

The first three chapters provide an overview of three clusters of theories: those commonly subsumed under the label Structuralism (Chapter 5 ), the transformational theories of early Generative Grammar (Chapter 6 ), and the lexicalist models of later Generative Grammar (Chapter 7 ).

Stewart ( Chapter 5 ) identifies Structuralism as a formative period in the history of linguistics. It brought a re-evaluation of the theoretical and descriptive machinery inherited from antiquity and established linguistics as an autonomous scientific discipline. The central characteristic of the movement was the understanding that each language constitutes a system in itself which should be investigated empirically based on the distributional patterns of forms. This involved overcoming the focus on Indo-European, on culturally privileged languages, and on diachrony. The result was a flourishing of scholarly work on both sides of the Atlantic, with—among many others—de Saussure, Hjelmslev, Jakobson, Trubetzkoy, and Vachek in Europe and Boas, Whorf, Sapir, Bloomfield, Harris, Hockett, and Nida in North America. Important issues for morphology were the place of morphology in the architecture of the grammar, the identification and representation of morphological units and processes, and the interaction of morphology with other linguistic domains.

The 1950s to 1970s saw the rise of Generative Grammar. Ten Hacken ( Chapter 6 ) discusses three seminal publications from this period, Chomsky ( 1957 ), Lees ( 1960 ), and Chomsky ( 1970 ), and—more briefly—two later publications, Halle ( 1973 ) and Jackendoff ( 1975 ), which are the focus of Chapter 7 . The central innovations in early Generative Grammar were rewrite rules, including transformational rules, that promised to make complex grammatical structures computable. While mainly devised for syntax, the model was also applied to morphological structure. A lexicon was added to account for idiosyncratic properties of words, marking the beginning of the debate between storage and computation, still very much alive today (see Chapters 25 – 28 ). Other major issues of the time were the incorporation of constraints into the generative model and the place and role of semantics.

The history of Generative Grammar is continued by Montermini with Chapter 7 on the development of Lexicalism. The hallmark of lexicalist theories is the assumption that word-internal phenomena are situated in a distinct module, independent of syntax and phonology. For many theories, this included the belief that the grammar of words is not only separated, but also substantially different from the grammar of phrases. Montermini discusses two foundational publications, Halle ( 1973 ) and Jackendoff ( 1975 ), which can be seen as the first lexicalist models, although diverging fundamentally in their assumptions about the interplay of grammar and lexicon and the nature of the lexicon itself. The lexicalist spirit continued through Aronoff’s work on derivation and Anderson’s work on inflection, the latter stressing not only the division between morphology and syntax, but also the need to distinguish between inflection and derivation. The surge of lexicalist work from the 1970s onwards established morphology as a phenomenon ‘by itself’ and a self-respecting field of linguistic inquiry.

Chapters 8–11 describe models of a ‘formalist’ orientation. The direct inheritors of Chomskyan Generative Grammar are Distributed Morphology and Minimalism, while Optimality Theory and LFG/HPSG constitute radically different models.

Distributed Morphology ( Siddiqi , Chapter 8 ) represents a countermovement to the Lexicalism described in Chapter 7 : it is a theory of syntax that extends into the word by manipulating morphemes. The chapter motivates the general outlook as well as the more specific choice for a lexical-realizational, morpheme-based, Item-and-Arrangement type of model and outlines its various incarnations, depending on the syntactic theory of the time. Some variants distinguish a separate level of Morphological Structure, later abandoned. Complex words and phrases are built in two steps: the grammar constructs a complete derivation, which is then instantiated by Vocabulary Items and spelled out phonologically. This architecture makes a number of classic morphological issues—among others productivity, blocking, and allomorphy—appear in a different light, as is elaborated in the chapter.

Another theory that is actually a family of syntactic models is Minimalism. Fábregas explains the Minimalist views on morphology in Chapter 9 . The name of the framework advertises its emphasis on a minimal grammatical component, as most constraints on language are seen as located either in Universal Grammar or in language-external systems, especially the Conceptual-Intentional (CI) and the sensorimotor (SM) system, or in the variable experience of individual speakers and learners. In its most minimal form, computations are done by a single operation, Merge. The chapter explains how the theory models lexical restrictions, grammatical categories, Aktionsart, and argument structure and discusses the rules of spell-out and the role of features.

Chapter 10 by Downing illustrates how Optimality Theory addresses the issues of prosodic morphology, specifically the non-concatenative phenomena known as reduplication, truncation, root-and-pattern morphology, and infixation. The model employs three types of constraints—faithfulness, markedness, and alignment—to determine the optimal form of a word or phrase. Constraint evaluation is demonstrated on a wide variety of languages, among others SiSwati, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Samoan, Diyari, and Nupe. Important theoretical issues are (a) whether constraints can be stated generally or are specific to a certain morphological operation, construction, or morpheme, and (b) whether restrictions (e.g. on the size of the optimal nickname or the location of the optimal infix) follow from other properties, such as the stress type or syllable structure of the language.

Chapter 11 presents two distinct but related theories, Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) and Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). Nordlinger and Sadler briefly explain the architecture and the formalism of the two models, highlighting their strong lexicalist commitment, which states that word-internal structure is invisible to syntax. This perspective implies that both theories are compatible with a variety of morphological models, as long as the lexicalist stance is maintained. In LFG, the emphasis is on the way different formal structures across languages can map onto the same functional structure. Some variants of HPSG are similar to construction-based theories (cf. Masini and Audring, Chapter 18 this volume) by modelling derivational rules as lexical items, while inflection is often understood as being realizational. The chapter discusses a variety of phenomena, from case stacking to paradigms, stem space, and floating affixes, in a number of typologically diverse languages. Both theories are fully formalized and implementable in computational models.

In Chapter 12 , Gaeta sketches Natural Morphology, a framework that strives to explain why morphological systems are the way they are and develop in the way they do. At the heart of the theory lies the notion of ‘naturalness’, understood as “cognitively simple, easily accessible (esp. to children), elementary and therefore universally preferred” (Dressler 2005 : 267). Naturalness manifests itself in preferences rather than laws. Such preferences can be in conflict with each other and with other preferences—both typological and system-specific—resulting in cross-linguistic diversity. The chapter introduces the naturalness parameters (i) diagrammaticity (transparency); (ii) biuniqueness (uniform coding); (iii) indexicality (proximity); (iv) binarity; and (v) optimal word shape and exemplifies how they bear on productivity, paradigm structure, and language change.

Chapters 13–15 form a loose cluster of allied models of the Word-and-Paradigm type. The general outlook is described succinctly in the contribution by Blevins, Ackerman, and Malouf , Chapter 13 . A major cornerstone is the focus on paradigmatic relations among words, which other models tend to neglect in favour of word-internal syntagmatics. Paradigmatic relations can take the form of inflectional paradigms or classes, but they are implicated whenever a word, or a cluster of words, is predictive of another. The Word-and-Paradigm (perhaps better called Item-and-Pattern) approach involves a broadly inclusive view on the size and granularity of morphosyntactic items, as it is “defined less by the units it recognizes than by the relations it establishes between units” (§13.3). That said, the word might be a privileged unit, both in its stability of form and function and the mapping between them, and in the degree to which it predicts other words. Formalizations of Word-and-Paradigm models use the mathematics of information theory to calculate the entropy of a given paradigm cell and the reduction of uncertainty effected by another cell or cluster of cells. The chapter closes with the unique perspective on learnability and cross-linguistic variation invited by the information-theoretic perspective.

In Chapter 14 , Stump presents his influential Paradigm Function Morphology, an inferential-realizational theory, which means that it rejects the listing of morphemes and the accumulation of properties by stringing morphemes together. Instead, the model assumes a Paradigm Function that operates on stems and cells of inflectional paradigms to induce the realization of each cell, that is, the phonological form of the fully inflected word. The model employs an explicit and rigorous formalism based on property sets and functions. The chapter lays out an earlier and a later variant of the theory and illustrates the basic functions. As the theory emphasizes its inclusive coverage, the second half of the chapter is devoted to non-canonical inflectional morphology, as manifested in defectiveness, syncretism, inflection classes, and deponency. The chapter closes with a brief look at derivation and the various interfaces between morphology and other domains.

Network Morphology, outlined by Brown in Chapter 15 , has much in common with PFM—centrally the inferential-realizational orientation—but differs in its architecture. As its name suggests, the model assumes an inheritance network containing lexemes and generalizations over their properties. Its aim is to model inflectional systems by developing the most parsimonious network that contains all information necessary for inferring the correct form for each inflected word. This means determining the right level for every generalization (e.g. about patterns of syncretism or stem allomorphy) and ordering properties such as number or case in such a way that queries about a particular inflected form are guided to the place in the network where the answer is encoded. The model is formalized and computationally implemented with the help of the DATR notation (Evans and Gazdar 1996 ). The chapter explains central notions such as default inheritance, underspecification, and generalized referral and shows the application of the model in a number of case studies, including a diachronic case.

Word Grammar, discussed by Gisborne in Chapter 16 , shares many traits of realizational models like PFM and is network-based like Network Morphology, but differs radically in the entities it models. In line with the cognitive orientation of the theory, nodes in a Word Grammar network encode linguistic knowledge directly and declaratively, requiring no procedures or algorithms. The network encodes three types of information: linguistic structure of various kinds (the nodes), the relations between nodes, and certain attributes that specify the relations (e.g. realization, base, variant, or part). Inflected and derived forms are represented in full. Morphemic structure is encoded indirectly via relations between forms that share parts. Generalizations, including those normally expressed as features, are captured by means of default inheritance. The chapter also discusses the difference between inflection and derivation, the interfaces between morphology and the lexicon and morphology and syntax, and comments on phenomena like productivity and syncretism.

Word Grammar forms a bridge to the more cognitively oriented models in Chapters 17 – 19 . The first and most venerable is Cognitive Grammar by Langacker ( Chapter 17 ). Including this theory in the volume might seem surprising, as it only recognizes two types of structure—semantic and phonological—and excludes morphological structure. Yet, the model allows for the expression of morphological units and patterns, both in individual words and as generalized constructional schemas. The perspective is explicitly usage-based: any unit of structure is abstracted from production or perception events and entrenched through recurrent use. Larger structures appear as composites if their parts correspond to (parts of) other structures. Stems can be distinguished from affixes in that affixes are dependent items that need other structures to be manifested. However, analysability of complex items is a matter of degree and can change over time. The theory provides a unified account of language structure, within which morphology is not highly differentiated, but seamlessly integrated.

