As the discussion of the studies investigating semantic transparency has shown, the results taken together do not yield a uniform picture. In addition, several factors make a comparison of the results difficult: (1) There is not a single true replication of any of the experiments, although some experiments are attempts at a replication in a different language (cf. Experiment 2 by Jarema et al. 1999, which partially replicates Experiment 2 in Libben et al. 2003, and Experiment 1 by Frisson, Niswander-Klement & Pollatsek 2008, which largely replicates Experiment 2 by Pollatsek & Hyönä 2005). (2) As outlined in Section 2.2.2, the way semantic transparency was established was usually not exactly the same. Note that this even holds for approaches that use the same ratings to begin with. Thus, Libben et al. (2003) and Marelli & Luzzatti (2012) both start with ratings for compound semantic transparency and constituent transparency, but in the former these ratings are then used to establish a 4-fold categorization while in the latter the 3 ratings are retained as continuous variables. (3) Different kinds of tasks or slightly differing variations of tasks are used.

These 3 factors make a comparison of the results difficult. For now, we will ignore the problem of missing true replications, neglect that the transparency measures themselves are not the same across the experiments, and instead focus on the picture that presents itself when considering the results of the different experiments in light of the different tasks.

The main difference between lexical decision and eye movement measures is that the former involves a conscious judgement whereas the latter is measuring unconscious processes. Precisely because of this metalinguistic nature, some researchers (for example Baayen 2014) advise to move away from the lexical

Table 2.4: Semantic transparency effects for compounds in other languages

### 2.3 Psycholinguistic studies

decision task altogether if the goal is to study actual language processing. For lexical decision in connection with semantic priming, Bueno & Frenck-Mestre (2008) show that lexical decision is less sensitive to early semantic processing than, in their case, a semantic categorization task. Thus, if one takes semantic priming to reflect a (relatively) late process, and, in contrast, assumes that repetition priming reflects an early process, one can align these findings with the eye tracking data from Pollatsek & Hyönä (2005) and Frisson, Niswander-Klement & Pollatsek (2008) in so far as the zero findings in the eye tracking studies likewise might indicate early processes, and the only significant finding with regard to semantic transparency, the longer gazes in the spillover region reported by Frisson, Niswander-Klement & Pollatsek (2008) being likewise a delayed effect. Across the 2 different tasks, it seems that if an effect of semantic transparency is found, then it is always a delayed effect. However, this does not go together with the findings by Marelli & Luzzatti (2012), where there were in fact effects of semantic transparency for non-delayed eye tracking measures (e.g. first gaze duration). Marelli & Luzzatti (2012: 662–663) argue that the model that fits their data best is the multi-route model proposed in Kuperman, Bertram & Baayen (2008) and Kuperman et al. (2009), complemented by a route dedicated to conceptual combination. The Kuperman et al. model as presented in Kuperman et al. (2009) is perhaps closest in spirit to the Baayen et al. (2011) model discussed in Section <IP_ADDRESS> above, except that it is not based on the Rescorla-Wagner equations but makes use of more traditional information-theoretic approach:

A fundamental assumption of our model is that the time spent by the eye on a constituent or word is proportional to the total amount of lexical information available in long-term memory for identification of that constituent or word at that timepoint […] Events with small probability and hence a large information load require more processing resources and more processing time […]. (Kuperman et al. 2009: 1112)

In particular, Kuperman et al. consider 7 lexical probabilities to be fundamental, the 4 final ones being conditional probabilities (cf. Kuperman et al. 2009: 1112–1116): (1) the probability of the compound, (2) the probability of the first constituent, (3) the probability of the second constituent, (4) the probability of the second constituent given the first, (5) the probability of the first constituent given the second, (6) the probability of the second constituent given the set of all strings that can occur in word-initial position, and (7) the probability of the first constituent given the set of all strings that can occur in word-final position. The weighted information based on these probabilities is then used to estimate the

### 2 Semantic transparency in psycholinguistics

time expected to be spent on the corresponding items. Since all these probabilities are based on frequencies, Marelli & Luzzatti (2012) suggest complementing this model with a semantic route, as they find semantic transparency effects over and above the frequency effects.

As far as I can tell, such a model would find the full support of the proponents of conceptual combination, since there is a dedicated route especially reserved for conceptual combination, and there is no doubt that the frequency effects, whether they are lower level effects or not, are real and independent of conceptual combination.

However, it is not clear to me whether the data with respect to semantic transparency excludes all other models. Marelli & Luzzatti (2012: 662) argue that the Libben model cannot explain the early effects of semantic transparency, since it accounts only for semantic effects at late stages. Libben (1998) is not very explicit on whether his model allows feedback from higher levels to lower levels; if it doesn't, then there is no mechanism to explain the early transparency effects. Marelli & Luzzatti (2012: 662) discuss the Schreuder/Baayen model together with other "strictly parallel (i.e., horse-race) dual-route models" and argue that these kind of models only partially fit the data, since "in the first place, the 2 routes do not seem to be independent, since compound and constituent properties influence each other during compound access, and in the second place, the relative weight of the 2 routes seems to be modulated by semantic transparency (see the third-level interactions) rather than by whole-word frequency (e.g., Schreuder & Baayen, 1995) […]" (Marelli & Luzzatti 2012: 662). As far as I can ascertain, Marelli & Luzzatti (2012: 662) are talking about models like the Morphological Race Model (cf. Frauenfelder & Schreuder 1992), which is a dual route model with strictly parallel processing. The Schreuder/Baayen model, in contrast, features feedback and spreading activation across all levels, so it is hard to see to what extent the data is principally problematic for this kind of model. At this point, and given the available data, I do not think that a principled choice between models is possible. However, I think it is a fruitful idea to follow Marelli & Luzzatti (2012) in assuming that the conceptual combination approach is not incompatible with other approaches, but can be seen as a complement, or, in the case of the Schreuder/Baayen model, perhaps as a way to further spell-out what happens at the level of licensing and computation and how the interplay between concept nodes and semantic representations could work.

2.4 Conclusion

### **2.4 Conclusion**

This chapter discussed the place, operationalization, and effects of semantic transparency in psycholinguistics. Section 2.1 introduced 3 classes of psycholinguistic models of morphological processing: morpheme-based models, amorphous models, and models of conceptual combination. Section 2.2 introduced the different operationalizations of semantic transparency used in the psycholinguistic literature. Finally, Section 2.3 presented the experimental results pertaining to semantic transparency. Section 2.2 has shown that the operationalizations of semantic transparency are never exactly the same. Section 2.3 has shown that experiments have not been replicated, but instead a wide variety of sometimes only slightly, but often considerably different paradigms has been used. These 2 factors are partly responsible for results that all in all fail to give a very clear picture of the role of semantic transparency for language processing– results which also at this point do not permit a clear decision in favor of one of the 3 classes of models discussed in Section 2.1. In addition, and this was the point which ended the previous section, at least the models of conceptual combinations should rather be seen as complements to the other models than as competitors. Using semantic transparency not as an independent variable, but instead trying to understand the factors that determine semantic transparency itself, as done in the work to be discussed in Chapter 5 and the new empirical work discussed in Chapter 6 and 7, might in the long run lead to better operationalizations and more comparable experiments. However, before I turn to this issue, Chapter 3 discusses the place of semantic transparency in theoretical linguistics and sets it apart from related notions, and Chapter 4 looks at the semantics of complex nominals in general.

## **3 Semantic transparency: related phenomena and notions**

Outside of psycholinguistics, semantic transparency has only played a negligible role in the discussion of specific linguistic phenomena, e.g. derivational morphology. Two areas where semantic transparency has received some attention as a possible explanation are the phenomenon of outbound anaphora and the factors determining stress assignment in English noun noun compounds. Both are discussed in the first part of this chapter. In the second part of this chapter, I briefly discuss a number of other notions that describe phenomena that are closely related to semantic transparency or even partially or fully overlapping with semantic transparency. At the end of the chapter, I briefly discuss the notions of phonological and orthographical transparency.

### **3.1 Semantic transparency reflected in other linguistic phenomena**

Semantic transparency is traditionally mentioned in introductions to morphology, but how it is assessed or what sort of linguistic patterns it is connected with is rarely discussed. Whether coincidental or not, the 2 areas where semantic transparency has been discussed in more detail both involve English compounds: the possibility of anaphoric reference to parts of a compound, and the factors driving stress assignment. Both will be discussed in turn.

### **3.1.1 Semantic transparency and outbound anaphora**

Semantic transparency has been discussed as a factor influencing whether parts of words are accessible as targets for anaphoric reference, or whether they constitute so-called anaphoric islands. The term *anaphoric island* was introduced in Postal (1969) in the discussion of the behavior of the constituents of complex words and of entities contained in the meaning of words with respect to anaphora, whether as targets of anaphoric references or as anaphorically refer-

### 3 Related phenomena and notions

ring expressions. Postal (1969) argued that words, whether monomorphemic or derived, are anaphoric islands. Being an anaphoric island means that neither internal constituents of morphologically complex words nor entities contained in the meaning of a word can serve as antecedents to a following anaphoric element nor can they themselves refer anaphorically to other elements. The property of serving as an antecedent for an anaphoric element is discussed under the term outbound anaphora, the property of refering anaphorically under the term of inbound anaphora. Outbound anaphora has been linked to semantic transparency in Coulmas (1988), Ward, Sproat & McKoon (1991) and Schäfer (2013).

A classic set of data that led Postal to introduce the notion of anaphoric islands is (1), reproducing (53) from Postal (1969).

	- b. \*Harry was looking for a **booki**rack but he only found racks for very small **onesi** .

While anaphora from *ones* to *books* is easily possible in (1-a), it is not possible to refer back to *book* via *ones* in (1-b). In Postal's terminology, *books* within the phrase *a rack for books* allows outbound anaphora, but *book* within the compound *bookrack* does not allow outbound anaphora.

Soon after the publication of Postal's paper, it was observed that his claim does not hold for all morphologically complex words. Rather, it was pointed out that there is data that shows different degrees of acceptability. Lakoff & Ross (1972) illustrated this cline in acceptability with the data and judgments reproduced in (2), their (2b) and (3a-b), where *one* in (2-a) and *it* in (2-b) and (2-c) are intended to refer to the guitar, which is contained in the derivation *guitarist*.

	- b. ?\*The **guitar**i ist thought that **it**i was a beautiful instrument.
	- c. ?John became a **guitar**i ist because he thought that **it**i was a beautiful instrument.

This cline cannot be explained by Postal's original proposal, which makes a categoric difference between islands and non-islands. Other authors offering counterexamples to Postal's strong claim include Tic Douloureux (1971), Corum (1973), Browne (1974) and Watt (1975), whose main claims and accounts are discussed in Ward, Sproat & McKoon (1991), as well as Levi (1977). A representative set of counterexamples involving English compounds is presented below, first with anaphoric references to the first element of the compound, cf. (3), secondly with anaphoric reference to the second part of the compound, cf. (4).

3.1 Semantic transparency reflected in other linguistic phenomena

	- b. Patty is a definite **Kal Kan**i cat. Every day she waits for **it**i .
	- c. I was an **IRS**i-agent for about 24 years. … I stopped working for **them**i .

The examples in (3) are from the appendix of Ward, Sproat & McKoon (1991). *Cocaine use* in (3-a) is a synthetic compound which should disallow anaphoric reference to its 2 constituents. However, the following *it* refers back to the denotation of *cocaine* and not to the denotation of *cocaine use*. Similarly, *it* in (3-b) refers back to the denotation of *Kal Kan*, that is, to a specific brand of catfood, where *Kal Kan* is embedded in a standard endocentric compound, and finally, in (3-c), *them* refers back to the IRS, the US Internal Revenue Service. Another notable feature of these 3 examples is that in 2 of the 3 compounds the actual anchors for the anaphors are proper names (*Kal Kan* and *IRS*). This corresponds to the distribution of cases involving pronominal reference to non-heads in the corpus investigated by Ward, Sproat & McKoon (1991): two-thirds of them are proper names (cf. ten Hacken 1994: 76).

The data discussed by Ward, Sproat & McKoon (1991) is restricted to anaphoric reference to the first element of the compound, whereas Levi (1977) presents data showing that reference to the second element is also possible, cf. (4), her (17b), (18b), and (19a).

	- b. Steam **irons**i need more maintenance than **those**i that iron dry.
	- c. Student **power**i is insignificant compared to **that**i of the Dean.

In (4-a), *ones* refers back to the denotation of *taxes* and not to the denotation of *state taxes*. *Those* in (4-b) refers to the denotation of *irons* and not to the denotation of *steam irons*. Finally, *that* in (4-c) refers back to the denotation of *power* and not to the denotation of *student power*.

Coulmas (1988) discusses sets of German data that either allow or do not allow anaphoric reference, cf. (5) and (6), his (3–4) and (5–6).

(5) a. \***Atomwaffen**igegner nuclear:weapons:opponents haben have gegen against **ihre**i their Lagerung storage in in Europa Europe protestiert. protested Intended: Opponents of nuclear weapons protested against their storage in Europe.

### 3 Related phenomena and notions

	- b. Die the **Diamanten**isuche diamond:hunt war was noch yet nicht not lange long unterwegs, underway, da then hatten have sie they **ihn**i it schon. already 'The diamond hunt had not been on for long when they already found it.'

Coulmas also gives some acceptable English examples, for example (7), his (12) and (15b).

	- b. The **river**ibank was damaged when **it**i overflowed after three days of heavy rain.

