1 Chapter 1. Introduction: status and definition of compounding ...

level status, as has happened in the case of NEWSPAPER and AIRPLANE. As a linguistic reflection
of this change to basic level category, the latter "tend to drop the first element, thus assimilating
to the simple form of basic level categories as paper and plane. This process, Ungerer and
Schmid (2006: 98) argue, can be studied in its various stages starting with items like apple juice
and wheelchair and finishing with (motor)car and (air)plane, giving "a tangible view of what has
traditionally been called lexicalization".
In Ungerer and Schmid (2006: 92-95), it is also argued that the existence of both type-of
and part-whole relationships in our conceptualization of the world and its categories should set
us thinking about the traditional, type-of-oriented or modifier-head analysis of certain
endocentric noun-noun compounds: the standard view which posits a basic head item and a
strictly specifying modifier element is far too rigid. With many compounds, even with model
cases like apple juice, the modifier category supplies more than just the specifying attribute.
Ungerer and Schmid give the example of the compound apple juice, which has typically been
analyzed as a modifier-head compound designating a type of juice. In an attribute-listing
experiment reported on in Ungerer and Schmid (1998), however, they managed to show that in
categorizing APPLE JUICE the language user makes much wider use of the first basic level
category, i.e. that of APPLE, than is assumed by traditional analyses: while most of the attributes
which their informants listed for the compound were also named for the head category JUICE (e.g.
'liquid', 'supplied in bottle or carton', 'served in glasses'), a significant number of informants also
listed attributes from the category of APPLE (e.g. 'yellow or similar colour', 'fruity'). The
compound APPLE JUICE, they conclude (2006: 93), while still denoting a type-of relationship (i.e.
a type of JUICE), "should throw first doubts on the rigidity of the modifier-head arrangement"
because its modifier category supplies more than just the specifying attribute. The attribute-
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