Construction Morphology ( Masini and Audring , Chapter 18 ) is the morphological theory within the framework of Construction Grammar. It shares a number of properties with Cognitive Grammar, especially its usage-basedness and the notion of constructional schemas. However, it assumes morphological structure as an independent layer of information. The central unit of analysis is the construction , intended as a sign, a form–meaning pairing. Constructions can be fully specified, in which case they correspond to words, or they can be partly or fully schematic. Schematic or semi-schematic constructions are the counterpart of rules in more procedural models, since they serve as templates for the creation of new words. All constructions are situated in a network which combines the lexicon and the grammar into a continuous and highly structured environment. As the same basic architecture is assumed for morphological and syntactic constructions, the model has a specific affinity with in-between phenomena such as multi-word units.

The newest theory in the volume is Relational Morphology ( Jackendoff and Audring , Chapter 19 ), an account of morphology set in the framework of the Parallel Architecture (Jackendoff 2002 ). The model is a sister theory of Construction Morphology, but differs by virtue of its radical focus on lexical relations, its inclusion of non-symbolic structures, and its formalism. Special theoretical attention is paid to unproductive patterns, which are regarded as more basic: productive patterns are patterns ‘gone viral’. Like all construction-based theories, but more explicitly so, the model is a theory both of morphology and of the rich internal structure of the lexicon. Moreover, it aspires to a graceful integration of morphology within a general and cognitively plausible model of language, and of language within other areas of cognition.

The survey of theories concludes with Canonical Typology ( Bond , Chapter 20 ), which is special in not being a theory in the usual sense, but providing a methodological framework for a typologically informed understanding of linguistic phenomena and a better comparability of theoretical terms and concepts. Most of the work in Canonical Typology is on morphology and morphosyntax, especially inflection, with the closest ties to inferential-realizational models like PFM (Chapter 14 ). The method consists in the identification of a canonical core for a phenomenon and the possibility space of less canonical variants around it. Both the core and the possibility space are defined logically; establishing the actual population of the space by real-life examples is an independent, later step. The chapter outlines the method in detail and provides a wealth of references on the canonical approach as applied to a wide variety of phenomena.

1.3.3 Part III: Morphological theory and other fields

Part III of the volume is devoted to the interdisciplinary dimension. It presents observations and insights from other linguistic fields relevant for morphological theory, namely language typology (including creole languages), dialectal and sociolectal variation, diachrony, first and second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, computational linguistics, and sign languages. The chapters in this part do not discuss what the different theories of morphology have to say about the various fields (this should emerge—where relevant—from Part II ), but illustrate how each field informs and challenges morphological theory.

Chapter 21 by Arkadiev and Klamer on morphological theory and language typology discusses the challenges that languages around the world pose for common theoretical concepts and terminology. This is especially true for morphology, since it is the domain where languages differ most, which stands in the way of cross-linguistic generalizations. Richly illustrated with examples and supported by a wealth of references, the chapter shows the difficulties associated with the notion of the word, the distinction between inflection and derivation, the deviations from biuniqueness in form–meaning mapping, the ordering of affixes, and various paradigmatic phenomena such as inflectional classes and morphomic allomorphy in stems and affixes. The authors conclude by arguing for greater collaborative efforts among typologists, theoreticians, and descriptive linguists in order to arrive at theoretically informed descriptions, dictionaries, and corpora, on the one hand, and typologically informed theories, on the other.

In Chapter 22 , Luís carries on the typological theme with a survey of the morphology in creole languages. Creoles are often neglected in theoretical morphology, as their morphological systems are said to be poorly developed. The chapter refutes this assumption, showing the interesting diversity of morphological, especially derivational, patterns found in creole languages. These include affixes from both the superstrate and the substrate language, as well as novel morphological formatives, which gives interesting insights into the genesis of affixal morphology. While inflectional systems in creoles are indeed often simpler, languages do show complexities such as portmanteau morphemes, extended exponence, syncretism, allomorphy (including morphomic stem allomorphy), and inflectional classes. The chapter demonstrates that creole morphology is as interesting to analyse formally and discuss theoretically as is the morphology of non-creole languages.

The issue of diachronic change, pertinent to the creole languages discussed in Chapter 22 , is addressed more broadly in Chapter 23 by Hüning . The chapter focuses on word-formation and discusses three major types of change: (a) the rise of new word-formation patterns by way of reanalysis, for example ‘affix telescoping’ or resegmentation; (b) the development of new affixes from lexical words through grammaticalization; and (c) the increase or decrease of productivity. Productivity proves especially problematic, being hard to establish synchronically, but even harder to assess diachronically. A general problem is the gradience that the ever-changing nature of language imposes on all entities, properties, and behaviour, making them difficult to capture in fixed theoretical categories and terms. The chapter closes with a plea for interdisciplinary, data-driven research, and a usage-based approach that is better suited to the emergent nature of language.

Variation from a synchronic perspective—with some additional discussion of pathways of change to complement Chapter 23 —is addressed by Ralli in Chapter 24 . The chapter identifies certain recurrent types of morphological variation in inflection, derivation, and compounding, with illustrative analyses of modern Greek dialect data. For inflection, patterns of special interest are overabundance, heteroclisis, and allomorphic variation in paradigms. In derivation, we find affix synonymy and affix competition. In the realm of compounding, the Greek data show puzzling doublets of left-headed (and exocentric) and right-headed (and endocentric) compounds with the same meaning. For all three domains of morphology the chapter stresses the importance of language contact as a trigger of variation and change, and as an explanatory factor in view of the often surprising variational patterns.

The volume continues with four loosely connected chapters on morphological theory and first and second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and neurolinguistics. All four chapters share a common fundamental theme: the division of labour between storage and computation in complex words.

In Chapter 25 , Blom outlines how data from first language acquisition can inform morphological theory. A central topic is the ‘past tense debate’ inquiring whether irregularly and regularly inflected English verbs are treated differently in processing, with full-form lookup for the former and computation from their parts for the latter. 2 While the evidence is not conclusive, analyses of child language indicate a gradual acquisition curve with frequency effects both in acquisition order and in overgeneralization patterns, which suggests that lexical storage also matters for regularly inflected words. Results from language development in children with Specific Language Impairment or Williams syndrome, by contrast, do support a difference between the regular and irregular words. To date, the past tense debate remains unresolved. Deeper understanding can only be expected if individual and cross-linguistic variation is considered, as well as the interplay of morphology, phonology, and syntax and wider cognitive factors.

Archibald and Libben in Chapter 26 move the spotlight of attention to morphological theory and second language acquisition. The issues in this field are partly the same as in first language acquisition. What do error patterns tell us about linguistic knowledge? Which deficits are betrayed by a particular error? What makes certain structures difficult to acquire? Additional questions in second language acquisition concern the influence of the L1, the typical cognitive strategies of adult learners, and the representation of the bilingual lexicon and grammar in the brain. An important insight, also mentioned in Chapter 25 , is that morphological errors need not represent morphological deficits. Instead, they may be caused by incorrect mappings of morphological knowledge to other aspects of linguistic competence, for example phonology. The chapter also problematizes the question of what constitutes morphological ability and presses the point that morphological knowledge cannot be investigated in isolation from other kinds of knowledge. In addition, scientific results are highly task- and methodology-dependent and may differ markedly for production and comprehension.

Chapter 27 by Gagné and Spalding broadens the view from language acquisition to psycholinguistics in general, focusing on the key question for morphology: the representation and processing of complex words in the mental lexicon. The central debate is whether complex words are stored in full or computed from their parts, or indeed both—in succession or in parallel. The chapter reviews a wide variety of psycholinguistic research from different experimental paradigms and concludes that there is strong overall evidence for the involvement of sub-word units in the processing of multi-morphemic words. However, the effects differ depending on frequency, on semantic transparency, and on whether the complex word is inflected, derived, or a compound. Sub-word units may have a facilitatory or inhibitory effect depending, again, on frequency and on the time window in the processing event. The chapter closes with an agenda for future work, emphasizing the need for a closer integration of experimental and theoretical morphology.

The fourth chapter in the cluster, Chapter 28 , is Schiller and Verdonschot ’s contribution on morphological theory and neurolinguistics. Neurolinguistics differs from psycholinguistics primarily in its methods: most of the evidence cited in the chapter comes from brain imaging studies using ERP or fMRI. Again, the main issue is the role of sub-word structure in the processing of complex words. The chapter provides a broad and detailed overview of recent research on language comprehension, that is, parsing, and language production, the less-studied perspective. Evidence from healthy speakers is discussed as well as studies on individuals with aphasia or other language disorders. The chapter presents a variety of experimental paradigms, from priming and grammatical violation experiments to lexical decision tasks and picture naming. Drawing especially on compound processing, the chapter argues for an important role of morphemic constituents, indicating morphological decomposition in both comprehension and production.

The volume continues with Pirrelli ( Chapter 29 ) on morphological theory, computational linguistics, and word processing. The chapter reviews computational models of language processing such as finite state automata and finite state transducers, hierarchical lexica, artificial neural networks, and dynamic memories. Illustrations are given with the help of Italian verbal paradigms. A substantial part of the chapter is devoted to machine learning, both supervised and unsupervised. Each section concludes with a critical assessment of theoretical issues, pointing out ties to individual theoretical frameworks or to problem areas such as the interplay of storage and computation, the nature of representations, the encoding of general versus specific information, and notions such as entropy and economy. The chapter argues for an inclusive modelling of lexical and grammatical knowledge and highlights the mutual interdependence of word structure and word processing.

The final Chapter 30 by Napoli broadens the view from spoken language to sign language. The particular affordances and restrictions of sign languages pose considerable challenges to morphological theory. For example, signs can be uttered in parallel, adding a vertical structural dimension not found in speech. Moreover, sign phonology, in particular non-manual parameters, can be meaningful, which obscures the boundary between phonology and morphology. Other special properties can be attributed to the relative youth of sign languages, which limits the amount of grammaticalized morphology. Established theoretical notions are often hard to apply to sign, for example in identifying roots and affixes or distinguishing lexical categories. Compounding and affixation are notoriously hard to tell apart. On the other hand, there are morphological entities unique to sign, such as ion morphs: partially complete morphemes that need to be accompanied by a particular phonological parameter to yield a full lexical meaning. The chapter offers a broad overview of the issues and a wealth of references.