It is not the rocket launch but the rocket that has problems, likewise, it is not the riverbank but the river that overflows. Coulmas hypothesizes that the ability of outbound anaphora is proportional to the compositionality of words and to the correspondence between formal and semantic compositionality (1988: 321).

Ward, Sproat & McKoon (1991) take semantic transparency to be a key factor in the facilitation of outbound anaphora. They argue that anaphoric reference to parts of a word is only possible if the individual constituents invoke individual discourse entities. Whether or not the individual constituents of a compound invoke individual discourse entities does, in turn, depend on whether they are semantically transparent or not. In case of semantic opacity, they assume that "[morphologically complex words] can no longer be straightforwardly interpreted on the basis of their component parts" Ward, Sproat & McKoon (1991: 454). Once a word is semantically opaque, so they argue, outbound anaphora is inhibited, as their example in (8) shows, where # marks pragmatic deviance.

### 3.1 Semantic transparency reflected in other linguistic phenomena

(8) Fritz is a **cow**iboy. #He says **they**i can be difficult to look after.

While Ward, Sproat & McKoon (1991: 455) assume that the distinction between transparent and opaque words is gradient, they provide no measure for this gradience.

Considering the above-mentioned preponderance of proper names as anchors for anaphora in the corpus used by Ward, Sproat & McKoon (1991) and their own analysis that anaphoric reference requires the constituents to invoke individual discourse entities, one could also argue that the very fact that reference to individual entities is the core function of proper names makes them more likely to actually lead to the activation of the corresponding referents, even when embedded in compounds.

In Schäfer (2013), I discuss German adjective noun constructions and attempt to provide a measure for different degrees of semantic transparency. Adapting paraphrase tests proposed in Fahim (1977), I distinguish between 5 different classes of AN compounds that I hold to be semantically transparent to a decreasing degree. The 5 classes are briefly illustrated in (9), ranked from most to least transparent.

	- b. Endocentric pattern B: [ANN] ≈ [AN]NP: *Großstadt* ≈ *große Stadt* 'big city'
	- c. Endocentric pattern C : [ANN] , [AN]NP: *Grünspecht* , *grüner Specht* 'Green woodpecker'
	- d. Exocentric pattern A: [ANN](x) → [A](x): *Ein Dummkopf ist dumm.* 'A stupid.head is stupid.'
	- e. Exocentric pattern B: [ANN](x) ↛ [A](x): *Ein Rotkelchen ist nicht rot.* 'A red.throat (a robin) is not red.'

While the patterns as presented here are dependent on the semantics of the corresponding phrases, the proposed 5-fold distinction is more or less a mixture of criteria involving institutionalization, internal semantic structure and metonymic shifts.

In Schäfer (2013), I also tried to provide empirical support for my classification by doing a small corpus study. However, I only found attested examples of patterns involving outbound anaphora for the first 2 endocentric classes.

### 3 Related phenomena and notions

### **3.1.2 Semantic transparency and compound stress**

Semantic properties of compounds correlate with the stress patterns found in English compounds. Plag et al. (2008) show that the categories of compound constituents as well as the semantic relations between compound constituents are highly predictive of compound stress. Bell (2012) also finds certain semantic relations to be highly predictive of noun noun stress patterns, in particular, of right prominence. Bell (2012: 49–51) hypothesizes that the factor semantic transparency might be a higher order feature that unites this group of relations (cf. also the generalization in Giegerich 2009: 6 that "end-stress favours transparent over non-transparent semantics"). How does Bell (2012) operationalize semantic transparency? In a first step, Bell (2012) equates semantic transparency with semantic compositionality. In the context of her work, which focuses exclusively on noun noun constructions, she also refers to noun noun constructions with compositional meanings as constructions with phrase-like semantics, referencing an old tradition within the compound noun community starting with Sweet's (1891: 288) observation on nouns with "even stress" that "the logical relation between the elements of the compound resembles that between the elements of a free group, especially when the first element is felt to be equivalent to an adjective". Semantic compositionality is then operationalized as shown in (10), her (3.10):

(10) A NN is semantically compositional when its meaning entails one of a small number of relations between N1 and N2, which can usually also be expressed phrasally, and can be described schematically.

The entailed relations that were considered were the following 4 (cf. Table 3.4, Bell 2012: 65): (1) N2 is (made of) N1, (2) N2 is at/on/in N1, (3) N1 has N2, and (4) NN is name. The entailment criterion can best be illustrated by a concrete example from the N2 is at/on/in N1 group. A(n) NN was classified as belonging to this dataset if the statement in (11), applied to the NN of interest, resulted in a true statement.

(11) X is (an) NN entails X is (an) N2 and X is at/in/on N1 Bell (2012: 69)

Bell (2012: 69) gives *London school* and *Monday morning* as examples that fulfill this condition. While this so far does not look different from other relational classifications, Bell shows that the entailment criterion can be used for further, non-trivial distinctions. For the at/in/on group, it is used for the distinction be-

### 3.1 Semantic transparency reflected in other linguistic phenomena

tween "NNs where N1 simply gives the location of NN, and those where N1 defines a type of NN, irrespective of its location" Bell (2012: 69). Thus, Bell (2012: 69) excludes an item like *door bell* from this group, since, according to her argumentation, a door bell remains a door bell independent of its actual location, whereas *office ceiling* was judged to entail that the ceiling is located in an office. Note that while this is an important difference, discussing this difference under the term of entailment is somewhat unfortunate, as what seems to have been judged here are typical relations between the referents of the compound and the referents of its constituents that need not always hold. On top of that, speakers might vary in their judgments on this typicality. Bauer, Lieber & Plag (2013: 447), discussing the issue of individual variation in relation to the terminological distinction between ascriptive and associative interpretations made in Giegerich (2009), remark: "linguists may disagree as to whether *door* in *doorknob* is associative (the knob is associated with a door) or ascriptive (the knob has the property of being on a door) in nature".

Bell (2012) tested her hypothesis by building models for NN prominence, and all 4 relations emerged as significant predictors of rightward stress in a logistic regression model that also included other predictors usually associated with rightward stress. Interestingly, Bell (2012) also compared her regression model with several rule-based models, and discovered that the best rule-based model was one that only made use of the 4 semantic relations discussed above; its results were only slightly worse than those of the regression model (cf. Bell 2012, Table 3.11).

### **3.1.3 Conclusion: semantic transparency and other phenomena**

As the extent of the discussion above has shown, semantic transparency has rarely been used in concrete attempts to explain observed language patterns. While the relationship between semantic transparency and outbound anaphora sounds very plausible, the value and the extent to which the observations are generalizable is unclear, as none of the studies used empirical measures for semantic transparency. The approach by Bell (2012) used a clear operationalization of semantic transparency; however, it is not clear to what extent this categorization actually captures the same notion of semantic transparency that was used in the psycholinguistic operationalizations described in Chapter 2.

### 3 Related phenomena and notions

### **3.2 Other measures and notions relating to semantic transparency**

### **3.2.1 Quantitative measures**

There are a number of quantitative measures that, to varying degrees, target semantic aspects of complex nominals. I will introduce these in detail in Chapter 5, which contains sections on informativity related measures and on measures based on the word space model (such as Latent Semantic Analysis).

### **3.2.2 Semantic overlap**

Odegard, Lampinen & Toglia (2005), studying effects on memory and recollection, consider the semantic overlap between compound triplets consisting of 2 parents, e.g. *handball* and *shotgun*, and a recombined child, e.g. *handgun*. For this particular example, they see a high semantic similarity between *shotgun* and *handgun*, and considerable semantic overlap between the meanings of *hand* in both compounds. As an example with little similarity and overlap they give the 2 parents *blackmail* and *jailbird* and the recombined child *blackbird*. For their experiments, they manually constructed a set of 40 compound word triplets which was then rated by 24 participants for "the level of similarity shared between the meaning of a parent word and its conjunction (e.g., blackmail to blackbird)" (Odegard, Lampinen & Toglia 2005: 419) on a 5-point Likert-type scale (ranging from 1, "not similar whatsoever", to 5, "highly similar").

Leding et al. (2007) used a large-scale questionnaire study (185 participants) to establish, besides familiarity and memorability, semantic overlap measures for 96 compound triplets.

### **3.2.3 Compositionality and literality**

There are 2 notions that are also often discussed together with the notion of semantic transparency, namely the notion of compositionality and the notion of literality. I will discuss these 2 notions in turn.

### **<IP_ADDRESS> Compositionality**

In lieu of the term semantic transparency, some psycholinguistic and linguistic studies use the term 'semantic compositionality' to refer to similar phenomena. This usage of the term also occurs in some studies within distributional semantics,

### 3.2 Other measures and notions

e.g. Reddy, McCarthy & Manandhar (2011), whose approach to establishing compositionality of compound nouns was already described in Chapter 2, Section 2.2.2. In formal semantics, compositionality is usually discussed in connection with the compositionality principle, cf. (12) for the formulation of this principle in Partee (1984: 281).

(12) The meaning of an expression is a function of the meanings of its parts and of the way they are syntactically combined.

An expression is compositional if its meaning can be computed in accordance with this principle. The problem is that it is very unclear which formalisms do and which do not fit under this principle. This in turn is related to questions pertaining to the exact meaning of 'meaning' in (12). Thus, if we accept underspecified semantic representations, and if we distinguish between a proper semantic and a proper pragmatic level of interpretation, then almost all meanings are compositional. For example, taking *milkman* again, one can argue that its semantic meaning is composed by combining the 2 predicates MILK(x) and MAN(x) with the help of the underspecified template in (13), where R represents an underspecified relation (note that it is not relevant to the point illustrated here when and how this relation is eventually existentially bound).

(13) *λ*B *λ*A *λ*y *λ*x [A(x) & R(x,y) & B(y)]

This yields (14), which, up to this point, is technically semantically fully compositional.

(14) *λ*y *λ*x [MILK(x) & R(x,y) & MAN(y)]

In order to arrive at the final, correct interpretation of *milkman*, the relational parameter needs to be specified. For the appropriate specification, access to pragmatic information is needed, but this could be argued to lie outside of the realm of semantics proper. On this view, semantic transparency could easily be linked to compositionality. One approach would be to argue that semantic transparency correlates with the amount of additional pragmatic input that is involved in arriving at the pragmatic meaning of a complex expression whose semantic meaning has been calculated via the principle of compositionality.

In contrast to such a view, some authors have argued for a clear distinction between transparency and compositionality. Sandra (1990: 550), for example, argues that transparency "refers to the relationship between compound and constituent meanings, the latter [compositionality] refers to the possibility of deter-

### 3 Related phenomena and notions

mining the whole-word meaning from the constituent meanings." This view is echoed in the final paragraph in Zwitserlood (1994):

[S]emantic transparency is not the same as compositionality. Although the semantic relation between transparent compounds and their constituents might be easy to establish, the meaning of the compound as a whole is often more than the meaning of its component words. (Zwitserlood 1994: 366)

### **<IP_ADDRESS> Literality**

Within computational linguistics, literality is often linked to compositionality. In Chapter 2, Section 2.2.2, I included the study of Reddy, McCarthy & Manandhar (2011), who argued for viewing compositionality as literality. As pointed out there, their way of operationalizing literality corresponds to the methods others have used to establish semantic transparency. Others working in computational linguistics who also explicitly link literality and compositionality are for example Lin (1999), Katz & Giesbrecht (2006), and Biemann & Giesbrecht (2011) (Biemann & Giesbrecht 2011 are very similar to Reddy, McCarthy & Manandhar 2011 in that they annotated phrases for compositionality by asking 'How literal is this phrase'). Lin (1999) presents a method to detect non-compositional phrases which is based on the assumption "that non-compositional phrases have a significantly different mutual information value than the phrases that are similar to their literal meanings" (Lin 1999: 321). However, the exact understanding of 'literality' is often not made very clear. Thus, Lin (1999) gives *red tape* vs. the "compositional phrase" *economic impact* as a starting example. Indeed, when one considers the collocation *red tape* with its meaning 'obstructive official routine or procedure; time-consuming bureaucracy', one would intuitively judge it to be less literal than *economic impact*. Note, though, that the impact in economic impact can also be argued to be not a literal impact but only a metaphorical impact, as no physical contact takes place. Lin (1999) uses the operationalization of non-compositionality given in (15), cf. his (3).

(15) A collocation *α* is non-compositional if there does not exist another collocation *β* such that (a) *β* is obtained by substituting the head or the modifier in *α* with a similar word and (b) there is an overlap between the 95% confidence interval of the mutual information values of *α* and *β*.

Thus, the actual criterion is exclusively based on frequencies, and no independent definition of literal or non-compositional meaning is given. Considering

3.2 Other measures and notions

the contrast between *red tape* and *economic impact* in the light of the condition in (15), one might hypothesize that the decisive difference between the 2 combinations lies in the fact that *impact*, but not *tape*, already occurs often (if not mostly) in a non-concrete usage when it occurs on its own.

This is problematic, because standard dictionary definitions of *literal* as applied to meanings are clearly based not on frequencies, but on quite different concepts, cf. (16), a definition taken from the OED.

(16) literal

II.c

Of, relating to, or designating the primary, original, or etymological sense of a word, or the exact sense expressed by the actual wording of a phrase or passage, as distinguished from any extended sense, metaphorical meaning, or underlying significance.

