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SUMMARY:Noun noun constructions in English - Melanie Bell\, RCEAL
DTSTART:20080212T160000Z
DTEND:20080212T173000Z
UID:TALK10353@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Napoleon Katsos
DESCRIPTION:In English\, noun-noun strings (NNs) have sometimes been analy
 sed as\ncompound words if unmarked stress falls on the first element\, but
  as\nnoun phrases if it falls on the second (eg Bloomfield 1935\, Marchand
 \n1969\, Haspelmath 2002). However\, the facts do not support this analysi
 s:\ncombinations with certain nouns are always stressed on N1\, while othe
 r\nconstituents systematically assign stress to N2\, and there are many\nc
 ombinations that show variable stress\, both between and within\nspeakers.
  Using evidence from corpora and elicitation experiments\, it\nwill be arg
 ued here that English NNs are not stressed according to a\nmorphological/s
 yntactic divide\, but on the basis of analogical patterns\nin the mental l
 exicon\, themselves the products of semantic and\nhistorical factors.\nFir
 st\, it will be shown that a syntactic analysis of NNs\, regardless of\nth
 eir stress pattern\, necessitates the formulation of exceptional\nphrase-s
 tructure rules. On the other hand\, recognising all English NNs\nas compou
 nd words\, avoids postulating the existence of such atypical\nphrases and 
 is consistent with analyses of cognate constructions\nelsewhere in Germani
 c.\nSecond\, it is argued that stress is assigned to these compounds large
 ly\nby analogy with related concatenations\, a conclusion supported by\nSp
 encer (2003) and by Plag et al (2007). The contribution of the present\nwo
 rk is to consider how such analogical patterns are established\, and\nevid
 ence is presented for the involvement of semantic and historical\nfactors.
 \nFinally\, the considerable inter-speaker variation revealed by the\nelic
 itation data suggests that\, for many of these items\, stress is not a\nca
 tegorical property of the construction per se\, but rather reflects the\nw
 ay that the construction is classified by individual speakers. Despite\nbe
 ing structurally compounds\, some NNs are clearly more phrase-like than\no
 thers\, and those in families with compositional\, phrase-like semantics\n
 tend also to have more phrase-like prosody. The stress assigned can\, in\n
 at least some cases\, depend essentially on how separate and independent\n
 the elements are felt to be in the mind of the speaker.
LOCATION:GR-06/07\, English Faculty Building
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