1.4 Conclusion

In conclusion, we hope that this handbook will serve as a guide through the jungle of theories in today’s linguistic morphology, and the phenomena they seek to account for. At the same time, we intend the volume to be helpful in fostering the dialogue among sub-disciplines that is much needed for a graceful integration of linguistic thinking. We hope that the book will be inspiring and useful to graduate students in linguistics as well as to scholars of various disciplines, from morphologists wishing to acquaint themselves with neighbouring or competing models to specialists from other subfields of linguistics.

Note that the term ‘morphosyntax’ is used differently here than it is used in the typological literature, where it denotes morphological structure relevant to syntax (e.g. in agreement).

The terms ‘single route’ and ‘dual route’ are used in this connection; these terms also appear in Chapters 27 and 28 . However, the reader should be aware that they are not always used in the same sense. Dual route is often associated with different processing mechanisms for different types of word (e.g. in Blom, Chapter 25 , and Schiller and Verdonschot, Chapter 28 ). However, the term can also mean different processing strategies for the same type of word (e.g. in Gagné and Spalding, Chapter 27 ). Evidence in favour of parallel lookup and computation for various types of complex word would support a dual route theory in the latter sense, but not in the former.

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Research in Morphology

Find out more about how linguists research Morphology through looking at some example research.

Gries (2004)

Shouldn’t it be breakfunch.

A really interesting example of research on morphology is a journal article which looks into blending and blend structure . But before looking at this research, you need to know what these things mean!

What is Blending and Blend Structure?

Blending is a process where a new word is created by combing non-morphemic parts (see column on the right for explanation) of two or more already existing words. These are either shortened and put together or are already overlapping. As you can see in the examples below blends are usually made up by the first part of one word and the last part of another. Some well-known examples in English are:

smog (smoke+fog) brunch (breakfast + lunch)

Most speakers don’t realise that blends are actually fusions of words as they are often very well integrated in the language. Did you know that the computer term bit is actually a blend of binary and digit, and modem it put together by modulator and demodulator?[1]

Therefore, the Blend Structure is the way in which the two source words have been put together (blended) to form the new word.

Examples of blending in English

While blending may not be considered one of the most productive forms of new word formation, it nonetheless gives us some valuable new words – some of which can be very entertaining!

We’ve all heard of words such as brunch (breakfast + lunch) and smog (smoke + fog), and probably are very aware that these are the result of blending- but some words become so much a part of our language that we forget their origins!

Glimmer = gleam + shimmer Moped= motor + pedal

Sitcom= situation + comedy

And then there are the blends that make obscure words, words that wouldn’t come about if it weren’t for the development of new technology and a developing social culture:

Chexting= cheating + texting Textpectation = texting + expectation Flirtationship = Flirting + relationship

Most of these kinds of constructions are made for slang use, whereas ones such as glimmer and moped have earned their places in dictionaries and are now considered words within their own right!

Shouldn’t it be Breakfunch? – The journal article

So now you’re all clued up on the process of blending and the concept of blend structure and how Blendiferous it all is we can now give you a real example of linguistic research into this morphological phenomenon. The research is presented in a Journal Article entitled:

Shouldn’t it be Breakfunch? A quantitative analysis of blend structure in English by Stefan Th. Gries.[2]

As you will find out if you go to university, journal articles can be really wordy and really long and rather difficult to get your head around! This is because they are written by researchers for other researchers to read so the writing style is very different to what you would find in textbooks. However, in this case we have just summarised the main points of the research to enable you to understand it.

The research investigates the word-formation process of blending in English and its main aim is to find out what factors determine why certain words are blended together in such a way.
The paper analyses the orthographic and phonemic structure of blends on a quantitative basis. The table below, taken from the journal article, shows the blend structure of the word Brunch which has been formed from the source words Breakfast and Lunch. It indicates the percentages of each word that appear in the blend.
the amount of information each source word contributes.
the similarity of the source words to the blend.
The method that was used by Gries (the researcher) to produce the results included statistical tests using quantitative data. Mathematical equations and statistics are often important aspects of Linguistic Research when analysing data.
The results show that the amount of material contributed by the words is determined by the degree of recognisability of the source words and that the similarity of source words to the blend plays a vital role in blend formation.

Here you can download and read the whole journal article.

[1] O’Grady, W., (1997). Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction. London: Longman. [2] Gries, S. T., (2004). Shouldn’t it be Breakfunch? A Quantitative Analysis of Blend Structure in English. New York: Walter de Gruyter & Co.

Bauer (2004)

The Journal article (Bauer, 2004)[1] summarises the morphological process of word-formation as well as distinguishing Inflectional and Derivational morphology. This short article firstly examines the question of the function of word formation and gives an explanation in relation to:

Lexical enrichment function e.g., new words are coined to denote new concepts.
Transpositional function: words with fixed word class are able to appear in a new word class and thus the same meaning can be transferred to a new function in the sentence.

This then leads to a question of the difference between Inflectional and Derivational morphology.

Bauer (2004) defines word-formation as a process with the result of a new lexeme. A lexeme is the form of the word which is considered to be the ‘standard form’, it is the form of the word which it is categorized as within dictionary. There are two types of word-formation: *Compounding *Derivation

Compounding is the formation of a new word by combining tow or more existing words. E.g. Green + House = Greenhouse

Derivational morphology is ‘the formation of a word from another word or base’ ( http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/derivation ). There a are a number of different types of derivation including:

*Conversion E.g., network (noun) – to network (verb)

*Back-formation E.g., editor (noun) – edit (verb)

*Blending E.g., smoke (noun) + fog (noun) = smog (noun)

Embedded below is a brief video which outlines the process of word-formation and gives a description of the difference between inflectional and derivational morphology:

https://youtu.be/pHGtn563DQI

Inflectional Morphology Vs. Derivational Morphology

Plank: “categories of inflection and derivation are prototypical categories, from which the categories of individual languages may differ”

Anderson : “inflectional morphology is what is relevant to the syntax”

Inflection= Grammatical changes e.g., Pluralisation Dog – Dogs

Derivation= Lexical changes e.g., Respect – Respect ful Function is to expand the lexicon by modifying the meaning of existing lexemes. EG:

Gender marking- Prince ss from Prince
Morphology which marks agents, patients, instruments, location- Kill to kill er , interview to interview ee , blend-blend er , dine to din er

Below is a list of possible affixes categorised as either derivational or inflectional:

The table below shows the differences between inflectional and derivational morphology:

Adverbalisation

Haspelmath (1996) argues that it's possible to have word class changing inflection e.g., adverbs -ly. * quick – quick ly * free – free ly * swift – swift ly

Nominalisation

Chomsky (1970) argues that nominalisation isn’t inflectional and that it changes a verb to a noun. * believe – belie f *laugh – laugh ter * marry – marr iage

These two processes are very different.

Adverbialisation

Follows a regular and conventional pattern by adding – ly
General and productive
More irregular and unpredictable e.g., believe – belie f
Semantics of English nominalisations are neither regular nor constrained by the affix or morphological process used

What can be concluded from this?

Bauer (2004) concludes that by approaching the initial question of the ‘function of word formation’, through the analysis of both lexical enrichment and transpositional function, one is able to provide a solution to the problem of what word formation’s purpose is (forming new words and allowing words to appear in different contexts within a sentence).
This is because the two allow you to differentiate between inflectional and derivational morphology due to the fact that lexical enrichment relates to derivational morphology whilst the transpositional function focuses on inflectional morphology (relevant to the syntax).

[1] Bauer, L. (2004). The function of word-formation and the inflection-derivation distinction. In: H. Aertsen et al.(eds.). (2004). Words in their Places. Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit. pp: 283-292.

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Morphology can be thought of roughly as the study of the structure of the parts of words, including for instance the nature of affixes. At Penn, morphology research spans into the syntax-morphology interface, in particular with a distributed morphology perspective in which morphology is thought to have the same constituent structures as at the level of syntax.

Much of David Embick 's work likewise explores the architecture of native-speaker grammars. He has done important work in Distributed Morphology, a new theory of the architecture of morphosyntax which is still developing rapidly. He also investigates the relation between morphology and argument structure, especially the appearance of related verbs (sometimes ostensibly "the same" verbs) in different syntactic structures. In addition, his work explores the relation between hierarchical syntactic structures and the strings which instantiate them, including phonological aspects of the latter that are relevant to syntax. Many of the questions addressed in this research program are architectural in nature, concentrating on the question of whether there are separate lexical and syntactic modes of derivation in the grammar. The idea behind much of this work is to tie detailed case-studies of phenomena from an individual language or languages to broader questions concerning the architecture of grammars.

Rolf Noyer 's work spans phonology and morphology. His dissertation was one of the first full expositions of Distributed Morphology, and he continues to work and publish in this frontier area of the field.

Charles Yang is interested in the real-time mechanisms of morphological processing and storage, and the architectural issues of morphology in the grammar. Of specific concerns is the issue of morphological productivity, which cuts deeply across the domains of morphological learning, processing, and change.

Formal phonology, phonology-morphology interaction, phonological explanation, Native American and Ethio-Semitic linguistics

Syntax, morphology, syntax/morphology interface, neurolinguistics

Syntax, morphology, syntax-morphology interface, language acquisition

Phonetics, prosody, natural language processing, speech communication

Theoretical phonology, morphology, morphosyntax, generative metrics; Huave, Mansi.

Historical linguistics, Indo-European, morphology

Language acquisition, language change, computational linguistics, morphology, psycholinguistics

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Chapter 5: Morphology

5.1 What is morphology?

In linguistics, morphology is the study of how words are put together. For example, the word cats is put together from two parts: cat , which refers to a particular type of furry four-legged animal (🐈), and -s, which indicates that there’s more than one such animal (🐈 🐈‍⬛ 🐈).

Most words in English have only one or two pieces in them, but some technical words can have many more, like non-renewability , which has at least five ( non-, re-, new, -abil, and -ity ). In many languages, however, words are often made up of many parts, and a single word can express a meaning that would require a whole sentence in English.

For example, in the Harvaqtuurmiutut variety of Inuktitut, the word iglujjualiulauqtuq has 5 pieces, and expresses a meaning that could be translated by the full English sentence “They (sg) made a big house.” ( iglu = house, – jjua = big, – liu = make, – lauq = distant past, – tuq = declarative; this example is from a 2010 paper by Compton and Pittman).

Not all combinations of pieces are possible, however. To go back to the simple example of cat and -s , in English we can’t put those two pieces in the opposite order and still get the same meeting— scat is a word in English, but it doesn’t mean “more than one cat”, and it doesn’t have the pieces cat and -s in it, instead it’s an entirely different word.