OED

Importantly, a purely distribution-based approach like the one by Lin (1999) and the traditional understanding of literal meaning as illustrated in the quote from the OED might sometimes yield the same result, but this need not be the case. Take an example like *sacred cow* from the dataset of Reddy, McCarthy & Manandhar (2011). In the BNC, only one of 15 uses clearly refers to a real cow. In contrast, if looking at the word *cow* on its own, we find many uses referring to the real animal. Here, we would expect Lin's distributional approach to coincide with the notion of literality as described in the OED quote. However, it would be interesting to compare the intuitive literality of examples with rare animals like lion (rare at least from a broadly western point of view), e.g. in *stone lion*, with actual corpus occurrence of *lion* on its own, many of which do seem to refer to pictures, statues, or toy versions of lions. I will return to this issue when discussing the annotation of constituent meanings in the 2 empirical studies presented in Chapters 6 and 7.

Focusing on the state of the traditional idea of literality as illustrated by the OED quote, I cannot possibly do justice to all the literature written on this topic. However, I will illustrate the debates surrounding this notion by considering 2 viewpoints on the notion of literal meaning from psychology and formal semantics respectively.

In psychology, Gibbs (1989: 249), while agreeing that "[p]eople can sometimes judge some statements as literal and other as metaphorical", points out that this does not mean that literal meanings necessarily play a role in understanding nonliteral meaning, and, perhaps more importantly, that there is no evidence to show that different cognitive processes are involved in processing these meanings.

### 3 Related phenomena and notions

For formal semantics, I will use Jaszczolt (2016) to illustrate a possible point of view. In general, Jaszczolt (2016) discusses the term *literal meaning* at several places, but, and that is most important for the discussion here, in her own model, called Default Semantics, this term does not occur anymore. In doing so, she does not abandon the idea of word meanings:

…: if we want a semantic theory that allows for the freedom of contextdependence and at the same time recognizes the fact that there *are* word meanings, that, to put it crudely, the word 'dog' is much more likely to refer to dogs than cats or food processors, we have to start with the assumption that words stand for concepts but that these concepts are situation-specific *not* because they shift according to some clear rules or that they are constrained by the possibilities of the grammar; neither are they situationspecific because they are built in the process of language use. Rather, they are dynamic simply because they are susceptible to new uses in virtue of past uses; the generalization over past uses does not produce an abstract concept but instead paves the way towards new uses. (Jaszczolt 2016: 133–134)

However, these word meanings are not literal meanings as traditionally understood. Rather, she argues "to retain the concept of word meanings as sufficiently to subsume such influences of context-driven inferences as well as automatic interpretations of different provenance" (Jaszczolt 2016: 136). Jaszczolt recognizes that some sentence meanings, and for that matter word meanings, are more easily arrived at when the sentences occur out of context. However, this is not because there is a literal meaning, but rather because she adapts a view she labels cognitive minimalism:

(17) Cognitive minimalism

Sentences issued out of context come with different degrees of plausibility and these degrees correlate with different intuitions concerning contextfree evaluability with respect to truth and falsity. The plausibility and the intuitions all depend on the accessibility of a default, 'made-up' context that can be used as a tool for such a 'neutral', apparently context-free, evaluation. (Jaszczolt 2016: 58)

Importantly, she points out that the standard meaning one assigns to a sentence need not be the literal one. Consider (18), her (48) (Jaszczolt 2016: 59):

(18) A star has died.

### 3.2 Other measures and notions

According to Jaszczolt, the default situation for (18) could be one that refers to the death of a movie star rather than to the death of a star in the astronomical sense (note that this point still seems to hold even if the predicate *die* is exchanged with something more neutral, e.g. *We saw a star*).

### **3.2.4 Semantic transparency as one dimension of idiomaticity**

Nunberg, Sag & Wasow (1994), working on idioms, point out that existing attempts at defining idioms often fail to keep key semantic concepts apart. In particular, they argue that 3 semantic dimensions should be distinguished: an idiom's relative conventionality, an idiom's opacity/transparency, and an idiom's compositionality. The relative conventionality is "determined by the discrepancy between the idiomatic phrasal meaning and the meaning we would predict for the collocation if we were to consult only the rules that determine the meanings of the constituents in isolation, and the relevant operations of semantic composition" (Nunberg, Sag & Wasow 1994: 498). The opacity/transparency dimension stands for "the ease with which the motivation for the use (or some plausible motivation – it needn't be etymologically correct) can be recovered" (Nunberg, Sag & Wasow 1994: 498). And finally, compositionality stands for "the degree to which the phrasal meaning, once known, can be analyzed in terms of the contributions of the idiom parts" (Nunberg, Sag & Wasow 1994: 498). They introduce the term *idiomatically combining expressions* to refer to idioms "whose parts carry identifiable parts of their idiomatic meanings" (Nunberg, Sag & Wasow 1994: 496), in contrast to *idiomatic phrases*, where this is not the case. In this context, their discussion of the phrase *to pull strings* is particularly helpful. Clearly, the idiomatic meaning "exert a hidden influence" cannot be predicted on the basis of the meanings of its constituents and the relevant semantic construction rules for verb object combinations, there is therefore a large amount of conventionality involved. On the other hand, as Nunberg, Sag & Wasow (1994: 496) point out, on hearing a sentence like *John was able to pull strings to get the job, since he had a lot of contacts in the industry*, the hearer might be able to deduce the correct meaning of the phrase. Thus, the expression is not completely opaque, and more importantly, the hearer can now map parts of the idiom to parts of the meaning. Nunberg, Sag & Wasow, using the interpretation *exploit personal connections*, argue that *pull* can be mapped to *exploit*, and *strings* can be mapped to the exploited connections.

That conventionality should be kept apart from compositionality is illustrated by Nunberg, Sag & Wasow (1994) with the help of the contrast between American *thumb tack* and British *drawing pin*, which both denote the same types of objects:

### 3 Related phenomena and notions

Both are compositional and do not involve any figuration. Their double existence is solely due to different ways of conventionalization (cf. Nunberg, Sag & Wasow 1994: 495).

Titone & Connine (1999) provide a balanced overview of previous studies of idiomaticity which either argue for a non-compositional or a compositional approach. They explore the distinction between idiomatically combining expressions and idiomatic phrases from Nunberg, Sag & Wasow (1994) in an eye tracking study working with preceding and following contexts favoring either the literal or the non-literal interpretation. They interpret their results as supporting a hybrid model of idiom processing, according to which the idiomatic meanings are directly retrieved but a literal analysis of the respective phrase is also carried out.

Note that the research on idioms described above presupposes that a) there is a literal meaning and b) we know what that literal meaning is. As the discussion in the section on literality has shown, though, literal meaning by itself is not in any way well-understood. I suspect that one reason why the departure from literal meaning is taken as a given in the discussion of idioms lies in the fact that the expressions usually allow 2 interpretations, that is, we can use *kick the bucket* to refer to the action of striking the corresponding vessel, as well as using it to refer to the act of passing away. This is reminiscent of the contrast between *red tape* and *economic impact* discussed above: *Red tape* allows 2 interpretations, and the one that just refers to a narrow strip with the color red is used as a foil for the second interpretation. In contrast, *economic impact* only comes with one interpretation, which, since it is the only interpretation, is intuitively judged to be literal.

### **3.2.5 Semantic transparency and productivity**

Just as one can hypothesize that there is a correlation between increased lexicalization and less semantic transparency, it seems intuitively plausible that productivity and semantic transparency might likewise be correlated, albeit with the effects going in the same direction: the more productive, the more transparent and vice versa. Baayen (1993: 199) points out that "semantic transparency, like phonological transparency, is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for productivity." He gives some examples from Dutch: the Dutch plural suffix *-eren* is fully semantically transparent, yet unproductive. Another example of phonologically and semantically fully transparent constructions are female personal nouns in *-ster*, which are less productive than constructions with an unmarked *-er* or a de-adjectival *-heid*. "Differences in the usefulness of items in *-ster*, *-er*

### 3.3 Transparency in other domains

and *-heid* to the language community, differences in markedness, the effects of paradigmatic rivalry, but also social convention as such – Dutch *-ster* is much less productive than its German counterpart *-in* – should not be neglected" (Baayen 1993: 199–200).

### **3.3 Transparency in other domains**

In all of the examples for semantic transparency discussed so far, the 2 constituents making up the compound are still recognizable. If the individual constituents can no longer be recognized, considerations of semantic transparency become moot. Consider *lord*: Etymologically, it is a compound, according to the OED, derived from Old English *hláford*, in turn derived from the precursors of today's *loaf* and *ward* respectively. However, as pointed out by Dressler (2006: 40), it is not recognizable as a compound anymore, being the end product of fossilization. As witnessed by *lord*, fossilization can affect a construction's meaning as well as a word's phonology and orthography, with the latter usually trailing the latter. Both areas by themselves can also be described in terms of transparency.

### **3.3.1 Phonological transparency**

In general, phonological transparency involves the relationship between the phonetic forms of a construction in isolation vs. the phonetic form of that construction when it is part of a larger, complex construction (this is in the spirit of Marslen-Wilson et al. 1994: 5, although they only discuss cases of affixation). Thus, the base *friend* in *friendly* is phonologically transparent, because the string [frend] occurs unchanged in [frendlI]. In contrast, the base *conclude* in *conclusive* is not phonologically transparent, because the [d] in [k@nklu:d] is changed to [s] in [k@nklu:sIv]. In the case of compounds, changes with respect to the phonetic shape of the constituents in isolation can be as extensive as to make it doubtful whether, orthography aside, the compound status is still perceivable, consider e.g. *blackguard*, *boatswain*, and *shepherd*, pronounced /"blæg@rd/) and /"b@Usn/, and /"Sep@d/ respectively. Phonological reduction is also a matter of degree. Thus, while *man* in *postman* [poUstm@n] contrasts with the free form man [mæn] and is therefore not phonologically transparent, the pronunciation of the free form can be retrieved in situations calling for contrastive stress, e.g. *a post*[mæn] *not a postwoman*.

Phonologically opaque compounds bear some similarity to (and might in practice be indistinguishable from) pseudocompounds like *boycott*, an example used in Zwitserlood (1994).

### 3 Related phenomena and notions

### **3.3.2 Orthographic transparency**

Orthographic transparency is, at least to a certain degree, unrelated to semantic and/or phonological transparency. Thus, 2 of the examples for phonologically opaque compounds of the previous section, *blackguard* and *boatswain*, are orthographically fully transparent. These 2 examples are also semantically opaque. In contrast, *shepherd* is not only phonologically opaque, but also orthographically opaque. However, the first element <shep> is not semantically opaque.

If, as in the case of *lord*, a construction is opaque with regard to its meaning, phonology and orthography, then it is typically impossible to synchronically recognize it as a compound.

### **3.4 Conclusion**

The aim of this chapter was threefold. First, I gave an overview of 2 linguistic phenomena, anaphora resolution and stress placement, where semantic transparency is hypothesized to play a role. Second, I gave a short overview of other terms that are related to semantic transparency. Finally, I briefly discussed transparency in phonology and orthography.

As the first section has shown, while it seems plausible that semantic transparency plays a role with regard to whether internal constituents of complex words are accessible or not, the research so far has not used a clear criterion to identify transparency in the first place, or, in the case of my own research, the criterion was clear, but only insufficient empirical evidence could be found. With regard to the role of semantic transparency in stress assignment, Bell (2012) used very clear criteria, but these were very different in nature from the methods used in psycholinguistics to establish semantic transparency.

The second section started by pointing to work on semantic overlap, a notion that very likely at least partially taps into the same features that semantic transparency is after. However, given the very specific targets of that line of research (memory and recollection effects), and the overall very small number of compounds thus classified, it is hard to compare it to measures directly targeting semantic transparency. The section on compositionality and literality showed 2 points: (1) For many, transparency, compositionality and literality are one and the same thing. For those that distinguish between transparency and compositionality, compositionality refers to meaning predictability whereas transparency is already fulfilled when the constituent meanings can be recognized in the meaning of the complex expression. (2) Literality is a difficult concept.

### 3.4 Conclusion

The section on idiomaticity and semantic transparency showed that a distinction should be made between transparency, conventionality, and compositionality. While conventionality here is closely related to the difficult notion of literality, the combination of the transparency and the compositionality dimension is very close to the conception of semantic transparency as introduced in Chapter 1, namely a gradual notion with meaning predictability at one end and recoverability of constituent meanings at the other end. Finally, productivity can be argued to result in transparency. In contrast, semantic transparency does not automatically lead to or entail productivity.

The third section discussed the notion of phonological and orthographical transparency. These notions will not play a role in this work, but it is important to realize that a sufficient degree of transparency in a given construction in either of these 2 domains is a prerequisite for the question of semantic transparency to arise.

## **4 Compounds and the semantic analysis of complex nominals**

Complex nominals, that is modifier-head combinations with a noun as their head, are traditionally distinguished into compounds and phrasal constructions. Compounds, because they are morphological units, are treated by morphologists, phrasal constructions are not.1 At the same time, in works on noun noun compounds, one often finds reference to "phrase-like" noun noun combinations (cf. Giegerich 2009: 8), or "phrase-like semantics" of noun noun combinations (cf. Bell 2012: 48). While these formulations imply that there is a specific semantic analysis for phrasal modifier head constructions, a considerable body of work in formal semantics on the semantics of phrasal modifier head constructions, especially adjective noun constructions, has shown that this is not the case. In contrast, with notable exceptions like Fanselow (1981) and Meyer (1993), formal semantic treatments of compounds are rare.

