19.12.2012 Views

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

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

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

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.

. kakotixos < kak- tix- -os<br />

unlucky bad luck INFL<br />

Crucially, compounds are inflected at the right-h<strong>and</strong> edge, <strong>and</strong> are phonological words,<br />

i.e. they contain one stress, which falls on one <strong>of</strong> the last three syllables. Very <strong>of</strong>ten, their stress<br />

<strong>and</strong> inflectional ending may be different from those <strong>of</strong> the second constituent part, when it is<br />

used as an autonomous word (see section 3 for an explanation):<br />

(3) Compound-inflectional ending < stem1-inflectional ending stem2-inflectional ending<br />

a. likóskil-o 4 < lík-os skíl-os<br />

wolf-dog wolf dog<br />

24.2. Compound marker<br />

As already mentioned, the internal constituents <strong>of</strong> Greek compounds are linked together<br />

by the vowel /o/. Items such as this -o- are traditionally called ‗linking elements‘ (Scalise 1992),<br />

‗interfixes‘ (Dressler 1984) or ‗confixes‘ (Mel‘čuk 1982). As shown by Ralli (2007,<br />

forthcoming), -o- is a semantically-empty element, which originates from an ancient thematic<br />

vowel, <strong>and</strong> synchronically does not belong to any <strong>of</strong> the compound members. As an illustration,<br />

consider the example psarovarka ‗fish boat‘ (< psar- ‗fish‘ + varka ‗boat‘), where the inflected<br />

form <strong>of</strong> the first constituent is psari ‗fish‘ <strong>and</strong> not *psaro. Following Booij (2005a), we could<br />

assume that psaro- is an allomorphic variation <strong>of</strong> the stem psar-, which is used in word<br />

formation. However, this is not an economical solution, since the form psaro- is restricted to<br />

<strong>compounding</strong> (see psarovarka), while in derivation only psar- is used (see psar-as ‗fisherman‘).<br />

718

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!