One of the things we know when we know a language is how to create new words out of existing pieces, and how to understand new words that other people use as long as the new words are made of pieces we’ve encountered before. We also know what combinations of pieces are not possible. In this chapter we’ll learn about the different ways that human languages can build words, as well as about the structure that can be found inside words.

What is a word?

If morphology is the investigation of how words are put together, we first need a working definition of what a word is.

For the purposes of linguistic investigation of grammar we can say that a word is the smallest separable unit in language .

What this means is that a word is the smallest unit that can stand on its own in an utterance. For example, content words in English ( nouns , verbs , adjectives , and adverbs ) can stand by themselves as one-word utterances when you’re answering a question:

Words are also syntactically independent , which means they can appear in different positions in a sentence, changing their order with respect to other elements even while the order of elements inside each word stays the same.

In everyday life, in English we might think of a word as something that’s written with spaces on either side. This is an orthographic (or spelling-based) definition of what a word is. But just as writing isn’t necessarily a reliable guide to a language’s phonetics or phonology, it doesn’t always identify words in the sense that is relevant for linguistics. And not all languages are written with spaces in the way English is—not all languages have a standard written form at all. So we need a definition of “word” that doesn’t rely on writing.

The definition of “word” is actually a hotly debated topic in linguistics! Linguists might distinguish phonological words (words for the purposes of sound patterns), morphological words (words for the purposes of morphology), and syntactic words (words for the purposes of sentence structure), and might sometimes disagree about the boundaries between some of these.

Though words are the smallest separable units, that doesn’t mean that words are the smallest unit of language overall. As we already saw earlier in this section, words themselves can have smaller pieces inside them, as in the simple cases of cats ( cat – s ) or international ( inter – nation – al )—but these smaller pieces can’t stand on their own.

To refer to these smaller pieces within words, we use the technical term morpheme . A morpheme is the smallest systematic pairing of both form (sign or sound) and meaning or grammatical function. (We say “meaning or grammatical function” instead of just “meaning” because while some morphemes have clear meanings, of the type that will be discussed in Chapter 7 in the context of lexical semantics, other morphemes express more abstract grammatical information.)

Words that contain more than one morpheme are morphologically complex . Words with only a single morpheme are morphologically simple .

Ask yourself if the word “morphology” is morphologically complex. Can you identify morphemes within this word, systematic pairs of form and meaning? Historically, this word is built from two morphemes borrowed from Classical Greek: morph- “shape” and -ology “study of”. People who know English don’t necessarily know Classical Greek, though. Regardless of a word’s etymology (the history of a word), the question of whether it is morphologically complex is a question about how people who know that word use it today. A word might be morphologically complex for some people, but morphologically simple for others. Neither of those options is “correct” or “incorrect”, they just represent different grammars.

Our goal in morphology is to understand how words can be built out of morphemes in a given language. In the this chapter we will first look at the shapes of different morphemes (and morphological processes); in later sections we will review different functions that morphology can have, looking at divisions between derivational morphology, inflectional morphology, and compounding .

Check your understanding

Compton, Richard, and Christine Pittman. 2010. Word-formation by phase in Inuit. Lingua 120:2167–2192

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New NSF grant targets large language models and generative AI, exploring how they work and implications for societal impacts

The U.S. National Science Foundation has announced a grant of $9 million to Northeastern University for research to investigate how large language models (LLMs) and generative AI operate, focusing on the computing process called deep inference and AI’s long-term societal impacts.

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NDIF will actively collaborate with public interest technology groups to ensure that innovations in AI uphold principles of ethics, transparency and social responsibility in the deployment of LLMs.

"Understanding the mechanisms behind the strength of modern LLMs is one of the most pressing mysteries facing scientists today, raising fundamental questions about cognition as well as the many societal impacts of AI," said David Bau, principal investigator and assistant professor of computer science at Northeastern University. "NDIF defines a new, fully transparent way to access the largest models that is both powerful and cost-effective. It will democratize scientific access to the largest open AI models."

In addition, the project will help build a next-generation, AI-enabled workforce by providing comprehensive training to students and equipping them to serve as networks of experts. NDIF will support and train graduate students in AI, disseminate educational materials for university and professional use, and make tools for the science of large-scale AI widely available to users in other disciplines.

“NDIF will create a research framework that helps the research community explore the factors that ensure LLMs are safe and secure, which aligns with the goals of the White House Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence,” said Eleni Miltsakaki, the NSF program director for NDIF. “Launching NDIF will break new ground in the scientific study of very large language models, equipping researchers with deep inferencing tools that will enable them to study the internal mechanisms of these models. This investment in knowledge itself will unlock important research problems in every field impacted by large-scale AI."

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Article contents

Compounding in morphology.

Pius ten Hacken Pius ten Hacken Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.251
Published online: 29 March 2017

Compounding is a word formation process based on the combination of lexical elements (words or stems). In the theoretical literature, compounding is discussed controversially, and the disagreement also concerns basic issues. In the study of compounding, the questions guiding research can be grouped into four main areas, labeled here as delimitation, classification, formation, and interpretation. Depending on the perspective taken in the research, some of these may be highlighted or backgrounded.

In the delimitation of compounding, one question is how important it is to be able to determine for each expression unambiguously whether it is a compound or not. Compounding borders on syntax and on affixation. In some theoretical frameworks, it is not a problem to have more typical and less typical instances, without a precise boundary between them. However, if, for instance, word formation and syntax are strictly separated and compounding is in word formation, it is crucial to draw this borderline precisely. Another question is which types of criteria should be used to distinguish compounding from other phenomena. Criteria based on form, on syntactic properties, and on meaning have been used. In all cases, it is also controversial whether such criteria should be applied crosslinguistically.

In the classification of compounds, the question of how important the distinction between the classes is for the theory in which they are used poses itself in much the same way as the corresponding question for the delimitation. A common classification uses headedness as a basis. Other criteria are based on the forms of the elements that are combined (e.g., stem vs. word) or on the semantic relationship between the components. Again, whether these criteria can and should be applied crosslinguistically is controversial.

The issue of the formation rules for compounds is particularly prominent in frameworks that emphasize form-based properties of compounding. Rewrite rules for compounding have been proposed, generalizations over the selection of the input form (stem or word) and of linking elements, and rules for stress assignment. Compounds are generally thought of as consisting of two components, although these components may consist of more than one element themselves. For some types of compounds with three or more components, for example copulative compounds, a nonbinary structure has been proposed.

The question of interpretation can be approached from two opposite perspectives. In a semasiological perspective, the meaning of a compound emerges from the interpretation of a given form. In an onomasiological perspective, the meaning precedes the formation in the sense that a form is selected to name a particular concept. The central question in the interpretation of compounds is how to determine the relationship between the two components. The range of possible interpretations can be constrained by the rules of compounding, by the semantics of the components, and by the context of use. A much-debated question concerns the relative importance of these factors.

synthetic compound
exocentric compound
copulative compound
Recoverably Deletable Predicate
skeleton and body
Parallel Architecture
onomasiological approach

Compounding is a word formation process based on the combination of lexical elements. The elements can be characterized as words, stems, or lexemes, depending on the language and on the theoretical framework adopted. In the theoretical literature, the discussion of compounding is marked by disagreement on basic issues. Here, these issues will be grouped into four main areas, labeled as delimitation, classification, formation, and interpretation. To each of these, a section will be devoted. Not all of the issues are equally important in all theoretical frameworks and perspectives. A question that concerns all of them is to what extent theories can be applied crosslinguistically. The final section gives some general considerations about the relationship between the different issues. As much of the discussion in the literature focuses on English, English compounds will be central in the presentation of issues. However, examples from other languages will be included as well, in particular when they raise issues that do not arise in English.

1. Delimitation

A wide range of criteria have been used to characterize compounds and distinguish them from other phenomena, in particular syntactic phrases and derivations. The preference for certain criteria is determined by three questions, listed in (1).

A typical compound in English is textbook . It has a range of properties that can be evaluated for the three factors in (1). Morphologically, it consists of two uninflected nouns. Phonologically, it has a characteristic stress pattern. Orthographically, the two components are written together. Syntactically, it behaves as a noun. Semantically, it refers to a type of book, marked in some way by text.

When these properties are considered in the light of (1), a good example of (1a) is the question of whether orthographic criteria are acceptable. In many linguistic theories, starting from Saussure ( 1916 ), it is assumed that orthography is not itself part of language. Such considerations have to be distinguished from the question how useful the criterion is. It is well known that in English, the orthography of many compounds is variable. Lieber and Štekauer ( 2009 , p. 7) give the example of flower pot , flower-pot , flowerpot . This makes it difficult to decide whether it is a compound on the basis of this orthographic criterion, a problem of type (1c). Whereas in English, compounds are most often written as two words, in other Germanic languages compounds are generally written together, which highlights the issue in (1b). The combination of problems involved has led to a fairly general rejection of orthography as a criterion for compoundhood.

Phonological criteria offer a good example of the problems involved in a positive answer to (1b). The Dutch examples in (2) illustrate contexts for final obstruent devoicing.

The final consonant of the stem in (2a) is realized as /t/ at the end of a word, but when it is followed by an affix starting with a vowel, whether inflectional as in (2b) or derivational as in (2c), resyllabification takes place and the final consonant is realized as /d/. Dutch orthography represents the underlying /d/ in all cases. Compounds as in (2d) do not have resyllabification, so that the final obstruent is devoiced and realized as /t/.

A criterion for recognizing compounds based on final obstruent devoicing would necessarily be language-specific. In English, the rule does not apply. In other languages where it applies, there is no reason to assume that it works in exactly the same way as in Dutch. Moreover, in many Dutch compounds, the rule does not have any observable effect. In hoofdkussen (lit. ‘head cushion’; i.e., pillow), the context for resyllabification does not exist. In kunstacademie (‘art academy’), the first component does not have an underlying voiced final obstruent. This reduces the value of the criterion in case of a positive answer to (1c). Similar considerations apply to criteria based on stress (cf. Giegerich, 2009 ).

Morphosyntactic criteria take as their starting point the structure of the compound. Usually, a structure such as (3) is assumed.

Adopting the binary structure in (3) means that compounds with more than two basic components, for example church history textbook , are the result of recursion, in this example [[church history] [textbook]]. For certain types of compound, for example philosopher-singer-songwriter , such an analysis is rather unnatural, because the choice between the possible orders of combination is arbitrary. However, (3) gives a good basis for discussing morphosyntactic properties of (most) compounds. In English and other Germanic languages, Y is usually the head of the compound.