Due to these differences in focus, the resulting analyses of complex nominals from the formal semantics and the morphological traditions also show major differences. In particular, early analyses in formal semantics are based on settheoretic properties, while morphological analyses focus on relations. Newer approaches, in contrast, mix ideas from these 2 approaches. In this chapter, I will start by sketching the main ideas behind the set-theoretic and the relation-based approaches, and then introduce some mixed approaches.

While giving an overview of possible approaches to compound semantics, this chapter will also show why compound classifications based on the Levi system of classification are still so useful.

1Unless the phrasal constructions are themselves embedded in words, cf. Trips & Kornfilt (2017) for a recent edited volume on phrasal compounding.

### 4 The semantic analysis of compounds

### **4.1 Set-theoretic approaches: the semantics of adjective noun combinations**

As mentioned in the introduction, formal semantics has focused on the analysis of phrasal constructions, and, when it comes to nominals, especially on settheoretic analyses of adjective noun combinations. The set-theoretic approaches usually start from classifications for adjectives, which are differentiated into intersective and non-intersective adjectives, the latter set again being differentiated into subsective and non-subsective adjectives, cf. Partee (1995). Here, I follow this tradition by illustrating intersective, subsective, and non-subsective modification with the help of adjective noun constructions. In addition, I give pointers to similar behavior within the class of noun noun constructions.

### **4.1.1 Intersective modification**

Intersective modification refers to combinations of modifier and modified that can semantically be analyzed as the intersection of the 2 sets denoted by modifier and modified respectively. The class of intersective adjectives is defined by its participation in the respective intersective modification patterns, illustrated below for the adjective *radioactive* in (1).

(1) **Radioactive bumper cars** lie silent in the abandoned city of Priypat near the Chernobyl reactor. COCA

Assuming that *bumper car* denotes a set of individuals, that is, the set of bumper cars, and that *radioactive* likewise denotes a set of individuals, namely the set of radioactive things, the denotation of the combination of the 2 strings can be analyzed as the intersection of the 2 sets, cf. (2) (this representation format is directly adapted from Kamp & Partee 1995, cf. also Partee 1995).

(2) *radioactive bumper car* [[radioactive]] = {*x* |x is radioactive} [[bumper car]] = {*x* |x is a bumper car} [[radioactive bumper car]] = [[radioactive]] ∩ [[bumper car]] = {*x* |x is radioactive and x is a bumper car}

Intersective adjectives therefore allow the inference patterns given in (3) and (4).

(3) This is a bumper car. This is radioactive.

→ This is a radioactive bumper car.

4.1 Set-theoretic approaches

	- → This is radioactive.
	- → This is a bumper car.

Kamp (1975: 124) refers to these adjectives as *predicative*, and he mentions that technical and scientific adjectives like *endocrine, differentiable* and *superconductive* constitute typical examples. Keenan & Faltz (1985: 124) name *male, female* and *Albanian* as examples; Kamp & Partee (1995) and Partee (1995) use *carnivorous* as their example.

While the discussion revolves around adjectives, it is easy to come up with examples of noun noun combinations that behave similarly. In particular, material nouns like *plastic*, *nylon*, or *silk* give rise to similar inference patterns, cf. *silk shirt* in (5).

(5) He wore his best suit, a clean **silk shirt** and shaved extra close. BNC/AC3 2081

Clearly, the same inference pattern arises here:

(6) This is a silk shirt.

→ This is silk. → This is a shirt.

Note that the material nouns are typically mass nouns, and that, presumably due to this inference pattern, a standard dictionary practice is to simply assign them double class membership as nouns and adjectives (e.g., the noun sense of *silk* is the fiber, and the adjective sense is 'composed of or similar to silk', cf. the entry in the American Heritage College Dictionary 1993).

Another class of noun noun combinations that allows this inference are socalled copulative compounds, e.g. *singer-songwriter*, see also the remarks in Section <IP_ADDRESS>.

### **4.1.2 Subsective modification**

Subsective modification differs from intersective modification in that the combination of modifier and modified results in a subset of only the set denoted by the modified. Importantly, the denotation of the modifier by itself does not yield a single independent set denotation, because it is always relative to some scale or measure provided either by the linguistic or the extra-linguistic context. The

### 4 The semantic analysis of compounds

class of subsective adjectives is defined by its participation in subsective modification patterns. Classic examples for this class are dimensional adjectives like *big* or *small*, cf. (7) for 2 combinations with *big*.

	- b. There I was, face to face with a **big snake**, getting over my fears. COCA

The denotation of *big mouse* is not the intersection of the set of big things and the set of mice, and without further qualification, the inference patterns discussed for the intersective adjectives in the previous section are not available. In particular, a snake that is as big as a big mouse is not a big snake, and big mice are mice, but mice as a class are typically counted among the small things. The most obvious feature of these adjectives is thus that they display a certain context sensitivity or vagueness, cf. Kamp (1975), Partee (1995), Heim & Kratzer (1998) and Chierchia & McConnell-Ginet (2000). Note that this context sensitivity is not only influenced by the choice of the head noun. This is very convincingly demonstrated by Partee (1995) with (8), her (17).

	- b. The D.U. fraternity brothers built a really **tall snowman** last weekend.

Although both sentences talk about tall snowmen, the size standards used to evaluate the adjective differ: One expects the snowman built by the 2-year old to be far smaller than the one built by the fraternity. In a similar way, information from previous utterances can influence which size standard is used in evaluation.

Note that once the context sensitivity is taken into account and the correct size standard has been chosen and is then fixed, subsective adjectives behave technically like intersective adjectives, cf. Partee (1995: 330–336).

There are various technical solutions on how vagueness can be accounted for. One popular implementation is Kennedy (2007), who analyzes gradable adjectives as functions from individuals to degrees. The degrees, in turn, constitute a scale, that is, a total ordering of the degree with respect to some dimension. The semantics of the positive form morpheme *pos* handles the vagueness, cf. (9), his (27).

(9) [[ [Deg*pos*] ]] = *λдλx*.*д*(*x*) ≥ **s**(*д*)

Here, "[…] **s** is a context-sensitive function that chooses a standard of comparison in such a way as to ensure that the objects that the positive form is true of 'stand

### 4.1 Set-theoretic approaches

out' in the context of utterance, relative to the kind of measurement that the adjective encodes" (Kennedy 2007: 17).

Kennedy (2007: 6) points out that vagueness needs to be distinguished from indeterminacy, "the possibility of associating a single lexical item with several distinct but related measure functions". Thus, he argues that his example (4a), *Chicago is larger than Rome*, is ambiguous with regard to the exact measure function used; one could at least refer to either population or sprawl. Kennedy (2007: 6) views adjectives like *skillful* and *clever* as extreme examples for this kind of indeterminacy, because they are "highly underspecified for the precise feature being measured". However, whether vague or indeterminate, both types of adjectives lead to the same pattern of subsective modification (note that the examples for indeterminacy given here are also vague and require a standard of comparison once a measure function is selected).

Parallels to the behavior of subsective adjectives in the domain of noun noun constructions are not so obvious. However, *star* in the 2 examples in (10) parallels the behavior of indeterminate adjectives.

	- b. As he was the NME 's **star writer** I guess Malcolm realised that once the band really started to get going, Nick would be able to help us out — whether he knew it or not. BNC/A6E 908

That is, after selecting a domain, here either the domain of dancing or writing, the modifier *star* is evaluated relative to the scale for this domain. And arguably, *star* also gives rise to the typical patterns for vague modification, since standards of starhood differ, consider the star writer of a high-school yearbook as opposed to the NME star writer in (10-b).

### **4.1.3 Non-subsective modification**

Non-subsective modification refers to cases where the denotations of the modifier and the modified do not intersect. Classic examples of adjectives that are analyzed as non-subsective are e.g. *former* in (11) and *alleged* in (12).

### 4 The semantic analysis of compounds

What happens in the case of *former* is that any overlap with the current denotation of the head noun is excluded, that is, the set of people in the denotation of *former employee* does not overlap with the set of people in the current denotation of *employee*, cf. (13).

(13) *former employee* [[former employee]] , [[former]] ∩ [[employee]]

The case of *alleged* is a bit more complicated, because an overlap is not excluded. Both adjectives are also different from the adjectives discussed so far in that they require a more complicated semantic analysis in any case and cannot fruitfully be understood as one place predicates of alleged or former things respectively. This property is reflected in their inability to occur in predicative position.

The *former*-type adjectives are also referred to as privative adjectives, cf. Partee (1995: 325). There, she gives *counterfeit* as an additional example.

Within the group of constructions traditionally labeled as compounds, nonsubsective usages can also be found. Thus, we have formations like *nonentity* in (14):

(14) 'Imagine them not even getting his name right, Weasley, it's almost as though he's a complete **nonentity**, isn't it?' he crowed.

J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Chapter 13, Mad-eye Moody

Another example is *shadow cabinet* in (15), for additional examples from German cf. (43).

(15) Mr Prescott is unquestionably closer to a large swathe of the rank and file than most other members of Labour's **Shadow Cabinet**. BNC/A1J 588

*Shadow* in *shadow cabinet* seems slightly similar to *former*, pointing to a virtual cabinet that might become the actual cabinet at a later point on the time axis.

### **4.1.4 Problems for a set-theoretic classification of adjectives**

While the main differences between the 3 different types of modification are clear, it is not so clear whether adjectives can be classified with the help of these classes, or whether or not all adjectives are more or less subsective. For intersective adjectives, it has been the class of color adjectives which led to principled discussion of the question of intersectivity.

4.1 Set-theoretic approaches

Another set of observations concerning the combinatorics of adjectives and nouns that is not accounted for by the set-theoretic approach is discussed in the section on pragmatic anomaly.

The non-intersectivity of specific adjectives is also sometimes questioned. Partee (1995: 325) discusses the adjective *fake* as a problematic candidate for the class of privative adjectives, pointing to questions like *Is that gun real or fake?* as rather suggesting otherwise.

### **<IP_ADDRESS> Color adjectives**

Color adjectives are typically taken to be good examples for the class of intersective adjectives, and combinations of color-adjective noun are often used to illustrate the expected inference pattern (cf. textbook discussions, e.g. Heim & Kratzer 1998: 62–70 on *gray cats* and Chierchia & McConnell-Ginet 2000: 459– 461 on *pink tadpoles*, but also Fodor & Pylyshyn 1988: 432 ). Many examples confirm this expectation, cf. *green chair* in (16), which gives rise to the 2 inferences in (16-a) and (16-b) and whose main clause, likewise, should be deducable from (16-a) and (16-b) treated as its 2 premises.

	- a. He sinks into something green.
	- b. He sinks into a chair.

However, even here the situation is not always so straightforward. Consider the 2 occurrences of *blue wall* in (17) and (18).

2 Fodor & Pylyshyn (1988: 43) do not use the term 'intersective', but their example is clear enough: "Consider predicates like '…is a brown cow'. This expression bears a straightforward semantical relation to the predicates '…is a cow' and '…is brown'; viz. that the first predicate is true of a thing if and only if both of the other are."

### 4 The semantic analysis of compounds

In (17), meaning composition for *blue wall* follows the intersective pattern, i.e., the denotation of *blue wall* is the intersection of the set of walls with the set of blue things, and its meaning can likewise be seen as the addition of the 2 meanings of *blue* and *wall*. In contrast, *blue wall* in (18) clearly is used with another meaning, referring to the *blue wall of silence*, a euphemism for the police practice of stonewalling investigations into police misbehavior. While this usage of *blue* involves a clear meaning shift, the existence of true intersectivity has also been questioned for usages not involving obvious meaning shifts.

Some remarks by Quine (1960) throw first doubts on an intersective analysis for color adjectives. First, he points out that *red wine* can be treated as a compound mass term where "[r]ed wine is that part of the world's wine which is also part of the world's red stuff" (Quine 1960: 104). In contrast, "[r]ed houses and red apples overlap the red substance of the world in only the most superficial sort of way, being red only outside" (Quine 1960: 104). Secondly, Quine (1960: 132–133) mentions a suggestion by Jakobson to him, according to which, based on examples like *black bread*, *white wine* and *white man*, *white* and *black* should be construed as comparative adjectives (that is, along the lines of *white X* being interpreted as X is more white than the average X) due to the fact that "no wine is white stuff and no men are white things" (Quine 1960: 133). In a tradition dating back to Partee (1984), Quine (1960) is attributed with the contrasting pair *red apple* vs. *pink grapefruit*, with a red apple being red only outside (see above), and the pink grapefruit only being pink inside.

