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

One problem hinges on how we distinguish bound roots from derivational affixes. One
criterion that we might use is semantic: roots in some sense have more semantic substance than
affixes. But there are languages in which items that have been formally identified as affixes
have as much, or nearly as much, semantic substance as items that might be identified as roots in
other languages. Mithun (1999:48-50) argues, for example, for what she calls ‗lexical affixes‘ in
many Native American languages. Bearing meanings like ‗clothes‘, ‗floor‘, ‗nape‘, ‗knob‘ (in
Spokane) or ‗eat‘, ‗say‘, ‗fetch‘, ‗hit‘ (in Yup‘ik), they might look semantically like roots, but
their distribution is different from that of roots, and they serve a discourse function rather
different from that of roots (they serve to background information that has already been
introduced in a discourse). So distinguishing lexemes from non-lexemes might not be possible
in semantic terms.
Another criterion must therefore be formal: we might say that bound roots can be
distinguished from affixes only by virtue of also occurring as free forms (inflected, of course, in
languages that require inflection). But that means that words like overfly and outrun in English
must be considered compounds, rather than prefixed forms (as Marchand would like). There are
two problems with this conclusion. First, the status of verbal compounds in English is highly
disputed, and these items are clearly verbal. 1 Second, even though over and out also occur as
free morphemes in English, the form that attaches to the verbs fly and run behaves rather
differently than the first element of a compound. Specifically, the first element of a compound in
English is typically syntactically inert: it does not affect the syntactic distribution of the complex
word. Yet over- and out- have clear effects on verbal diathesis:
(1) a. *The plane flew the field ~ The plane overflew the field.
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