One relevant issue is the status of X and Y. Especially in the German tradition, there is a tendency to identify intermediate categories between stem and affix. Fleischer ( 1969 , pp. 63–66) is an influential early source on this, but he refers to older sources. Often affixoid is used for elements such as ‑man in postman or ‑ful in careful . This approach is not compatible with a positive reply to (1c), but rather introduces a cline from more stem-like to more affix-like elements, resulting in more compound-like or more derivation-like words.

Another issue pertaining to X and Y in (3) is to what extent they can be inflected. The problem can be illustrated with the plural inflection in Dutch (4) and Italian (5).

In (4), there are two singular nouns (Z) formed with the same components, but X is singular in (4a) and plural in (4b). They have a different meaning in the sense that (4a) designates a council for a city, whereas in (4b) the council has its scope over several cities. Both nouns are generally considered compounds in Dutch. In (5), the contribution of X and Y is reversed. In Italian, N+N compounds are left-headed. As a consequence, the plural ending can either attach to the head X, as in (5b), or to the full compound Z, as in (5c). Dictionaries tend to give (5b), but grammars give both forms, for example, Dardano and Trifone ( 1985 , p. 120). If (4) and (5) are compounds, meaningful inflection of components as well as inflection of the compound attaching to the first component must be accepted.

A slightly different case is genitive inflection. Some relevant examples from different languages are given in (6).

German (6a) is generally considered a compound. It should be noted, however, that Friedens is the genitive form of Frieden (‘peace’). Traditionally, the ending ‑s is analyzed as a linking element in German grammar. Historically, many linking elements have their origin in genitive endings. Synchronically, however, there are some frequent combinations that do not correspond to genitives, as in (7).

As illustrated in (7), all nouns in ‑ung and ‑heit have a linking element ‑s when they appear as X in a structure such as (3). The genitive form of these nouns is the same as the nominative, without ‑s , and they do not have ‑s as an inflectional ending in other forms either. On the status of linking elements and their relation to syntax, cf. Koliopoulou ( 2014 ).

The English genitive in (6b) is ambiguous. As noted by ten Hacken ( 1994 , pp. 81–83), the ambiguity can be resolved in various ways. One of them is by means of agreement with the determiner, as in (8).

As indicated by the brackets, this in (8a) determines the bracketed complex expression α ‎, whereas these in (8b) is part of the noun phrase β ‎. Therefore, (6b) may be considered a compound in contexts such as (8a) but not in contexts such as (8b). From Marchand’s ( 1969 , pp. 65–69) discussion, it is obvious that the genitive construction illustrated in (8a) is particularly common with human or at least animate nouns as X.

If Polish (6c) is considered as a compound, it is left-headed. However, traditional Polish grammar considers it as a lexicalized syntactic construction (e.g., Szymanek, 2010 , p. 218). Observing the parallelism with the English construction, ten Hacken ( 2013a ) argues for an analysis as a compound, while noting the same ambiguity as in (8).

A third interesting case is that of relational adjectives (RAs). The way inflection plays a role in RA+N constructions is illustrated for Polish in (9).

The RA autobusowy agrees with the noun it modifies in case, number, and gender, as illustrated by the contrast in (9). When the nominative in (9a) is changed to the genitive in (9b), the ending ‑y on the RA is replaced by ‑ego . For Matthews ( 1974 , p. 35), who gives Latin examples, this is a sufficient reason to exclude RA+N constructions from compounding. To the extent they are fixed expressions, he assigns them to lexicography, analyzing them as idioms. For Polish, Szymanek ( 2010 , pp. 218–219) adopts a similar position. The opposite view, defended, for instance, by Levi ( 1978 ), appeals to semantic arguments.

As an example of a criterion based on the relation between the components X and Y and the compound Z in (3), Di Sciullo and Williams ( 1987 ) adopt the Right-hand Head Rule (RHR) not as a generalization over compounds but as a delimiting criterion for word formation, which can be used to distinguish compounding from syntax. According to the RHR, Y in (3) is the head of the compound by virtue of its being the right-hand component. Z inherits the syntactic category and other properties from Y. This is illustrated in German (10).

In (10), gender is indicated for each of X, Y, and Z. As the two components have different genders, it can be seen that Z takes its gender from Y, not from X. Especially in Germanic languages, taking the RHR as a criterion yields results that coincide with general usage of the term compound . However, (11) gives some examples of expressions that are excluded by this criterion.

The French expression in (11a) can be interpreted as evidence that compounds in French are left-headed. The same is true for Italian in (5). The entire compound shares its masculine gender with centre , whereas ville is feminine. However, Di Sciullo and Williams ( 1987 , p. 83) interpret such observations as evidence that French does not have compounds. The Dutch example in (11b) is an exocentric compound. It fails the RHR in the sense that its gender is neuter, whereas kant (‘side’) is nonneuter.

A purely syntactic criterion for the distinction between compounds and phrases can be based on the observation, originally by Postal ( 1969 ), that the nonhead of a compound, X in (3) in languages like English, cannot be the antecedent of a pronoun. This is illustrated in the Dutch example (12).

The only masculine noun that hij can refer to in (12) is berg (‘mountain’), but because it is embedded in the compound bergdorp (‘mountain village’), it is not available as an antecedent. An explanation for this impossibility is that nonheads of compounds are interpreted in a generic sense. However, proper nouns, which cannot be generic, also appear as nonheads. They are available for pronominal reference. A Dutch example is (13).

Ward et al. ( 1991 ) claim that pronominal reference to the nonhead of a compound is governed by pragmatic rather than morphosyntactic constraints. They give a list of real-life examples from English. The majority of them are with proper names; others seem to be performance errors or conscious play on the rule. A typical example of the latter is the dialogue in (14).

The contrast between B and B’ in reply to A in (14) is not equally strong for all speakers of English, but for most speakers it is easily detectable. In order to explain that the nonhead of a compound is either generic or a proper noun, ten Hacken ( 1994 , p. 73) proposes that it is not possible to use outside context for the interpretation. Proper nouns like Brahms in (13) refer to an individual directly, but common nouns like berg in (12) need a determiner to identify an individual object. This idea is corroborated by the observation that first names are only possible if they are by themselves sufficient to identify an individual, as illustrated in (15).

Compared to the properties discussed so far, semantic aspects have not been used a great deal in the delimitation of compounding. Their role is rather in formation and interpretation. Ten Hacken ( 2013a ), however, proposes to take the way an expression gets its meaning as the main criterion for identifying compounds. The relationship between the components of a compound is not determined by the word formation rule, but emerges from the meaning of the individual components and the use of the compound for naming a concept (cf. section 4 ). This results in the inclusion of genitive constructions such as (6b–c) as well as RA+N constructions as in (9) in compounding. An interesting case is prepositional constructions such as (16) in Romance languages.

The Italian linguistic tradition is divided over constructions such as (16b). Scalise ( 1992 ) does not mention them in his overview of compounds, but in their overview of theories, Konecny and Autelli ( 2015 ) mention several accounts in which such constructions are given a status close to compounding. The preposition has a function similar to the genitive, and the P+N could be called a periphrastic genitive .

After this overview of criteria that have been used, it is worth reconsidering the questions in (1). The centrality of theory in the selection and formulation of criteria is an obvious given. Dressler’s ( 2006 ) objections to existing definitions that they are theory-specific and not crosslinguistically valid are not compatible with a terminological understanding of the nature of definitions. Definitions cannot be refuted. The question is not whether a definition is accurate but whether it delimits a useful theoretical concept. In a pretheoretical sense, it is no problem to use a language-specific definition with criteria that are easy to apply. If the concept of compounding is not used as a basis for theoretical claims, a series of typical properties for their identification, leading to a prototype with gradually decreasing typicality, is sufficient.

2. Classification

In classification, a fundamental distinction has to be made between taxonomies and incidental classes. In a taxonomy, a class of items, for instance compounds, is partitioned into subclasses in such a way that every item of the class belongs to exactly one subclass. There is no such requirement for incidental classes. An example of an incidental class is Roeper and Siegel’s ( 1978 ) class of verbal compounds. They define verbal compounds as compounds in which the head is deverbal and has one of the suffixes ‑er , ‑ing , or ‑ed . There is no obvious way the remaining set of compounds would be characterized, except as the complement of this class. In general, taxonomies are theoretically more valued. However, the value depends on the use made of the classes. A division of English compounds into solid compounds, hyphenated compounds, and spaced compounds on the basis of their orthography is of little use, because not much follows from membership in one of the classes.

A widely used classification scheme for compounds is the one found in Sanskrit grammars such as Whitney ( 1879 , pp. 424–456). The three main classes he distinguishes are copulative compounds, determinative compounds, and secondary adjective compounds. At this level, the Sanskrit classification system is a taxonomy. Its principal use is to describe the types of compound found in Sanskrit. This means that it is language-specific. At lower levels, there are also incidental classes, that is, special classes whose complement is not a described class or set of classes. Bloomfield ( 1933 , p. 235) mentions several of these classes, but for the three that remain as the central ones he gives the Sanskrit names dvandva , tatpurusha , and bahuvrihi . The equivalents he gives for them are copulative, determinative, and exocentric. Determinative compounds are exemplified by most of the examples in section 1 , for example, (4), (5), and (7).

The idea that bahuvrihi is equivalent to exocentric is somewhat problematic (cf. Koliopoulou, 2015 ). In Sanskrit, the word bahuvrīhi (lit. ‘much rice’; i.e., rich) exemplifies a class of adjectives that may become nouns by conversion. Two examples from Dutch are given in (17).

As opposed to Sanskrit examples, the Dutch examples in (17) are only nouns. (17a) has an A+N, (17b) an N+N structure. While (17) exhibits exocentric compounds of the bahuvrihi type, the classification into endocentric and exocentric is based on different criteria than the ones for the main Sanskrit classes. Bloomfield exemplifies exocentric compounds with turnkey , which is clearly not a bahuvrihi compound.

The distinction between endocentric and exocentric compounds was introduced by Bloomfield ( 1933 , p. 235) and is one of the most widely used taxonomic distinctions among compounds. Nowadays usually understood as based on headedness, for Bloomfield it is a matter of whether the compound belongs to the same (form) class as the head. Thus he calls turnkey exocentric because “the head member is an infinitive verb, but the compound is a noun” ( 1933 , p. 235). The difference between these two interpretations is particularly notable in copulative compounds, as illustrated in (18).