Lahav (1989) even uses the color adjective *red* to make a forceful attempt against the whole idea of compositionality. His exercise on what it means to be a red noun is worth citing in its entirety:

Consider the adjective 'red'. What it is for a bird to count as red is not the same as what it is for other kinds of objects to count as red. For a bird to be red (in the normal case), it should have most of the surface of its body red, though not its beak, legs, eyes, and of course its inner organs. Furthermore, the red color should be the bird's natural color, since we normally regard a bird as being 'really' red even if it is painted white all over. A kitchen table, on the other hand, is red even if it is only painted red, and even if its 'natural' color underneath the paint is, say, white. Moreover, for a table to be red only its upper surface needs to be red, but not necessarily its legs and its bottom surface. Similarly, a red apple, as Quine pointed out, needs to be red only on the outside, but a red hat needs to be red only in its external upper surface, a red crystal is red both inside and outside, and a red watermelon is red only inside. For a book to be red is for its cover but

### 4.1 Set-theoretic approaches

not necessarily for its inner pages to be mostly red, while for a newspaper to be red is for all of its pages to be red. For a house to be red is for its outside walls, but not necessarily its roof (and windows and door) to be mostly red, while a red car must be red in its external surface including its roof (but not its windows, wheels, bumper, etc.). A red star only needs to appear red from the earth, a red glaze needs to be red only after it is fired, and a red mist or a red powder are red not simply inside or outside. A red pen need not even have any red part (the ink may turn red only when in contact with the paper). In short, what counts for one type of thing to be red is not what counts for another. Of course, there is a feature that is common to all the things which count (non-metaphorically) as red, namely, that some part of them, or some item related to them, must appear wholly and literally redish. But that is only a very general necessary condition, and is far from being sufficient for a given object to count as red. (Lahav 1989: 264)

The same point is taken up again in Lahav (1993), cf. especially Lahav (1993: 76). Blutner (1998), in discussing these data, also points to the phenomenon of lexical blocking. Lexical blocking in the case of color adjectives concerns for example the contrast between *pale green/blue/yellow* vs. *pale red*. Due to the availability of the word *pink*, the combination *pale red* is anomalous for some speakers, for others its domain is restricted to only the non-pink sub-part of the domain of pale red (Blutner 1998: 123 attributes this observation to Householder 1971).

Travis (2000) also discusses some examples containing color adjectives in connection with the notion of occasion-sensitivity. He writes:

The English sentence 'It's blue' represents (that is, is a means of representing) some contextually definite object as blue. That form, as produced in different surroundings, in different speakings of those words (of a given object at a given time) might engage with the world in any of indefinitely many ways. One might, in so producing it, say any of many different things to be so. For there are indefinitely many and various *possible* understandings of an object's being blue. (Travis 2000: 200, his emphasis)

As a consequence, the only rule for the predicate *blue* is "it is correctly used on an occasion only to describe what then *counts* as blue" (Travis 2000: 213, his emphasis). Again, his examples include the search for *blue ink* at a stationer, where on most occasions, *ink* will count as *blue ink* if it produces blue writing, and on these occasions, *ink* that looks blue but writes black will not count as *blue ink* (though on other occasions it perfectly well might count as blue ink).

### 4 The semantic analysis of compounds

### **<IP_ADDRESS> Pragmatic anomaly of adjectives**

Blutner (1998: 123) uses the data in (19), his (5), to illustrate what he calls the pragmatic anomaly of adjectives:

	- b. The tractor is defective.
	- c. The tractor is loud.
	- d. The tractor is gassed up.
	- e. ?The tractor is pumped up.
	- f. ?The tractor is sweet.
	- g. \*The tractor is pregnant.
	- h. \*The tractor is bald-headed.

Blutner argues that pregnant and bald-headed tractors are simple cases of category violations, whereas the combinations in (19-e) and (19-f) are cases of pragmatic anomaly. Or, as Blutner writes, "[t]hat *sweet* is not an appropriate attribute of *tractors* can't be explained on grounds of an ontological category violation. A tractor *can* be sweet, by the way. Taste one: it might surprise you" (Blutner 1998: 123, his emphasis). Lahav (1989: 265–266) comes to the same conclusion, when he discusses the fact "that many adjectives do not apply to many objects at all" (Lahav 1989: 265), pointing to cases like *a straight house*, *a soft car*, or *a quiet stone*, or even *gradual rats* and *intense trees*. He continues:

Notice, that the point is not that houses are never straight or that trees are never intense in the same way that trees never breath or talk. Rather, we have no agreed upon conception of what it would be for a house to count – or to fail to count – as straight, […] (Lahav 1989: 265)

### **4.2 Relation-based approaches: the semantics of compounds**

There is a considerable number of compound classifications that are in one way or another relation based. My aim in this section is not so much to compare all these approaches, instead, I want to focus on 2 important works from the same period, namely Levi (1978) and Fanselow (1981). I will start with a more detailed description of Levi's work, because her classification system or adaptions thereof are still used widely today. This holds both for psycholinguistic approaches (cf.

4.3 Levi (1978)

especially the discussion of the work relating to conceptual combination in Chapters 2 and 5), as well as for work in computational linguistics (cf. Ó Séaghdha 2008, who starts from Levi's proposal in order to arrive at a new annotation scheme). In addition, Levi already includes more than traditional compounds in her analysis, and, as pointed out in chapter 1, Levi's approach and usage of the term *complex nominal* is the starting point for my own, extended usage of the term.

For earlier work on semantic relations, a good starting point is the overview in Levi (1978: 77) which lists the traditional names of her relational predicates and points to relevant earlier literature. In particular, she refers to Koziol (1937), Jespersen (1942), Hatcher (1960), Brekle (1970), and Adams (1973) for English, and to Li (1971) for Chinese and Motsch (1981) for German.

### **4.3 Levi (1978)**

### **4.3.1 Levi's complex nominals**

Levi (1978: 1–2) introduces the term 'complex nominals' in order to cover 3 sets of expressions "which have generally been called 'nominal compounds', 'nominalizations', and 'noun phrases with nonpredicating adjectives' " Levi (1978: 1). Examples for each group, chosen from her original examples (1.1)–(1.3), are given in (20).

Why does she treat these 3 distinct groups as one? The main reason, stated in Levi (1978: 4–5), is the observation that the third group, the noun phrases with nonpredicating adjectives, are very similar to noun noun constructions as far as their syntax and semantics are concerned, which leads Levi to the hypothesis that these adjectives are derived from underlying nouns. Following this hypothesis, she identifies complex nominals as a group encompassing the 3 subgroups mentioned above.

While Levi's understanding of complex nominals is thus wider than the traditional class of compounds, it nevertheless does not equate to a consideration of all sorts of traditional phrasal constructions. This can be seen very clearly when looking at the kind of data she considers as evidence for the introduction of her

### 4 The semantic analysis of compounds

new class. Of the 6 properties Levi (1978: 19) proposes, 3 are particularly interesting, namely nondegreeness, conjunction behavior, and case relations. The first 2 of them are reminiscent of traditional compound tests, cf. the remarks in Chapter 1, Section 1.2.

Levi (1978: 19) exemplifies the property of nondegreeness with the help of the following examples, cf. her (2.4).

### (21) a. \*very urban riots

This property can also be found in items traditionally considered as compounds, cf. *\*very blackbird* or *\*very blackboard*.

The conjunction behavior of interest is illustrated in (22) and (23), her (2.6) and (2.7): As (22) illustrates, nonpredicating adjectives can be conjoined with common nouns. In contrast, they cannot be conjoined with true adjectives, that is, prototypical attributive adjectives, cf. (23).

	- a. electrical and mining engineers
	- b. a corporate and divorce lawyer
	- c. solar and gas heating
	- d. electrical and water services
	- e. domestic and farm animals
	- a. a civil and mechanical/\*rude engineer
	- b. anthropological and ethnographic/\*respected journals
	- c. continental and oceanic/\*expensive studies
	- d. literary and musical/\*bitter criticism

While the co-ordination criterion also plays a role in the compound vs. phrase debate (cf. Bauer 1998: 74–76, who discusses this issue extensively), the main point here is that the nonpredicating adjectives follow the pattern of the nouns and not the pattern of the other, more prototypical adjectives.

The data that Levi (1978: 27–28) discusses under the heading of case relations concerns the observation that one can attribute the semantic relations of agent, object, location, dative/possessive, and instrument to nonpredicating adjectives.

4.3 Levi (1978)

Her 'agentive' category is illustrated in (24), cf. her (2.12).

	- b. editorial comment
	- c. revisionist betrayals
	- d. senatorial investigations
	- e. national exports

Levi distinguishes between 2 distinct analyses (or, in her understanding, derivational pathways) for complex nominals. In Section 4.3.2, I give an overview of the first approach, the recoverably deletable predicates. Section 4.3.3 discusses her second approach, which involves predicate nominalizations.

### **4.3.2 Levi's recoverably deletable predicates**

Levi (1978: 75–80) introduces 9 types of *recoverably deletable predicates*: cause, have, make, use, be, in, for, from, and about. The first 3, cause, have, and make, come in 2 different versions.

The basic idea behind her analysis is that a construction like *tear gas* can be derived via an underlying relative clause in which the respective predicates serve as main verbs. Thus, *tear gas* is derived from *gas that causes tears*, and so on. Below, I give 2 of her examples for each predicate, one containing what is traditionally considered a compound noun, the other a phrase containing a nonpredicating adjective (cf. Table 4.1 in Levi 1978: 76–77).3 The complex nominals are embedded in sentences retrieved via COCA. Behind the examples, I added paraphrases which make the intended interpretation clear. Note that since not all recoverably deletable predicates are verbs, the actual derivation pathways that Levi suggests are rather complex, cf. Levi (4.2, Derivations 1978: 118–153) for the details. Here, I will ignore this aspect of her work, focusing on the resulting semantic classification of complex nominals.

(25) cause

a. cause1 [N2 causes N1]

(i) You can no more deal with them in good faith than you can with a–a **disease germ**. COCA 'germ that causes a disease'

3Due to zero occurrences in the COCA and the BNC, I replaced *nasal mist* with *nasal spray*. Likewise, *rural visitors* was replaced by *rural lawmakers*, *linguistic lecture* with *linguistic theory*, and *professorial friends* with *professorial staff*.

(ii) The 9/11 attacks was a deeply **traumatic event** for our country. COCA

'event that causes a trauma'

	- (i) As we have been reporting, **drug deaths** in Mexico skyrocketed. COCA

'deaths that drugs cause'

	- a. have1 [N2 has N1]
		- (i) The children narrated a wordless **picture book**. COCA 'book that has pictures'
		- (ii) One teacher described the immediate area around the school as an **industrial area** with no houses and several major intersections. COCA

'area that has industry'

	- (i) Instead, it has issued demolition notices throughout the slum, which sits illegally on **government land**. COCA 'land that the government has'
	- (ii) Her **feminine intuition** told her that he was very definitely attracted to women, but she was pretty sure that he did not permit himself to cross the line that separated physical satisfaction from mind-spinning passion. COCA 'intuition that females have'
	- a. make1 [N2 makes N1]
		- (i) The town had a large-scale **silkworm** cultivation and many factories employed Korean workers. COCA 'worm that makes silk'
		- (ii) A digital clock on the computer screen starts to tick down from sixty seconds, and a **musical clock** starts to sound too – something like the "Jeopardy" theme. COCA 'clock that makes music'

4.3 Levi (1978)

	- (i) "I taught her how to make **daisy chains**," Essa said from the doorway. COCA 'chains that daisies make'
	- (ii) The atmospheric reactions can create **molecular chains** heavy enough to rain out on Titan's surface. COCA 'configurations that molecules make'
	- a. If you need to press the felt, use a **steam iron** or damp cloth. COCA 'iron that uses steam'
	- b. It's hot, it's dirty, and it's undoubtedly **manual labor**. COCA 'labor that uses hands'
	- a. Grammar boxes the **target structure** explained and exemplified for clarification and for reference. BNC/CLL 2985 'structure that is a target'
	- b. Setzler had done graduate work at the University of Chicago, and he maintained strong ties with the **professorial staff** there. COCA 'staff that are professors'
	- a. He hops out of the truck and goes inside to quickly say his **morning prayers**. COCA 'prayers that are in the morning'
	- b. In addition, it should be noted that great **marital sex** is good for your health, in addition to the glow it puts on your face and the spirit it puts in your step. COCA 'sex that is in a marriage'
	- a. Kirghiz, the bay gelding, needs the **horse doctor**. COCA 'doctor that is for horses'
	- b. Retrieving a **nasal spray** from an inner pocket of his waistcoat, he assumed a thoughtful expression: COCA 'spray that is for the nose'
	- a. Stir in the **olive oil**; it does not need to emulsify. COCA 'oil that is from olives'

### 4 The semantic analysis of compounds

	- a. This has been **tax law** in, in America for almost 10 years now, existing **tax law**. COCA 'law that is about tax'
	- b. He believed that an adequate **linguistic theory** should include not only just linguistic competence, but also the social-cultural aspects, which are "so salient" in any linguistics proper. COCA 'theory about linguistics'

Levi's study contains extensive commentary on these different classes. Here, I will only point to some of her remarks and findings that are particularly important as far as their interaction with or contribution to semantic transparency is concerned.

Levi (1978: 85–86) notes that her 9 recoverably deletable predicates are quite different in terms of their productivity (note, though, that from extensively studying Levi 1978 it has not become clear to me what exactly the data is that she uses to draw these conclusions). According to her, have1, cause, make and from are least productive (cf. *picture book*, *disease germ/drug deaths*, *silkworm/daisy chains* and *olive oil* above). Moderately productive are use, be, and about. Finally, for, in, and have2 (cf. *government land* above) are most productive. In addition, for all 3 predicates with 2 configurations she finds a skew in her data towards those derived from passivized verbs (Levi 1978: 86). Interestingly, she mentions that she finds a 'surprisingly' similar distribution in an early study on Modern Hebrew, cf. Levi (1976).

Levi's system in many cases allows for multiple alternative analyses of one and the same complex nominal. Levi (1978) points out that a particular subgroup of those nominals that can be analyzed via the make2 predicate have an alternative analysis via be, again corresponding to a specific subset of complex nominals that fall under this predicate, cf. the examples in (34).

