Root compound

Definition

A root compound is a compound whose head is not deverbal or whose non-head does not have the function of argument of the verb from which the head is derived.

Example

English compounds such as housewife, blackbird, overcoat, rattlesnake, well-formed, off-white, overlook, and so on do not have a deverbal head, and therefore can be called root compounds. A compound such as truck driver on the other hand has a deverbal head and the non-head is an argument of the embedded verb drive. The distinction between root compounds and synthetic compounds has played a major role in theoretical discussions since the late seventies. Another term for root compound is primary compound. Synthetic compound.

Links

• Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics

References

• Fabb, N. 1984. Syntactic Affixation, PhD diss. MIT.
• Lieber, R. 1983. Argument Linking and Compounds in English, Linguistic Inquiry 14:2, pp.251-285, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
• Roeper, T. 1988. Compound syntax and head movement, Yearbook of morphology 1, 187-228
• Roeper, T. 1987. Implicit arguments and the head-complement relation, Linguistic Inquiry 18, 267-310
• Roeper, T. and D. Siegel 1978. A Lexical Transformation for Verbal Compounds, Linguistic Inquiry 9, pp. 199-260
• Selkirk, E. O. 1982a. The Syntax of Words, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
• Spencer, A. 1991. Morphological Theory, Blackwell, Oxford.
• Sproat, R. 1985. On Deriving the Lexicon, PhD diss. MIT.