In English, copulative compounds of the type illustrated by α ‎ in (18a) only occur as the nonhead of compounds. Dutch also has them for adjectives in contexts such as β ‎ in (18b). Haeseryn et al. ( 1997 , p. 731) treat β ‎ as a compound, not the entire expression of (18b). In Modern Greek, N+N compounding of this type, illustrated in (18c), is productive. In these cases, Bloomfield would call α ‎, β ‎, and (18c) endocentric. However, as it is impossible to distinguish between a head and a nonhead in these cases, such copulative compounds are not usually considered endocentric in modern interpretations of the term.

Whereas from a language-specific Sanskrit perspective, the classification of dvandva, tatpurusha, and bahuvrihi may be a taxonomic one, the concepts need to be extended to maintain this status for a wider range of languages. As mentioned, the extension of bahuvrihi to V+N constructions such as turnkey was adopted by Bloomfield ( 1933 , p. 235). This construction is very common in Romance languages, as illustrated in (19).

It is not generally accepted that (19) should be classified as compounds. Di Sciullo and Williams ( 1987 ) and ten Hacken ( 2010 ) adopt alternative analyses.

Perhaps the clearest illustration of the difficulty of extending the Sanskrit taxonomy to a wider range of languages is Bauer’s ( 2008 ) crosslinguistic study of dvandva. Whereas the examples in (18) all correspond to the Sanskrit class of dvandva compounds, Bauer ends up with a much more detailed typology, including related types of copulative compounding not found in Sanskrit. In this typology, five types of dvandva are distinguished, as well as four types of coordinated compounds that are not dvandva.

A type of compound that has been discussed controversially is synthetic compounds. The term was introduced by Bloomfield ( 1933 , p. 231). Although the precise boundary is not set in stone, usually two types of expression are classified as such, illustrated in (20).

All examples in (20) show a combination of two stems and an affix. In (20a–b), the second stem is verbal. Bloomfield ( 1933 , p. 232) calls these semi-synthetic . Marchand ( 1969 , p. 31) uses the term verbal-nexus compound . In these cases, the noun with a V+affix structure can be considered the head of a compound. The nonhead may be the object of the verb, as in (20a), or have a different function, as in (20b). In (20c–d), the second stem is nominal. Semantically, it combines with the adjectival nonhead before combining with the affix. In (20d), poster is not a constituent of the word. On this basis, ten Hacken ( 2010 ) argues that they are not compounds but derivations based on a phrase. He also points out the similarity in meaning structure of synthetic compounds of the type in (20a–b) and exocentric compounds as illustrated in (19).

Scalise and Bisetto ( 2009 ) give a detailed overview of compound classifications and propose a taxonomy with three layers. At the highest level, they distinguish subordinative, attributive/appositive, and coordinative compounds. Subordinative compounds are divided into ground compounds and verbal-nexus compounds. Attributive compounds and appositive compounds are the divisions of the second class. The five classes resulting from the distinctions on the first two levels of the taxonomy are illustrated in Table 1 .

Table 1: Classification of compounds by Scalise and Bisetto ( 2009 )

A problem with the division in Table 1 is that it is supported only by rather vague descriptions of the labels. The number of examples they give is very limited. There are more examples from an earlier version of the classification, but it is not clear to what extent these are meant to fall into a different class in the new version. Thus, Scalise and Bisetto ( 2009 , p. 46) list girlfriend as attributive but woman doctor as coordinative.

For the third level of the taxonomy, Scalise and Bisetto ( 2009 ) refer to the distinction between endocentric and exocentric. Each of the five classes in Table 1 is further subdivided according to this opposition. Technically, this means that the headedness criterion is orthogonal to the classification in Table 1 . Although Scalise and Bisetto ( 2009 , p. 50) present the classification as a tree structure, a matrix would be a better representation. The examples in Table 1 are all endocentric. In order to implement this matrix structure, a further column with exocentric examples would have to be added.

A general question about classification is for what purpose a classification is needed. Sanskrit grammarians used their classification as a way of systematically presenting the range of compound constructions in their language. Modern examples of this type of use are found in Marchand ( 1969 ) for English and de Haas and Trommelen ( 1993 ) for Dutch. They tend to select criteria from the ones presented in this section and supplement them with criteria such as syntactic category and semantic relation between the head and nonhead. There is no reason to expect that the details of such a classification, which at least for the lower levels is arrived at by a bottom-up approach, would be applicable crosslinguistically. Unless theoretical claims are associated with individual classes of compounds, the details of the classification are of limited theoretical relevance.

3. Formation

Whereas the tradition of the delimitation and classification of compounding reaches back to the Sanskrit grammarians, the question of the formation of compounds only came up with the emergence of generative grammar. A landmark in this respect was the 1960 PhD dissertation by Robert Lees. Lees ( 1960 ) proposes a rule system that derives a compound from a deep structure that may also serve (with at most minor modifications) as the basis for a sentence. He gives the examples in (21) ( 1960 , p. 117).

Lees ( 1960 ) did not intend that (21a) is derived from (21b), but that (21a) and (21b) are derived from the same deep structure by means of a different sequence of transformations. As described in more detail by ten Hacken ( 2009 ), Lees’s ( 1960 ) account triggered extensive discussion. On the one hand, the derivation of compounds from a deep structure that specifies the relation between the two components has the potential to account for the meaning of the compound. On the other, the transformations required to derive a compound from such a richly specified deep structure are so powerful that they undermine the explanatory value of the theory. The emphasis on the advantages or disadvantages of this type of approach was correlated with the position taken in the debate on the place of semantics in generative grammar in the late 1960s and the 1970s.

Researchers embracing generative semantics tried to save the central insight of Lees ( 1960 ) that the formation of compounds could account for their meaning. In this vein, Levi ( 1978 ) proposed a set of Recoverably Deletable Predicates (RDPs). Instead of the unlimited freedom of describing the meaning of compounds exhibited in (21), RDPs offer a finite set of possible relations between the two components of a compound. The deep structures underlying (21a) and (21c) in Levi’s account would be something like (22).

Whereas in the system illustrated in (21), the number of possible deep structures is not limited, the system illustrated in (22) has nine RDPs, three of which can be used in two directions (X make Y or Y make X), so that windmill and flour mill are exactly 12-way ambiguous.

The opposition to Levi’s ( 1978 ) system was mainly directed at the generative semantic framework she adopted. However, there were also objections based on the problems of connecting the formation of compounds with their interpretation. Thus, the high degree of ambiguity that is predicted by Levi’s account does not correspond to the perceived meaning. Windmill and flour mill do not have twelve meanings from which one is selected.

As an alternative, Allen ( 1978 ) proposed the Variable R Condition. Her hypothesis is that the relation between the two components of a compound depends only on the semantics of the components, not on any constraints imposed by the formation rules for compounding. The different relations in (21) are determined by the slots opened by mill and the ways wind and flour can fill these slots. As a consequence of this hypothesis, the formation of compounds can be studied independently of their interpretation. An example of the resulting approach is Selkirk’s ( 1982 , p. 16) set of rewrite rules for the formation of compounds in English, given in (23).

The categories in {} in (23a–b) are alternatives. Reflected in (23) is the Right-hand Head Rule (RHR), which was already encountered in a different role in section 1 ; cf. (10). For Allen and Selkirk, the RHR is the only generalization contributed by the rule of compounding. The selection of categories in (23) is in principle language-specific. Following Marchand ( 1969 , pp. 100–107), Selkirk ( 1982 , pp. 16–17) analyzes verbs such as mass-produce and dry-clean as back-formations, based on compounds such as mass production and dry cleaning . Therefore, they do not require an extension of the rule in (23c).

Selkirk’s proposal has been influential in particular in inspiring the framework of Distributed Morphology (DM). DM was first proposed by Halle and Marantz ( 1993 ). It does not include a lexical component in which word formation could take place, but distributes the workings of morphology between feature bundles, active in syntax; a vocabulary list, used between syntax and PF; and an encyclopedia, consulted between LF and semantic interpretation. Harley ( 2009 , p. 129) describes the goal of DM as developing “a fully explicit, completely syntactic theory of word formation.”

When rules of the type in (23) are accepted as the basis of compounding, the formation and the interpretation of compounds are separated. Perhaps the only type where the formation can still be correlated with the interpretation is verbal compounds. Roeper and Siegel ( 1978 , p. 199) restrict this class to compounds involving the affixes illustrated in (24).

For this class, Roeper and Siegel ( 1978 ) propose a special mechanism that exploits the argument structure of the verb embedded in the nonhead. Although they formulate this mechanism as a transformation, in later elaborations (e.g., Selkirk, 1982 ), it was conceptualized as an operation on the argument structure in the lexicon. After the end of research in generative semantics, research on compounding was largely focused on verbal compounds for some decades. Thus, in his chapter on compounding, Spencer ( 1991 , pp. 309–349) devotes 20 pages to verbal compounds as against 5 to root compounds.

The explicit restriction to the three affixes in (24) has been criticized. Thus, Allen ( 1978 ) argues that population growth should be treated in the same way. However, Marchand ( 1969 , p. 349) gives growth and spilth as the only deverbal nouns in ‑th . When such unproductive suffixes are considered relevant as well, this raises the question where to draw the line. If bicycle theft and bicycle thief are treated in the same way, the result may be a mechanism in which theft and thief are analyzed on the basis of their meaning, independently of the structure of the form, an approach very similar to the one adopted in generative semantics. A generalization of this approach can be observed in Booij’s ( 2010 ) construction morphology. He proposes to dissolve compounding as a category into a hierarchy of more and less inclusive constructions, where the more specialized constructions inherit properties from the more inclusive ones they are specializations of.

Finally, the exact nature of the elements combined in a compound must be considered. Whereas in English, rewrite rules such as (23) take a form as their basis that is at the same time identical to the stem and to the word, other languages show variations in the form. Some Dutch examples illustrating this are given in (25).

In (25), the linking elements are indicated in small caps in the literal gloss. In (25a), there is no linking element. (25b–c) illustrate two forms of a linking element that, for standard Dutch and most dialects, only differ orthographically, because the <n> in (25c) is not pronounced. The other widespread form of the linking element is illustrated in (25d). (25e) shows a third linking element, which only occurs with a very limited number of stems. The choice of the form of the linking element depends on the first component, although there exist cases in which the same noun takes different linking elements in different compounds, for example, kindsdeel (lit. ‘child- s -part’; i.e., statutory portion of an inheritance going to a child of the deceased).