(34) *landmass, chocolate bar, stone wall, sugar cube, bronze statue* [modifier denotes a unit, head denotes a configuration]

In general, make2 nominals are derived from sources with what Levi (1978: 90) calls a 'compositional reading', corresponding to *make up of/made out of*, as op-

4.3 Levi (1978)

posed to make1, where Levi (1978: 90) diagnoses "a sense of 'physically producing, causing to come into existence"'. In (34), there are "head nouns that denote either a mass or an artifact of some sort, and modifiers that describe its constituent material". On the make2 analysis, a complex nominal like *chocolate bar* is derived from *a bar that chocolate makes*, that is, *a bar made from/made of chocolate*. On the be analysis, it is derived from an underlying *a bar that is chocolate*. Crucially, these 2 analyses are available for the same compound reading, that is, the compound itself is not ambiguous.

Other instances of 'analytic indeterminacy' (Levi 1978: 90) occur between make1 and for (e.g. *musical clock, music box, sweat/sebaceous/salivary glands*, the analysis of *suspense film* (*film that causes suspense/has suspense*), and *job tension* (*tension caused by the job, tension that the job has, tension on the job*), cf. Levi (1978: 91) for all examples.

Levi (1978: 262–269) raises a number of issues connected with analytic indeterminacy. First, she notes that in many cases the analytic indeterminacy may in fact be regular and predictable, pointing to the make2/be pattern illustrated in (34). Secondly, in some cases analytic indeterminacy may in fact be non-existent on an ideolectal level. People may agree on the denotatum of a complex nominal, but nevertheless disagree if explicitly asked why a given complex nominal is called that way. Levi (1978: 265) mentions that an example like *tidal wave* is explained by some by *because it is caused by the tide*, others explain it by *because it sweeps in like the tide, only it's more powerful*. An important point that she makes in this context is that this kind of intersubject variation is not bound to high frequency complex nominals, but can also be expected for new nominals, exemplifying this by her first encounter with *athletic charges*, where even when being offered an explicit explanation she could either assign a for deletion or a nominalization based analysis (for the curious: "students on athletic scholarships had their book bills charged to the Athletic department" Levi 1978: 265).

Analytic indeterminacy, especially the case in which several non-conflicting analyses are held simultaneously, is also discussed by Jackendoff (2010: 427–428), who proposes to label the words in question as promiscuous, cf. the discussion in Chapter 6, Section <IP_ADDRESS>.

### **4.3.3 Predicate nominalization**

A predicate nominalization analysis is only relevant for nominals with deverbal nouns as heads. Again, the focus will be on the resulting classification rather than on the derivational system Levi introduces. Levi (1978: 167–174) works with 2 different axes of classification, one involving the type of nominalization, the

### 4 The semantic analysis of compounds

other involving the syntactic status of the first, premodifying element, in the assumed underlying structure.

As far as nominalization types are concerned, she distinguishes between act, product, agent and patient nominalizations. Examples along with illustrating paraphrases, drawn from her (5.1) and (5.2), cf. Levi (1978: 168–169), and enriched with actual corpus occurrences and some additional explanatory paraphrases are given in (35).

### (35) a. act nominalizations

	- (i) Cognitive science is a young, changing discipline subject to **human error** and ambition; only recently, a Harvard evolutionary biologist has been accused of fabricating data about animal cognition. COCA

'that which is produced by (the act of) humans erring'

(ii) Ten most common misconceptions regarding **musical critique**. WEB

'that which is produced by (the act of) criticizing music'

	- (i) My father worked in the post office, first as a **mail sorter** and then as station manager. COCA 'x such that x sorts mail'
	- (ii) He was a successful Hollywood attorney; she was a **film cutter** for Hollywood movies. COCA 'x such that x cuts film'
	- (i) **Student invention** could save kids in overheated cars WEB 'y such that students invent y'
	- (ii) He has also served as a **presidential appointee** to the National Museum and Library Services Board since 2006. COCA 'y such that presidents appoint y'

4.3 Levi (1978)

For the second axis of classification, Levi distinguishes between subjective, objective, and multi-modifier nominals. In the case of subjective nominalizations, the premodifier is analyzed as the subject in the corresponding derivational source, for the objective nominalizations, it is the object, and in the case of multi-modifier nominalizations, both subject and object of the underlying forms are realized as premodifiers. These 3 types are illustrated in (36), drawn from her (5.6–5.8), cf. Levi (1978: 173–174).

	- (i) **parental refusal** to allow initiative and creativity; COCA 'act of parents refusing'
	- (ii) Anna Chau's 2010 Fulton County and Johns Creek tax bills were sent to the wrong address because of a **clerical error**. COCA

'that which clerics making errors produce'

(iii) Then Surapati and his men left Kartasura, reportedly with some of the Susuhunan's horses and fine firearms as **royal gifts**. COCA

'that which royals give as gifts'

	- (i) What kind of access should women have to **birth control**? COCA

'the act of controlling birth'

(ii) Her income, from welfare, food stamps, rent and **tuition subsidies** and a \$3,000 gift from her mother, puts Ms. Owens, a single mother, and her three children just above the official poverty line. COCA

'that which subsidizes the tuitions'

(iii) Privacy, hah! I slipped the **acoustic amplifier** out of my desk drawer and stuck it on the wall that my office shared with Sam's. COCA

'that which amplifies the acoustics'

	- (i) In the mid-1980s, the Indian government began an ambitious effort to clean up municipal and **industrial water pollution** in the Ganges River, where most of the 1.4 billion liters of sewage generated every day by cities and towns along the river is dumped without treatment. COCA 'the industry's act of polluting water'

### 4 The semantic analysis of compounds

(ii) Why should there be **government price supports** for sugar? COCA

'the products of governments supporting the price'

As can be seen from the examples, subjective constructions can be found with act, product, and patient nominalizations, objective constructions with act, product, and agent nominalizations, and multi-modifier constructions only with act and product nominalizations.

### **<IP_ADDRESS> Scope restrictions of Levi's analysis**

Levi (1978) aims "to demonstrate the pervasive regularities that may be discerned in the area of CN [complex nominal] formation" (Levi 1978: 269). To this end, she excludes certain sets of data from her analysis.

First of all, she is only interested in endocentric formations, that is, "those CN [complex nominals] whose referents constitute a subset of the set of objects denoted by the head noun" (Levi 1978: 6). With this, she in particular excludes the 3 groups illustrated in (37), cf. Levi (1978: 6).

	- b. synecdochical reference (using a part to present the whole), e.g.: *peg leg, blockhead, birdbrain, eagle-eyes* in reference to people, or *razorback, glasseye, hammerhead, cottontail* in reference to animals.
	- c. coordinate structures "such that neither noun may be taken as head", e.g.: *speaker-listener*, *participant-observer*, *player-coach*, *secretary-treasur-*

*er*, *screwdriver-hammer*, *sofa-bed*, *library-guestroom*

Secondly, she excludes proper nouns that resemble complex nominals in form but contain a first element used primarily to name a single and definite referent, e.g. *Kennedy Library* or *Sheridan Road*. Levi (1978: 7) notes that these usually denote places or businesses. Thirdly, she excludes constructions which contain non-predicating adjectives that, in her opinion, are derived from underlying adverbs, cf. the examples in (38), from her (1.9).

	- b. occasional visitor
	- c. former roommate
	- d. alleged attacks

4.3 Levi (1978)

Paraphrase possibilities like those in (39), cf. (1.10) in Levi (1978: 8), are taken by her as suggestive evidence for an underlying derivation from adverbs.

	- b. She is a former roommate/was formerly a roommate.

Finally, she wants her theory to be a theory about productive processes and therefore excludes metaphorical, lexicalized, or idiomatic meanings. She distinguishes between lexicalized meaning and idiomatic meanings as follows: lexicalized meanings are meanings of complex nominals that have idiosyncratic meaning added on to a predicted literal reading, cf. her example *ball park*, which is predicted to have the meaning 'park for ball' but has developed the lexicalized meaning 'park or stadium designed for people to play baseball in [rather than football, basketball, or handball]', cf. (1.16) in Levi (1978: 10). In contrast, idiomatic meanings are those meanings where the choice of the specific constituents is 'more or less' irrelevant. Thus, she considers *fiddlesticks, horsefeather*, and *bullshit* with their meaning 'nonsense' as fully idiomatic, cf. (1.20) in Levi (1978: 12) for more examples. Complex nominals are also excluded if only one of the constituents is idiomatic. Levi (1978: 12) illustrates these constructions with complex nominals containing an idiomatic prenominal modifier, e.g. *polka dot* as the name for a dot-based pattern, or *cottage cheese* as the name for a type of cheese.

### **4.3.4 Evaluating Levi's approach**

Levi's approach has been much discussed, starting with Downing (1977) (she discusses Levi 1975, Levi's dissertation which forms the basis of the 1978 book).

Downing (1977: 827) points out that when reducing the semantics of a compound to the formulas proposed by Levi, "it is unclear how much of essential semantic content of the item is lost". In addition, she points out that her experimental results and some of the attested novel compounds "would be very difficult to reduce to any of these categories", illustrating this claim with the examples in (40), cf. her (14).

	- (i) *cow-tree*: a tree that cows like to rub up against
	- (ii) *egg-bird*: a bird that steals other birds' egg
	- (iii) *pea-princess*: a genuine princess, who passes the test of a pea under 20 mattresses

### 4 The semantic analysis of compounds

	- (i) *pumpkin-bus*: 'a bus that turns into a pumpkin at night' one likely, 6 possible, one impossible
	- (ii) *oil-bowl*: 'a bowl designed to hold oil or syrup' 3 likely, 5 possible, zero impossible

However, Downing (1977: 828) acknowledges that the fact that many of the compound taxonomies proposed in the earlier literature are reducible to Levi's, and that, in addition, her own novel compounds are also reducable to a limited set of basic semantic categories akin to Levi's suggests that "these lists are something less than arbitrary". Downing (1977: 828–829) also points out that at least in her data there is a link between the semantic class of the head of the compound and the resulting preferred interpretation of the compound.

More principled criticism comes from Fanselow (1981: 151–154) who sees Levi's work in the tradition of Motsch (1981). He sees the resulting ambiguities in the classifications of individual compounds as problematic. Further, he doubts that the number of predicates can be kept as low as the respective authors assume, questioning the appropriateness of an analysis of, e.g., *Polizeihund* 'police dog' as 'dog that the police uses', and pointing to the exploitation of polysemies in the analyses of the different authors as indicative of this problem, citing Levi's analysis of both *cell block* as well as *silk worm* as formed with make as an example (note that this criticism holds although the 2 are distinguished as make2 and make1 respectively). In general, he questions the usefulness of the resulting classification, which can only be a classification of those *Verrichtungen* 'doings' which dominate in our society, not a classification of possible ways of forming compounds. Finally, the system does not allow one to test whether a given classification is correct, since the final step from the predicates to the relation needed for the specific compounds is missing. If one acknowledges that the specific compound's constituents are responsible for the concrete specification of the relation in question, that is, when the constituents themselves allow to deduce the relation, then the underlying predicates are superfluous.

Devereux & Costello (2005) experimentally investigate the issue of analytic indeterminacy in a Levi-derived classification system, investigating the system

4.3 Levi (1978)

used in establishing the CARIN model in Gagné & Shoben (1997) (for this system and the relations used, cf. Chapter 2, Section <IP_ADDRESS>).4 In their experiments, subjects could choose from 18 relations in classifying 60 compounds, and they were allowed to choose as many relations as fit. Although the compounds were presented along with an interpretation, subjects on average suggested 3.23 relations for every compound. One of the compounds where participants consistently chose several relations was *job anxiety*, where 'MODIFIER causes HEAD' and 'HEAD about MODIFIER' occur most often, with 13 (!) of the 18 relations chosen at least once.

### **4.3.5 Conclusion: the enduring appeal of Levi's system**

As shown in the previous section, Levi's system has a number of weaknesses. However, if one is interested in compound formation from a cognitive point of view, one would like to be able to assess the productivity of different kinds of compounds. To assess the productivity, in turn, one needs to have access to some kind of frequency data. Here, the approaches to compound semantics that rely on a categorization in terms of different relations are in widespread use, and within these, the relations proposed by Levi (1978) have proven hugely influential. The reason for the success of her system is succinctly summed up in the following quote: "[…] Levi's proposals are informed by linguistic theory and by empirical observations, and they intuitively seem to comprise the right kind of relations for capturing compound semantics" (Ó Séaghdha 2008: 27). Often, the Levi-relations provide the starting point for classifications and are enriched with additional relations as needed (cf. especially the discussion of the works using the CARIN or RICE models of conceptual combination in Chapter 2 and Chapter 5). While these classifications are still very similar to Levi's original classification, other reworkings include a number of greater changes. The proposal by Ó Séaghdha (2008), who dubs Levi's and similar systems as inventory-style approaches (Ó Séaghdha 2008: 17), is a good example for a very extensive and careful reworking of Levi's system. Starting with her original 9 relations, he points out 4 main problems with her classification (cf. Ó Séaghdha 2008: 30–31):

4 For the purpose of their experiment, they add 2 additional relations, modifier is head, and modifier makes head, cf. Devereux & Costello (2005: 495).

### 4 The semantic analysis of compounds

4. Levi does not provide explicit annotation guidelines and is unconcerned with regards to overlapping categorization or vague boundaries between categories.

Ó Séaghdha (2008: 31) singles out the overlapping categorization as the most critical of the problems, using the compound *car factory* to illustrate: whether categorized as for (factory for producing cars), cause (factory that causes cars to be created), in (factory in which cars are produced), or from (factory from which cars originate), all 4 categories still describe the very same meaning (cf. also Devereux & Costello (2005) discussed in section 4.3.4 above).

