Debonding of Dutch and German compounds

Van Goethem, Kristel [UCL] Hüning, Matthias [Freie Universität Berlin]

This study focuses on Dutch and German adjectives (and occasionally adverbs) that arise through "debonding" from N+N- or N+A-compounds. Debonding is a type of degrammaticalization defined by Norde as "a composite change whereby a bound morpheme in a specific linguistic context becomes a free morpheme" (Norde 2009:186). It typically involves processes such as severance (i.e. decrease in bondedness), flexibilization (i.e. increase in syntactic freedom), scope expansion and recategorialization. In previous studies (Amiot & Van Goethem 2012; Van Goethem & De Smet 2012), it has been shown that the lack of (prosodic) cohesion of French and English compounds facilitates debonding in both languages. This holds for instance for compounds or compound-like sequences with French clé 'key' (e.g. poste clé 'key position') (1) and English key (e.g. key area) (2): (1) FR. Ces deux ministres auraient réclamé, selon ces sources, le poste prestigieux et clé de Christine Lagarde (...) '(...) the key and prestigious position of Christine Lagarde (...)' (GlossaNet, 2011) (2) ENG. The U.S. (...) has said it will do more in terms of intelligence-sharing to (...) stop some of the killings, and really restore some -- some law and order in these pockets of lawlessness that -- that tend to be along some very key border areas. (COCA) Dutch and German compounds, by contrast, are very cohesive, not only prosodically but also orthographically, which seems to counteract strongly the debonding process (e.g. DU. *de sleutel en prestigieuze post, GERM. *der Schlüssel und prestigeträchtige Posten). However, it is striking that Dutch compounds with an intensifying left-hand member (with nominal origin) and -e- interfix often do allow debonding: (4) DU. De binnenstad staat immers op een reuze betonnen plaat van 12 ha tussen twee heuvelruggen waaronder alle gemotoriseerd verkeer moet parkeren zodat het ganse centrum overdag een grote voetgangerszone is. 'The town centre is indeed built on a gigantic sheet of steel (...)' (news.google.com, 2011) (5) DU. Echt een buitenkansje voor een nieuw appartement op een klasse locatie... '(...) a new flat at a prime location' (GlossaNet, 2011) It can therefore be assumed that the ending of the left-hand member plays a crucial role in the debonding process. Since Dutch attributively used adjectives mostly end in the inflectional affix -e, the linking morpheme -e could trigger the reanalysis of forms such as reuze and klasse as adjectives. In German, we also find nouns like Klasse 'the class' or Spitze 'the top' that can be used as intensifiers in compounds and (with the same intensifying meaning) as adjectival modifiers, cf. die Klassevorstellung 'marvelous performance' vs. die Vorstellung war klasse 'the performance was marvelous'. In prenominal use Klasse is often interpreted as adjective as shown by the spelling and the stress pattern die klasse Vórstellung. Unlike 'normal' adjectives, these prenominal elements are, however, not inflected. This can be illustrated by comparing klasse with an adjective like böse: ein klasse Hund 'a marvelous dog' vs. ein böser Hund 'an angry dog'. This feature can be used to distinguish the literal from the intensifying meaning: ein spitzer Bleistift 'a sharp pencil' vs. ein spitze Bleistift 'a top pencil', the first being an instance of spitz 'sharp' and the second of the (debonded) spitze 'top, super'. In corresponding compounds, the intensifying Spitze gets a linking morpheme (ein Spitzenbleistift 'a top pencil'). The recent (substandard) use of Hammer 'hammer' as an intensifying element represents another case of debonding in German: ein Hammerkonzert 'a great concert' - das Konzert war hammer 'the concert was fantastic'. In our talk we will discuss these phenomena from a contrastive perspective. We will describe debonding in Dutch and German and analyze the commonalities and the differences. References Amiot, D. & K. Van Goethem (2012). A constructional account of French -clé 'key' and Dutch sleutel- 'key' as in mot-clé / sleutelwoord 'key word'. In G. Booij (ed.), Construction Morphology. Berlin: Springer. 12p. http://www.springerlink.com/content/r1q18pr7347t7p68/fulltext.pdf Norde, M. (2009). Degrammaticalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Van Goethem, K. & H. De Smet (2012). How nouns turn into adjectives. The emergence of new adjectives in French, Dutch and English through debonding processes. Paper presented at Adjectives in Germanic and Romance, Amsterdam, March 2012. Corpora: COCA: http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/ GlossaNet: http://glossa.fltr.ucl.ac.be/