A different type of form variation is found in Modern Greek. Here, components of compounds can be stems or words. The contrast is illustrated in (26), taken from Ralli ( 2013 ).

In (26), the compounds are followed by the base form of their components. In both examples, the thematic vowel of the first component is replaced by the linking element ‑o‑ . This means that these components are stems. In (26a), also the second component σπιτ ‎- (‘house’) is used as a stem. However, in (26b), it is the entire word ταβέρνα ‎ (‘tavern’) that becomes the second component of the compound.

In several contexts, a striking disparity can be observed between heads and nonheads of compounds. Linking elements generally depend on the nonhead. Whereas the status of Greek heads can vary, as illustrated in (26), the nonhead is always a stem. (18) showed that dvandva compounds in English are possible as nonheads of a compound. In other contexts they do not occur. All of these cases suggest that nonheads of compounds permit the appearance of elements that are not possible elsewhere. It is not surprising, then, that there are also phrasal compounds, namely compounds with a phrasal nonhead, for example a connect-the-dots puzzle . Wiese ( 1996 ) also mentions extralinguistic material that can appear in nonheads of compounds, for example the # key . Ten Hacken ( 2003 ) proposes that this is possible because the nonhead of a compound does not have a syntactic category. For a recent discussion of phrasal compounds, comparing English and German data, cf. Trips ( 2016 ).

An even more radical difference in the nature of the elements can be found in the case of neoclassical compounds, for example, anthropomorphism . As Bauer ( 1998 ) shows, these formations raise different issues compared to the more typical compounds discussed here. These issues include the status of anthropo and morpho (or anthrop and morph ) as elements of the English lexicon and of the rule that combines them. Ten Hacken ( 2012 ) proposes an explanation of their emergence in English and a system of formation rules in which they are minimally different from regular compounds. Panocová ( 2015 ) compares the status of neoclassical compounds in English and in Russian, concluding that English has a formation system for them, but in Russian they are borrowings.

The formation mechanism for compounds is for most languages relatively simple. Complications arise in particular when the formation of compounds is linked directly with their interpretation. Form-related questions going beyond the combination patterns of components, for example, the presence and shape of linking elements, require language-specific solutions.

4. Interpretation

In early overviews of compounding, it was not so much the process of compounding but the interpretation of the compounds which was the central concern. The crucial question in interpreting a compound is how the relation between the two components should be established. Jespersen ( 1942 ) gives an extensive catalogue of relations, while admitting that no such list can pretend to be exhaustive. Lees’s ( 1960 ) transformational account instrumentalized these relations as the basis for the deep structure of the compounds, cf. (21). This idea was taken up by Marchand ( 1969 ), although the two disagreed on the precise significance of the deep structures (cf. ten Hacken, 2009 , pp. 60–63 for an overview of their discussion).

Levi’s ( 1978 ) RDPs, illustrated in (22), can be interpreted as a compromise between the constraints of a mechanism for the formation of compounds and the requirements of a mechanism for their interpretation. As a formation mechanism, it has the disadvantage of making each compound 12-way ambiguous. As an interpretation mechanism, it has the limitation that with only 12 RDPs the description of the relation is very crude. A well-known example is the contrast in (27).

Both compounds in (27) have for as their RDP, although the intended effect on the referent of the nonhead is opposite. As noted by Downing ( 1977 , pp. 825–828), it is possible to reduce the relations between components of a compound to a finite set, but only as a classification, not as an adequate description of the relation. The main problem of Levi’s approach is perhaps that she tries to derive the relation between the two components exclusively from rules for compounding.

Allen’s ( 1978 ) Variable R Condition takes the opposite position. The Variable R Condition says that the relation R between the two components of a compound is only governed by the semantics of the components. The head component opens a range of slots for modification, and the semantics of the nonhead determines which of the slots fit. In the case of (21a, c), mill opens slots for, among others, the source of energy and the output of the operation. Wind fits the former slot and flour the latter. Of course, there are other slots, as in town mill (‘in the service of’) or riverside mill (‘located at’). Also the contrast in (27) can be accommodated if it is assumed that fertility is desirable and headache is not. However, without a proper theory of slots, the Variable R Condition does not offer any explanations.

For a relatively long period after 1978 , the interpretation of compounds was low on the agenda of morphological research. Presumably, this is because the question was associated with generative semantics, and the predominant currents of generative grammar focused on the generation of grammatically correct forms. It is only at the start of the 21st century that some new proposals have been made. Three such proposals are compared by ten Hacken ( 2016 ). Two of them can be seen as building on the insights of Levi ( 1978 ) and Allen ( 1978 ) as well as on the critical reception of their ideas.

Lieber ( 2004 ) presents a theory of word formation that includes a mechanism for the coindexation of slots. It can be interpreted as providing the principled approach to slots that is missing in Allen’s ( 1978 ) proposal. In Lieber’s theory, the meaning of lexical entries consists of a skeleton and a body. The skeleton is a formalized part of the meaning that is expressed by a closed class of features. The body encodes the remaining aspects of meaning, some of which may be formalized as features, others only stated informally. Lieber ( 2016 , p. 40) gives the example of cat , where [+material ([ ])] is a feature of the skeleton, <+animate> a feature of the formalized part of the body, and ‘meows’ belongs to the informal, more encyclopedic part of the body. As an example of a case where the coindexation expresses contrastive readings, Lieber ( 2016 , p. 45) gives (28).

The contrast in (28) involves verbal compounds. The transitive verb celebrate has two slots, and the contrastive interpretation of the roles of family and birthday in (28) can be correlated with the interpretation of the nonhead as going into the first slot, corresponding to the subject, in (28a), but into the second slot, corresponding to the object, in (28b).

Compounds of the type illustrated in (21) and (27) do not have the same possibility of contrastive coindexation. However, in all cases, the precise interpretation of what coindexation means uses information from the body. The idea that a family is a group of people and as such <+sentient>, as opposed to birthday , qualifies it to be in the first slot of celebrate and at the same time indicates the nature of the event. In the case of (27), pill will have the encyclopedic information that it is taken with the purpose of changing something in the physical body of the person taking it. The encyclopedic information that fertility is desirable and a headache is not can then be used to make sense of the coindexation for the two compounds in (27).

Jackendoff ( 2009 ) presents a system for the interpretation of compounds in the framework of his Parallel Architecture (PA; cf. Jackendoff, 2002 ). Somewhat modified versions of this system are presented in Jackendoff ( 2010 , pp. 413–451; 2016 ). The most striking aspect of his system is a set of ‘basic predicates.’ The number and characterization of these predicates vary slightly in the different versions, but several of them correspond to Levi’s ( 1978 ) RDPs, for example, cause and make . The crucial difference between Jackendoff’s basic predicates and Levi’s RDPs, however, is that the basic predicates are embedded in a much richer system for expressing the meaning of compounds. In particular, the combination of various mechanisms in a generative way results in an in principle unbounded number of possible relations. For barbershop , Jackendoff ( 2016 , p. 34) gives the analysis in (29).

In (29a), it is formalized that shop refers to a place which has the proper function ( pf ) that someone sells something in it. In (29b), it is formalized that barber designates a person whose occupation ( occ ) is to cut hair. In the compound barbershop , the representation of barber is inserted into the representation of shop , but only after an operation of reprofiling . As represented in (29c), this operation puts the person profiled in (29b) into the position of α ‎ with which it was coindexed. In (29d), most of the meaning is ultimately based on the lexical entries of the components. This is not because the components have a verbal root, but because for primary nouns as well, the semantic component of PA gives lexical conceptual structures with a great deal of relevant detail.

In all the approaches seen so far in this section, the interpretation of compounds is based on two sources of information. On one hand, there are the rules of compounding, contributing, for instance, RDPs or basic functions. On the other, there is the semantics of the components. The latter is the main source of information in Lieber’s system, but also very important in Jackendoff’s. Lieber’s approach starts from the form and works toward the meaning. Jackendoff’s approach starts from the components and works toward the compound. As noted by Downing ( 1977 , pp. 822–824), compounds have the function of providing a name for a concept. Therefore, a further source of information that determines the meaning of a compound is the concept to be named. In general, compounds are not formed in order to combine two components but in order to name a new concept. They are neologisms. Ten Hacken ( 2013b ) argues for a separate word formation component in PA on the basis of this argument.

The onomasiological approach to word formation as developed by Štekauer ( 1998 , 2005 ) takes the naming function of word formation as its central characteristic. Although the resulting system does not identify compounding as a separate phenomenon, Štekauer ( 2016 ) explores how different types of compounding are covered in it. The point of departure is that the system provides a series of ever more specific decisions leading from the identification of a concept to be named to the selection of a name for this concept. A central role in this process is taken by the so-called onomasiological types (OTs). Štekauer ( 2016 , pp. 59–61) presents eight different OTs, which lead to the morphological expression of different semantic aspects. The type of difference giving rise to different OTs can be illustrated on the basis of the examples in (30).

In (30a), three components are expressed, an object ( guitar ), an action ( play ), and an agent ( ‑er ). It illustrates Štekauer’s OT1, which expresses all components of the onomasiological structure. Other OTs leave one or two components unexpressed or express two components in one morpheme. In (30b), the object is not expressed, which makes it an example of OT2. In (30c), the action is not expressed, as is typical of OT3. In (30d), representing OT5, the action and the agent are jointly expressed by cheat . It should be noted that Štekauer’s theory is much richer than only an expression of the contrasts in (30). The OTs illustrated here can also be applied to other types of word formation. Thus, writer also belongs to OT2 and novelist to OT3. The distinction between derivation and compounding is orthogonal to the distinction between OTs.

An important difference between the onomasiological approach and the other approaches seen in this section is that by starting from the concept, the ambiguity of a compound is not relevant. Starting from the concept ‘a mechanism for grinding grain into flour’ and working gradually toward the compound flour mill , there is no point at which the possibility of interpreting flour mill in a way parallel to windmill comes up.

In general, it can be said that there are three sources of information that can be used in the interpretation of compounds. One is the lexical entries for the elements that are combined. Then there is the rule for combining them, which may be equipped with specific conditions. Finally, there is the concept to be named. Different approaches have emphasized one or two at the expense of the others.

5. Correlations Between the Different Issues

The distinction between delimitation, classification, formation, and interpretation is useful for expository reasons, but it is to some extent artificial. This is visible in the appearance of the same theories in different sections. After the presentation of the individual issues, it is therefore worth indicating more systematically how the four issues relate to each other.