Ó Séaghdha works both aspects of Levi's analysis into one consistent annotation system, and adds detailed annotation guidelines for his system. Perhaps the most important changes are the removal of make1, cause, use, and for, and the introduction of 2 new categories actor and instrument.

### **4.4 Fanselow (1981)**

Working on German, Fanselow (1981) distinguishes between 2 major groups of compounds, *nominale Rektionskomposita* 'nominal relational compounds' and *Determinativkomposita* 'determinative compounds'. Following the structure of his work, I will start with the former in the next section and then discuss the *Determinativkomposita* in Section 4.4.2, cf. Part II and Part III in Fanselow (1981) respectively. Since Fanselow's approach is only published in German, I present his ideas here somewhat more extensively.

### **4.4.1 Compounds involving relational nouns**

Fanselow not only discusses compounds with deverbal heads, but also other relational heads in some detail. Examples are words like *Sozialdemokratenfan* 'fan of the social democrats', *Professorenkomplize* 'professor accomplice' and *Kanzlerbruder* 'chancellor brother', cf. Fanselow (1981: 81). What they have in common with deverbal heads is that the noun in the head position has an open position for a term. Within this group, Fanselow distinguishes a number of subgroups. Here, I am not going to discuss these subgroups in any detail but simply point to several interesting observations in his work. Thus, he notes that for the deverbal cases, especially those formed with agent nominalizations like *LKW-Fahrer* 'truck driver', either a habitual or a non-habitual reading is possible. Corpus examples illustrating these 2 usages are given in (41), where *LKW-Fahrer* in (41-a) clearly requires a habitual interpretation, because it describes a specific function

4.4 Fanselow (1981)

in a company. In contrast, in (41-b) the driver does not need to have been a habitual truck driver.

	- b. Ein dahinter fahrender 29-jähriger **LKW- Fahrer** konnte nicht mehr rechtzeitig bremsen und fuhr mit seinem LKW auf, teilt die Polizei mit. DeReKo

'The driver behind them, a 29-year old truck driver, didn't manage to stop in time and drove his truck into the preceding vehicle.'

In contrast to compounds with non-derived relational heads, compounds with deverbal heads also allow local interpretations of their first constituent. Thus, while both *Zeitungsverteiler* 'newspaper distributor (=newspaper boy)' and *Hochschullehrer* 'university teacher (=teacher at a university)' have deverbal heads, the modifier fills an argument position in the former case, but requires a location interpretation in the latter case, cf. Fanselow (1981: 93–94).

Besides their relational reading, compounds with a non-deverbal relational head like *Richterfreund* 'judge friend' might also have a simple coordinated reading, cf. (42).

(42) Der von Renaud Dély gekürte " Mann der Woche " ist Pierre Estoup, der heimliche **Richterfreund** von Bernard Tapie. WEB 'The man of the week chosen by Renaud Dély is Pierre Estoup, the secret judge friend of Bernard Tapie.'

*Heimlicher Richterfreund* 'secret judge friend ' in (42) needs to be interpreted as 'secret friend and judge'.

While in the examples so far the relational noun is always the head, Fanselow also presents numerous cases where a relational noun constitutes the first part of a compound. Among Fanselow's initial examples are *Mitgliedsbuch* member:book 'party book', *Freundeskreis* friend:circle 'circle of friends', and *Lieblingspolitiker* 'favourite politician'. Generally, these relational nouns yield compounds that are themselves relational. However, as Fanselow makes clear, there are very few general rules for these compounds, cf. e.g. *Lieblingspolitiker* vs. *Traumpolitiker* 'dream politician'. In passing, he notes a number of examples where the AB is not a B, cf. (43), Fanselow (1981: 104).

### 4 The semantic analysis of compounds

	- b. *Kunsthonig* art:honey 'fake honey'
	- c. *Schattenkanzler* shadow:chancellor 'shadow chancellor'
	- d. *Ehrenpräsident* honor:president 'honorary president'
	- e. *Falschgeld* wrong:money 'counterfeit money'
	- f. *Pseudocleftkonstruktion*5 pseudocleft:construction 'pseudo-cleft construction'

For these cases, Fanselow (1981: 105) assumes an analysis where the first element operates on the intension of the second argument. In other cases with a relational first element, Fanselow (1981: 107) notes an asymmetry with regard to the examples in (44) as opposed to those in (45).

(45) a. *Anfangskapitel* begin:chapter 'first chapter'

5Note that the bracketing that Fanselow must have in mind here is [Pseudo[cleftkonstruktion]], contrasting with the bracketing suggested in the English translation equivalent. On the latter bracketing, the compound appears to be a regular determinative compound.

4.4 Fanselow (1981)

b. *Schlußstein* end:stone 'keystone'

Note that Fanselow is explicitly exluding readings where the first noun is not used as a relational noun. That is, Fanselow (1981: 107) acknowledges that *Vorstandspartei* 'steering committee party' could actually denote a party that only consists of the steering commitee or a party that supports the steering commitee. Given that, note that while he is correct that the first constituents in *Anfangskapitel* 'first chapter' and *Schlußstein* 'keystone' in (45) both still receive a relational interpretation, the relational argument place is not filled by the second noun, but is filled by something outside of the compound, as e.g. in *Anfangskapitel des Buches* 'first chapter of the book' or *Schlußstein des Gewölbes* 'keystone of the vault'. That is, the asymmetry is tied to whether the resulting compound is still relational, with the relationality deriving from the first noun. For compounds consisting of 2 relational nouns, he also distinguishes between those that yield relational nouns, e.g. *Zweigstellenleiter* 'branch manager', and those that do not, e.g. *Rektorentochter* 'headmaster daughter (=daughter of the headmaster)'. And again, there are sometimes ambiguities due to different readings of the compound constituents.

Perhaps Fanselow's most important finding with regard to the compounds involving relational nouns is that deverbal heads are not so very special, since non-deverbal heads often function very similarly.

### **4.4.2 Common nouns with common nouns:** *Determinativkomposita* **'determinative compounds'**

### **<IP_ADDRESS> Restrictions and the question of subsectivity**

Fanselow (1981: 130) begins his treatment of determinative compounds by discussing the question whether there are any general restrictions on this type of compounds, starting with the categories that, according to Brekle (1970), play no role for compounds: quantification, tense, assertion, mode and negation. For negation, Fanselow (1981) agrees that this relation is in fact non-existent for compounds (contra Downing 1977, cf. also *nonentity* discussed in Section 4.1.3). As for quantification, he agrees with Brekle (1973) that it is usually indefinite (e.g.,

### 4 The semantic analysis of compounds

*car engine* ≈ engine of a car), and he likewise agrees with Brekle that the category of *assertion* is irrelevant for compounds, insofar as it has nothing to do with compound formation in particular. For mode, Fanselow (1981: 139) argues that it is needed, giving *Ziegellehm* 'brick clay' and *Kuchenmehl* 'cake flour' as examples: brick clay can be used to make bricks, and cake flour can be used to make cakes. On tense, Fanselow (1981: 133–139) argues that it is needed, but essentially restricted to perfect and co-temporality. A relevant pair of examples is *eine Nagelfabrik* 'a nail factory (= a factory that produces nails)' vs. *ein Fabriknagel* 'a factory nail (= a nail that has been produced in a factory)', illustrating co-temporality and perfect respectively. In this connection, he also points again to the different readings due to habitual vs. at least once interpretations, cf. *LKW-Fahrer* 'truck driver' in (41) above, and also notes their complementarity with what will be discussed in Section <IP_ADDRESS> as basic relations (cf. Fanselow 1981: 138–139).

In a next step, Fanselow considers the similarity between the first nominal element in these compounds and adjectives: "We can view the first constituent of a compound as a very special adjective with complicated semantics" [my translation] (Fanselow 1981: 142), and addresses to what extent they are subsective. He distinguishes 5 types of deviations from subsectivity. The first type subsumes combinations that do not fall into the common noun - common noun category, e.g. combinations of proper nouns like *Baden-Württemberg* 'Baden Württemberg', or combinations with a relational noun as the second element. The second type are compounds where either the first or the second element contain a 'regelmäßig bedeutungsverschiebende[n] Faktor', a regularly meaning-shifting element. An example is *Scheingefecht* 'mock battle', cf. (43-a) above, further examples are given in (46).

(46) a. *Saufbruder* drinking:brother 'drinking companion' b. *Ehrenjungfrau* honor:maiden 'lady of honor' c. *Boykottbrüder* boycott:brothers 'guys involved in a boycott'

For these examples, compare also the comments following (43) above. Thirdly, he excludes so-called bahuvrihis, cf. the examples in (47), due to their low productivity and unsystematicity.

4.4 Fanselow (1981)

	- b. *Blaustrumpf* blue:sock 'bluestocking'
	- c. *Einhorn* one:horn 'unicorn'

Fourthly, some compounds (1) do not contain a regularly meaning-shifting element, (2) can be understood context-free, and (3) are not bahuvrihis. His examples are repeated in (48) and his further sub-classification is given in (49), cf. (4) in Fanselow (1981: 143).

	- b. *Spielgeld* play:money 'toy money'
	- c. *Stoffhund* cloth:dog 'stuffed dog'
	- d. *Bronzegott* bronze:god 'bronze god'
	- e. *Holzgewehr* wood:rifle 'wooden rifle'
	- f. *Spielzeugauto* toy:car 'toy car'
	- g. *Schokoladenzigarette* chocolate:cigarette 'chocolate cigarette'

### 4 The semantic analysis of compounds

Finally, the fifth type of deviation subsumes compounds that would not receive the indicated interpretation without a specific context, Fanselow (1981: 143) gives the 3 examples in (50), corresponding to his (5).

	- a. *Fahrradbaby* bicycle:baby 'somebody who just learned how to bicycle' b. *Tribünensportler*
	- tribune:sportsman 'somebody who likes to watch sports from the grandstand'
	- c. *Juso-Oma*

Juso-grandmother 'somebody who supports Juso-aims but is, in the view of the speaker, already too old' [Juso: a youth organization of the social democratic party]

Fanselow (1981: 144) points out that the interpretation of a compound like *Bronzelöwe* 'bronze lion' does not present a compound-specific problem, as can be seen when looking at corresponding phrasal variants, cf. (51).

(51) a. *bronzener* bronzeADJ *Löwe* lion 'bronze lion' b. *Löwe* lion *aus* from *Bronze* bronze 'bronze lion'

Further, Fanselow (1981: 144) points out that the required meaning shifts are not in any way different from shifts that are already needed for simplicia.  Auch dieser **Löwe** erinnert an das welfische Wappentier. Nur hockt der **Löwe** auf einem Granitsockel, reißt das Maul auf und legt die Pranke auf das Wappenschild des Herzogtums. So wacht er symbolisch über das Land Ernst Augusts und Victoria Luises. DeReKo 'The other lion comes from the former right-of-the-land party in the dukedom […] This lion, too, reminds one of the Welfian heraldic animal. But the lion crouches on a granite pedestal, yanks open his mouth and has his paw on the coat of arms of the dukedom. […]'

In addition, Fanselow (1981: 145) notes that even for adjective noun combinations, one finds either reinterpretations of the noun (as in e.g. *bronzener Löwe* 'bronze lion') or reinterpretations of the adjectives (as in *scharfer Hund* 'sharp (= aggressive) dog'). In general, "[w]hat exactly is re-interpreted is determined by rules that crucially rely on questions of psychology and the state of things in the world" [my translation] (Fanselow 1981: 147).

Fanselow comes to the following conclusion:

We have thus reached a point where the compositional semantics must be silent and is allowed to assume that *Bronzelöwen* 'bronze lions' are indeed lions, and a *Juso-Oma* 'Juso grandmother' is indeed a grandmother, but *Löwe* 'lion' and *Oma* 'grandmother' understood with a re-interpreted denotation. Thus the first constituents [*Vorderglieder*] are subsective. That is, every semantic rule should be of the kind: *λx* (*R*(*A*, *B*))(*x*) & *B*(*x*)). That the first constituents are subsective is also the only implication relationship [*Folgerungsbeziehung*] that we can defend for compounds consisting of 2 common nouns" [my translation] (Fanselow 1981: 147).

### **<IP_ADDRESS> Two patterns for compounds: stereotypes or basic relations**

Fanselow assumes that in many cases the relation that is not explicitly expressed in a compound can be derived from the meaning of one of its 2 parts. The general idea is best illustrated with his examples, cf. (53).

(53) a. *Zeitungsfrau*

newspaper:woman 'woman who delivers the newspaper'

### 4 The semantic analysis of compounds

b. *Buchgeschäft* book:store 'book store'

According to Fanselow, the meaning of *Zeitung* 'newspaper' is the source of the inferred relation *zustellen* 'deliver' in (53-a), and the meaning of *Geschäft* 'store' is responsible for the inferred relation *verkaufen* 'sell' in (53-b). Some further examples from Fanselow (1981: 156) are reproduced in (54), with the compound part responsible for the inference set in boldface. The inferred relation itself is made explicit and set in boldface in the free paraphraes.

4.4 Fanselow (1981)

j. *Sektflasche* champagne:bottle 'bottle **containing** champagne'

Fanselow (1981: 156) argues that not all compounds fall under this generalization, compare *Politiker-Komponist* 'politician-composer', *Juso-Student* 'Juso student', or *Küstenstadt* 'coast town (= coastal town)', where Fanselow thinks that it would be strange to argue that the *and* relation in *Politiker-Komponist* 'politiciancomposer' or the *located by* relation in *Küstenstadt* 'coastal town' are linked to the meanings of either *politician* or *town*. Therefore, he argues that 2 classes of compounds need to be distinguished: A first, smaller class, whose members can be generated with the help of the 5 basic relations *und* and, *gemacht aus* made of, *ähnelt* similar to, *ist teil von* part of, and *ist lokalisiert bezüglich* located relative to. And a second, larger class, where the meaning is derived from the meaning of its constituents.

