Complex Lexical Units

Compounds and Multi-Word Expressions

Barbara Schlücker

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• eBook ISBN:
  9783110632538
• Subtopic: German Language
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Both compounds and multi-word expressions are complex lexical units, made up of at least two constituents. The most basic difference is that the former are morphological objects and the latter result from syntactic processes. However, the exact demarcation between compounds and multi-word expressions differs greatly from language to language and is often a matter of debate in and across languages. Similarly debated is whether and how these two different kinds of units complement or compete with each other.

The volume presents an overview of compounds and multi-word expressions in a variety of European languages. Central questions that are discussed for each language concern the formal distinction between compounds and multi-word expressions, their formation and their status in lexicon and grammar.

The volume contains chapters on German, English, Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Russian, Polish, Finnish, and Hungarian as well as a contrastive overview with a focus on German. It brings together insights from word-formation theory, phraseology and theory of grammar and aims to contribute to the understanding of the lexicon, both from a language-specific and cross-linguistic perspective.

Ferenc Kiefer/Boglárka Németh

Compounds and multi-word expressions in Hungarian

The notion of compounding is notoriously difficult to define and there are hardly any universally accepted criteria for determining what a compound is. In the present chapter we will make a distinction between prototypical compounds and non-prototypical compounds. The latter but not the former are syntactically separable. All compounds are right-headed and are inflected as a whole. Moreover, according to the received view compounds express a conceptual unit though it is not easy to define what exactly this means. Finally, typically only the first syllable of a compound bears stress.

Compounding is a rather late development in the history of Hungarian. Though compounds can be found sporadically before the 18th century, during the language reform (end of 18th and beginning of 19th century) new compounds were massively created partly by using existing patterns and partly by loans mainly from German. This explains why productive patterns of root (endocentric) compounds are – as far as the categories involved are concerned – identical in Hungarian and German.190

The structure of our chapter is as follows: in the first part of the chapter we are going to provide an overview of productive compounding patterns, i. e. root compounds, morphologically marked compounds, deverbal compounds and coordinative compounds. Section 2 is devoted to the description of compound-like phrases in Hungarian, i. e. preverb + verb constructions and bare noun + verb constructions. Finally, Section 3 summarizes the main conclusions of the chapter.

1Prototypical compounds

1.1Root compounds

Let us first have a look at root compounds. A root compound is a compound whose head is not deverbal or whose non-head does not have the function of argument of the verb from which the head is derived. The productive patterns involve nouns and adjectives only, there are no productive patterns with adverbs and/ or verbs. All endocentric compounds in Hungarian are right-headed and are formed by juxtaposition of the relevant lexical items. No morphological markers appear between the constituents of root compounds. (1a–d) shows the chart of productive patterns.191,192

(1a)	N + N
	város+háza
	‘city hall’
	tök+mag
	‘pumpkin seed’
(1b)	A + N
	kis+autó
	‘small car’
	meleg+ágy
	‘hotbed’
(1c)	N + A
	kő+kemény
	‘stone hard’
	oszlop+magas
	‘pillar high’
(1d)	A + A
	sötét+zöld
	‘dark green’
	bal+liberális
	‘left-liberal’

Recently a fifth pattern seems to be gaining ground in addition to the ones shown in (1a–d), namely the pattern N + V. It can be argued, however, that the corresponding compounds are (at least in the majority of cases) backformations from the corresponding deverbal compounds. For some examples, cf. (2a–c).193

(2a)	N + V
	gép+ír
	machine write
	‘write on a typewriter’
	from gép+ír-ás194
	machine writing
	‘typing’
(2b)	ház+kutat
	house search (verb)
	from ház+kutat-ás
	house search (noun)
(2c)	tömeg+közlekedik
	mass run
	from tömeg+közleked-és
	mass/public transportation

Similar examples are legion. It should be noted, however, that compounds such as (2a–c) are more frequent in everyday and newspaper language than in literary language.

1.2Morphologically marked compounds

Compounds in Hungarian may be morphologically marked or morphologically unmarked. In the first case the morphological marker may appear either on the first or on the second member of the compound, e. g. újjá+épít (új ‘new’ + -já ‘translative case suffix’ + épít ‘build’) ‘reconstruct’, tévét néz195 (tévé ‘television’ + t ‘accusative case suffix’ + néz ‘look, watch’) ‘watch television’. In such cases the head of the compound is always a V and the nonhead is a syntactic or semantic argument of the verb. Note that neither újjá nor tévét are independent lexical items. Moreover syntactic rules may manipulate the internal structure of such compounds, in other words these compounds must be considered non-prototypical.

The morphological marker appears on the second member of the compound if it is derived from a possessive construction, e. g. város+háza (város ‘city’ + ház ‘house’ + -a ‘possessive suffix’) ‘city hall’, tojás+fehérje (tojás ‘egg’ + fehér ‘white’ + -je ‘possessive suffix’) ‘egg-white’. Neither can the members of such compounds be separated by syntactic rules. In this sense they belong to prototypical rather than to non-prototypical compounds. Note that the second member of such compounds is not an independent word: *háza, *fehérje.196 Though such compounds are rather frequent, it is unclear to what extent the pattern is productive and/ or rule-governed.

Another case where the second member of the compound is morphologically marked are N+A compounds in which the head is derived from a past participle. In such compounds the participle is suffixed by the 3P personal suffix and the nonhead is interpreted as a kind of causer, i. e. of being the cause of the eventuality, normally referred to as Natural Force.

(3a)	vihar+ver-t-e
	storm+beat-PTCP-3SG
	‘storm-beaten’
(3b)	víz+mos-t-a
	water+wash-PTCP-3SG
	‘water-lashed’

Once again the participial head ad...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Titelseite
• Impressum
• Inhalt
• Compounds and multi-word expressions in the languages of Europe
• Compounds and multi-word expressions in English
• Compounds and multi-word expressions in German
• Compounds and multi-word expressions in Dutch
• Compounds and multi-word expressions in French
• Compounds and multi-word expressions in Italian
• Compounds and multi-word expressions in Spanish
• Compounds and multi-word expressions in Greek
• Compounds and multi-word expressions in Russian
• Compounds and multi-word expressions in Polish
• Compounds and multi-word expressions in Finnish
• Compounds and multi-word expressions in Hungarian