There is a clearly observable opposition between two pairs of strongly related issues. Delimitation and classification can be called expository issues, whereas formation and interpretation are substantive issues. Expository issues are more descriptively oriented and originate in traditional grammar. Definitions of compounding and divisions into subtypes are used to come up with a systematic description. Substantive issues have an explanatory orientation and originate in theoretical approaches to language. A theory of language cannot dispense with an account of the formation and interpretation of compounds, but such an account does not have to identify a precisely delimited category of compounds. An example is Štekauer’s ( 2016 ) onomasiological theory, which treats compounds without identifying compounding as a class.

Historically, classification is the oldest issue, as it was already part of the Sanskrit grammarians’ concerns. In traditional grammar, the question of delimitation is less prominent in the sense that it follows from the classification. It only becomes an issue of its own when a crosslinguistic perspective is taken. Both issues can be seen also as primarily of a terminological nature. The question is, then, whether and how to define terms such as compound or subtypes, for example, exocentric compound .

The interest in the substantive issues only arose when explanatory theories became more important. As the discussion in sections 3 and 4 illustrates, the emergence of generative grammar played a central role in this process. Historically, three phases can be distinguished. The first was marked by the account of the formation and interpretation of compounds by means of a single, nondifferentiated mechanism. Exponents of this phase are Lees ( 1960 ) and Levi ( 1978 ). In the second phase, the emphasis was on formation mechanisms only. Examples include Allen ( 1978 ) and Selkirk ( 1982 ). Downing ( 1977 ) starts by criticizing the theories of the first phase, but instead of limiting herself to formation mechanisms, she makes some lucid observations that foreshadow the issues that emerge in the third phase. This third phase reintegrates the issue of interpretation into the theory, but separates it from the question of how compounds are formed. Here, Lieber ( 2004 ) and Jackendoff ( 2009 ) are good examples.

From a theoretical perspective, the substantive issues are more important than the expository issues. The extent to which definitions of terms designating (classes of) compounds are necessary is determined by the need to make and test theoretical claims depending on them. Whether a definition of synthetic compound , for instance, is needed depends on whether synthetic compounding is covered by a separate mechanism. When it is decided for what reason synthetic compound needs a definition this reason gives at least a clue as to the criteria this definition should be based on. In this way, the expository issues have become subordinate to the substantive issues.

At the same time, classifications have benefited from theoretical insights. An obvious example is Marchand’s ( 1969 ) use of Lees’s ( 1960 ) theory. However, it should be noted that a purely classificational use of a theory does not respect the theory’s original purpose. This was a source of conflict between Marchand and Lees. Also for other theories, it is important to see that they are not meant as a source for classification or delimitation, but as an explanatory account. Levi’s ( 1978 ) RDPs are not intended as a classification. When Levi ( 1978 , pp. 280–284) gives lists of compounds for each RDP, her purpose is to illustrate RDPs, not to classify compounds. Jackendoff’s ( 2009 ) basic functions are even less suitable for a classification, because they are meant as only one component of a much more complex mechanism for the formation and interpretation of compounds. Similarly, for Štekauer’s ( 2016 ) OTs, it is not a problem when for some compounds it is hard to determine which OT they belong to. As long as all compounds can be accounted for, the purpose of the theory is fulfilled. As long as each OT has cases that are not covered by any other OT, its separate existence is justified.

The development of the research in compounding has seen a gradual shift of emphasis. Whereas expository issues were the focus of attention until the mid- 20th century , substantive issues have become more central since then. Within the substantive issues, the interpretation has gained in importance in the last decades, after being in the background in the final part of the 20th century . Although no agreement has been reached in many of these issues, insight has grown.

Special Issues of Journals

Scalise, S. (Ed.). (1992). The morphology of compounding, Rivista di Linguistica , 4 (1).
Gaeta, L. , & Grossmann, M. (Eds.). (2009). Compounds between syntax and the lexicon, Rivista di Linguistica , 21 (1).
Bisetto, A. (Ed.). (2009). Compounds crosslinguistically, Lingue e linguaggio , 8 (2).
Szpakowicz, S. , Bond, F. , Nakov, P. , & Kim, S. N. (Eds.). (2013). On the semantics of noun compounds, Natural Language Engineering , 19 (3).
Lees, R. B. (1960). The grammar of English nominalizations . Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Levi, J. N. (1978). The syntax and semantics of complex nominals . New York: Academic Press.
Selkirk, E. O. (1982). The syntax of words . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
ten Hacken, P. (1994). Defining morphology: A principled approach to determining the boundaries of compounding, derivation, and inflection . Hildesheim: Olms.
Lieber, R. (2004). Morphology and lexical semantics . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Booij, G. (2010). Construction morphology . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Language-specific handbooks

Marchand, H. (1969). The categories and types of present-day English word-formation: A synchronic-diachronic approach (2d ed.). München: Beck.
Bauer, L. , Lieber, R. , & Plag, I. (2013). The Oxford reference guide to English morphology . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fleischer, W. , & Barz, I. (2012). Wortbildung der deutschen Gegenwartsprache (4th ed.). Berlin: De Gruyter.
de Haas, W. , & Trommelen, M. (1993). Morfologisch handboek van het Nederlands: Een overzicht van de woordvorming . ’s‑Gravenhage: SDU.
Moyna, M. I. (2011). Compound words in Spanish: Theory and history . Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Ralli, A. (2013). Compounding in Modern Greek . Dordrecht: Springer.
Allen, M. R. (1978). Morphological investigations (Unpublished PhD diss.). University of Connecticut, Storrs.
Bauer, L. (1998). Is there a class of neoclassical compounds and if so is it productive? Linguistics , 36 , 403–421.
Bauer, L. (2008). Dvandva. Word Structure , 1 , 1–20.
Bloomfield, L. (1933). Language . New York: H. Holt.
Dardano, M. , & Trifone, P. (1985). La lingua Italiana: Una grammatica completa e rigorosa . Bologna: Zanichelli.
Di Sciullo, A. M. , & Williams, E. (1987). On the definition of word . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Downing, P. A. (1977). On the creation and use of English compound nouns. Language , 53 , 810–841.
Dressler, W. U. (2006). Compound types. In G. Libben & G. Jarema (Eds.), The representation and processing of compound words (pp. 23–44). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fleischer, W. (1969). Wortbildung der deutschen Gegenwartsprache . Leipzig: VEB Bibliographisches Institut.
Giegerich, H. J. (2009). The English compound stress myth. Word Structure , 2 , 1–17.
ten Hacken, P. (2003). Phrasal elements as parts of words. In E. Hajičová , A. Kotěšovcová , & J. Mírovský (Eds.), Proceedings of CIL17 . CD-ROM, Praha: Matfyzpress, MFF UK.
ten Hacken, P. (2009). Early generative approaches. In R. Lieber & P. Štekauer (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of compounding (pp. 54–77). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
ten Hacken, P. (2010). Synthetic and exocentric compounds in a parallel architecture. Linguistische Berichte Sonderheft , 17 , 233–251.
ten Hacken, P . (2012). Neoclassical word formation in English and the organization of the lexicon. In Z. Gavriilidou , A. Efthymiou , E. Thomadaki , & P. Kambakis-Vougiouklis (Eds.), Selected papers of the 10th International Conference of Greek Linguistics (pp. 78–88). Komotini: Democritus University of Thrace.
ten Hacken, P. (2013a). Compounds in English, in French, in Polish, and in general. SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics , 10 , 97–113.
ten Hacken, P. (2013b). Semiproductivity and the place of word formation in grammar. In P. ten Hacken & C. Thomas (Eds.), The semantics of word formation and lexicalization (pp. 28–44). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
ten Hacken, P. (Ed.), (2016). The semantics of compounding . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ten Hacken, P. (2016). Three analyses of compounding: A comparison. In P. ten Hacken (Ed.), The semantics of compounding (pp. 211–232). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Haeseryn, W. , Romijn, K. , Geerts, G. , de Rooy, J. , & van den Toorn, M. C. (1997). Algemene nederlandse spraakkunst . Groningen: Nijhoff.
Halle, M. , & Marantz, A. (1993). Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection. In K. Hale & S. J. Keyser (Eds.), The view from Building 20: Essays in linguistics in honor of Sylvain Bromberger (pp. 111–176). Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
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Jackendoff, R. (2002). Foundations of language: Brain, meaning, grammar, evolution . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jackendoff, R. (2009). Compounding in the parallel architecture and conceptual semantics. In R. Lieber & P. Štekauer (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of compounding (pp. 105–128). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jackendoff, R. (2010). Meaning and the lexicon: The parallel architecture, 1975–2010 . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jackendoff, R. (2016). English noun-noun compounds in conceptual semantics. In P. ten Hacken (Ed.), The semantics of compounding (pp. 15–37). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Koliopoulou, M. (2014). How close to syntax are compounds? Evidence from the linking element in German and Modern Greek compounds. Rivista di Linguistica , 26 (2), 51–70.
Koliopoulou, M. (2015). Possessive/bahuvrīhi compounds in German: An analysis based on comparable compounds in Modern Greek. Languages in Contrast , 15 , 81–101.
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Štekauer, P. (1998). An onomasiological theory of English word-formation . Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Benjamins.
Štekauer, P. (2005). Onomasiological approach to word-formation. In P. Štekauer & R. Lieber (Eds.), Handbook of word-formation (pp. 207–232). Dordrecht: Springer.
Štekauer, P. (2016). Compounding from an onomasiological perspective. In P. ten Hacken (Ed.), The semantics of compounding (pp. 54–68). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Szymanek, B. (2010). A panorama of Polish word formation . Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL.
Trips, C. (2016). An analysis of phrasal compounds in the model of parallel architecture. In P. ten Hacken (Ed.), The semantics of compounding (pp. 153–177). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Acceptability Judgments
The Onomasiological Approach
Compound and Complex Predicates in Japanese
Nominalization: General Overview and Theoretical Issues

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Whereas morphology has been identified as a dimension of language that may be easier for language-minority children to acquire than vocabulary, and is thereby a particularly promising target for interventions, the research base on morphological knowledge in language-minority children is relatively small.
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Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words and forms a core part of linguistic study today. The term morphology is Greek and is a makeup of morph- meaning 'shape, form', and -ology which means 'the study of something'. Morphology as a sub-discipline of linguistics was named for the first time in 1859 by the German ...
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