Fanselow (1981: 157) proposes the following operational distinction between the set of basic relations and inferred relations:

If the most explicit paraphrase of the compound AB contains nothing that has to do either with the meaning of A or B, then the relation is a basic relation. 6 [my translation] (Fanselow 1981: 157)

He motivates his operationalization by using the compound *Kinderzimmer* 'nursery', cf. (55).

(55) *Kinderzimmer* children:room 'nursery'

One could propose a reading à la *room meant for children*, and, based on this reading, establish a basic relation meant for. However, there is a more explicit paraphrase for this compound, namely *room in which usually the children live*. And since *to live in* can be related to *room*, no basic relation is needed for a successful interpretation. According to Fanselow, all basic relations (except be similar to) can be linked to basic principles of the organization of the lexicon, e.g. hyponymy, partonomy, and local inclusion (here Fanselow refers to Miller 1978: 79). In addition, Fanselow states:

6 "Wenn die expliziteste Paraphrase des Kompositums AB nichts enthält, was mit der Bedeutung von A oder B in Zusammnhang stünde, so liegt eine Grundrelation vor."

### 4 The semantic analysis of compounds

If one learns the meaning of, e.g., *hammer*, then one has to learn that it holds of things with a specific form and function, if one learns the meaning of *nail*, that these are things to be hammered into walls etc. But one does not need to learn that their denotations are located somewhere, that they can belong to other denotations, or that they are made out of something.

While therefore the inferred relations are something that needs to be learned when learning the meanings of the words, the basic relations are organizational principles of perception or of semantic classification that are constituted independent of the meanings of individual words. [my translation] (Fanselow 1981: 158)

### **<IP_ADDRESS> More on compound interpretations based on stereotypes**

For Fanselow, "[a] stereotype A*i* of a word A is a typical property of things that fall under A. Its semantic type is therefore necessarily the same as the translation of A" [my translation] (Fanselow 1981: 169). In many cases, the stereotypes of 2 compound constituents will not generate the specific meaning of the compound. A case in point is his example *Taschenmesser* 'pocket knife'. *Tasche* 'bag, pocket' has the stereotype *carry in*, and one can therefore generate the meaning 'knife that can be carried in a bag'. In contrast, the more specific meaning, e.g. 'a small knife with one or more blades that fold into the handle', is due to the compound developing its own stereotype.

Fanselow (1981: 168) mentions the categories introduced in Shaw (1978), that is *vollmotiviert* 'completely motivated', *teilmotiviert* 'partially motivated', *unmotiviert* 'not motivated', and ponders the introduction of 2 categories building on these ideas: (1) *systemmotiviert* 'motivated by the system', where the production system almost, but not quite, yields the full meaning of the compound, and (2) *motiviert im engern Sinne* 'motivated in a strict sense', where the production system yields the full meaning of the compound. Shaw's categories are illustrated in (56), Fanselow's 2 categories in (57), cf. Fanselow (1981: 168).

	- (i) *Steinpilz* stone:mushroom 'Boletus edulis (penny bun)'

4.4 Fanselow (1981)

	- (i) *Taschenmesser* pocket:knife 'pocket knife'
	- (ii) *Blutbuche* blood:beech 'blood beech'
	- b. motivated in a strict sense (i) *Staudacherbruder*
		- Staudacher:brother 'Staudacher's brother'
		- (ii) *Nagelfabrik* nail:factory 'nail factory'

Fanselow (1981: §18) discusses how best to formulate the stereotypes. Again, I report here only some of his observations. In general, if the inferred relation is stative, cf. e.g. *Rheinbrücke* 'Rhine bridge (= bridge over the Rhine)' or *Kandidatenplakat* 'candidate poster (= poster for a candidate)' (cf. Fanselow 1981: 157), there is no ambiguity between habitual and instantaneous ['instantiell'] readings. In all other cases, one finds an ambiguity, with the habitual reading being the preferred one. Fanselow (1981: 192) assumes that stereotypes are generally habitual, but allow the derivation of instantaneous readings. The relations inferred via the first constituent might be either efficient (as in *Fabriknagel* 'factory nail' → produce) or afficient (as in *Raketenbasis* 'missile base' → fire); among other things, this will influence the choice of tense. Words typically have several stereotypes that are relevant for compound composition, *Milch* 'milk' allows one to infer *drink in* in *Schulmilch* 'school milk' but *given by* in *Kuhmilch* 'cow milk'. As already shown in the examples in (54), some of the stereotypes contain a local relation, e.g. *Schulmilch* 'school milk' and *Teehaus* 'teahouse', which both use the relation *drink in*. Stereotypes come with constraints on their argument places, see *Professorenfabrik* 'factory for professors' in (58), his (9).

### 4 The semantic analysis of compounds

(58) Die The Uni Uni Konstanz Konstanz ist is eine a richtige right **Professorenfabrik**. professor.pl:factory 'The University of Konstanz is a right factory for professors.'

Factories, according to Fanselow, produce inanimate things. Since professors are animate, the compound must be understood metaphorically.

According to Fanselow (1981: 201), the frequency adverbials that are most likely to modify a given inferred relation seem to be determined by the relevant stereotypes (or, as he puts it, the words determine this for their stereotypes). To illustrate this, Fanselow contrasts *Raketenbasis* 'base for firing missile in case of need for doing so' with *Gartenblume* 'flower that usually grows in a garden'. In addition, he notes that compounds like *Nagelfabrik* 'nail factory', 'a factory that usually produces nails', can be given a more precise paraphrase, e.g. 'usually, if this factory produces sth., it produces nails'. A similar step, according to Fanselow, is possible for *Gartenblume* 'garden flower' ('usually, if this flower grows somewhere, it grows in the garden') and *Sektflasche* 'champagne bottle' ('usually, if this bottle contains something, it contains champagne'). This is, however, not possible across the board, as he illustrates with *Silberbergwerk* 'silver mine', which not only excavates silver (technically, it excavates ore which contains silver, for one thing), and *Zuhältermercedes* 'pimp mercedes', which is not only driven by pimps. Finally, in a few cases, stereotypes of both compound parts are involved, see his example *Teehaus* 'teahouse', where, according to Fanselow (1981: 202), the inferred relation *drink in* is due to the contribution of both parts, *tea* being responsible for the *to drink* relation, and *house* being responsible for the *in* (as opposed to the local relation to be inferred for *Thekenbier* 'counter beer', 'a beer that is drunken at the counter').

### **<IP_ADDRESS> More on Fanselow's basic relations**

Fanselow (1981: §17) discusses the basic relations in more detail and gives further examples. For the combination of 2 common nouns, the first basic relation, *und* 'and', is analyzed as intersection, that is, for a compound AB, we have *λ* x (a'(x) & b'(x)), where a' is the semantic translation of A and b' that of B. Relevant examples are *Eichbaum* 'oak tree', *Juso-Student* 'Juso-student', *Hausboot* 'house boat', *Radio-Uhr* 'radio clock', *Negerfrau* 'negro woman'7 , and *Juso-Oma* 'Juso-grandmother'. Other examples, like *Mördergeneral* 'murderer general', are already more complex; he speculates:

7And yes, this is considered to be politically incorrect in German nowadays, too.

### 4.4 Fanselow (1981)

One might wonder whether words like *Mördergeneral* 'murderer general (= general who is a murderer)', *Mörderpolizist* 'murderer police man', *Mörderkanzler* 'murderer chancelor', and *Mörderpräsident* 'murderer president' are all *Analogiebildungen* 'analogical formations'. Because it further seems to hold that the interpretation of compounds via stereotypes constitutes an explication of that which is usually seen as *Analogiebildung* 'analogical formation', we can view *Mördergeneral*'murderer general' and *Einbrecherpolizist* 'thief policeman' simply as a very specific case of a general word formation possibility. [my translation] (Fanselow 1981: 176)

Note that the difference between the 2 groups observed by Fanselow seems to correspond to compounds that, in Levi's system, would be analyzed with the be relation, and, on the other hand, those combinations she refers to as coordinate structures and excludes from her analysis. In Bauer, Lieber & Plag (2013: 479– 480), these 2 types are both subtypes of coordinative compounds, referred to as appositive and additive respectively.

The made of relation is essentially treated by Fanselow as an extension of the and-relation, so that e.g. an x is a *Roggenbrot* 'rye bread' iff x is bread and has been rye, and there is a process that caused the rye to be bread afterwards, cf. Fanselow (1981: 180).

For the basic relation part of Fanselow (1981: 184–185) gives the examples *Autokotflügel* 'car mudguard' and *Kammzinke* 'comb tooth'. Interestingly, he points out that "[w]e cannot simply translate *Autokotflügel* 'car mudguard' into: an x, that is a mudguard and part of a car. The mudguard can be dismantled, the corresponding car does not need to continue to exist, nor does there need to be a car at all in order for a thing to be a car mudguard."[my translation] Fanselow (1981: 184). Cf. Bell's entailment criterion discussed in Section 3.1.2, Chapter 3 for a similar point.

Fanselow (1981: 185–186) believes that the location-relation has fewer usages than commonly assumed; he takes *Küstenstraße* 'coast road (=coastal road)', *Hafenstadt* 'harbor town', and *Bergdenkmal* 'mountain monument (= monument in the mountains)' to be clear examples. In contrast, compounds like *Nachtarbeiter* 'night worker', *Automotor* 'car engine' and *Rheinbrücke* 'Rhine bridge' need stereotypes for their correct interpretation. In trying to find a good formal spell-out for a location relation, he mentions an observation by Warren (1978) for English as support for what is essentially an underspecified localization relation: the conjunction with *und* 'and' is only possible, if the underlying relation is the same, cf. combinations like *Sekt- und Weingläser*. Since one can form combinations like *die Gruben- und Landarbeiter Boliviens* 'mine and farm laborers of Bolivia', with

### 4 The semantic analysis of compounds

the mine laborers being in the mine and the farm laborers being on the farm land, this can be taken as support for an underspecified locative relation. However, he also notes that this idea does not generalize to all cases, as examples like *das Münchener Schnell- und Untergrundbahnsystem* 'the Munich express and subway railsystem' and *Schnell- und Güterzüge* 'express and freight trains' contain coordination with *and* even though the relationship between the head and the first elements cannot be the same, cf. Fanselow (1981: Footnote 10). A second rule to introduce location relations is needed for compounds like *Denkmalsberg* 'monument mountain' and *Stadtküste* 'town coast', which, according to Fanselow, are converses of the location relation as seen in the examples above. However, I think that instead of introducing a converse location relation one could also argue for other relations here, e.g. part of or and.

The last basic relation to be discussed is be similar to, which comes in many forms. (59) gives a few examples from his overview.8

	- (i) *Flammenschwert* flame:sword 'flame-bladed sword'
	- (ii) *Einhornplastik* 'unicorn sculpture'
	- b. B has the color of A: (i) *Blutbuche*
		- 'blood beech'
		- (ii) *Silberpappel* silver:poplar 'white poplar'
		- (iii) *Laubfrosch* foliage:frog 'European tree frog'
		- (iv) *Milchglas* 'milk glass'

Fanselow's basic observations is that the exact type of the *being-similar-to* relation is determined via stereotypes, and he exploits this via a semantic rule that makes use of stereotypes. As a result, in his system compounds like *Blutbuche* 'blood beech' are explained with the help of a semantic rule, but a compound like *Bronzelöwe* with the help of a pragmatic rule, which Fanselow (1981: 191) justifies

8 Fanselow (1981: Footnote 13, p. 188) points to a similar overview for English in Warren (1978).

4.4 Fanselow (1981)

by arguing that these semantic rules follow a clear pattern, whereas the shifts of the head seen in *Bronzelöwe* seem to behave more unruly. In addition, in his view explicit rules are always better than pragmatic explanations.

### **<IP_ADDRESS> Context dependency and ambiguity in Fanselow's system**

Fanselow argues that his system can derive most readings that compounds have. However, his system also generates ambiguity. In addition, nothing in his system as it stands is able to deal with context sensitivity. Thus, Fanselow mentions that combinations like *Taschenmesser* 'pocket knife' and *Fabrikgeige* 'factory violin' could also be used to mean 'knife to cut pockets with', or 'violin for usage in a factory' respectively.

He thinks that a hierarchy like (60), cf. Fanselow (1981: 215), is likely to be in place, and proposes the general hypothesis for compound interpretation in (61).

	- a. stereotypes
	- b. and-rules
	- c. location-rules
	- d. similarity-rule

In the interpretation of an AB compound, that relation R holds between A and B which is the most prominent relation in a given context among the relations whose linguistic realization occurs most often in sentences between A and B so that the compound interpreted with that relation R makes sense in the given context. [my translation] Fanselow (1981: 215)9

Based on this, Fanselow (1981: 215–216) thinks that it is not the case that every interpretation of a compound is possible in the respective contexts, and that the number of possible readings is smaller than the number of possible relations that are technically available.

He concludes his work by pointing out that it is still an open question which factors determine the most prominent relations/stereotypes in a given context, and illustrates the problem with the 2 examples in (62) and (63), examples (1)

9 "Hypothese zur Interpretation der Nominalkomposita