Synthetic compound

Definition

Synthetic compound is a particular type of compound, viz. compounds whose head is derived from a verb by affixation, and where the non-head fulfills the function of argument or complement of the verb.

Example

The English compounds truck driver, truck driving, fast acting and pan fried are synthetic compounds. Synthetic compounds have played a major role in the development of linguistic theory, since they raise a number a questions concerning the morphology-syntax interface. Another term for synthetic compound is verbal 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.

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