Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1999, Síða 151

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SUMMARY
‘On Genitive Compounds and Other Compounds in Icelandic’
Keywords: morphological theory, inflection, derivation, compounding, Icelandic
The purpose of this article is to explore the interrelations between compound types in
Iceiandic, with special emphasis on compounds with “inflected” (or genitive) first
Part. Icelandic grammars traditionally distinguish between three kinds of compounds:
(1) a. Stem compounds, where the first part looks like a bare stem. Example hús-
bátur ‘house-boat’.
b. Genitive compounds, where the first part seems to consist of an inflected
(i.e. genitive) form. Example vél-ar-hljóð ‘ machine-sound’.
c. Joined compounds, where the first and second part of the compound are
bound together by a morpheme which does not seem to be (nor be derived
from) any kind of inflectional ending. Example: ráð-u-nautur ‘advisor’.
is often said that inflected first parts of compounds, as in (lb), are troublesome for
ar>y morphological theory. These compounds have been explained away, either by
stating that this type of inflection is in some sense irregular and hence applies prior to
cotnpounding (see among others Sproat 1985) or that these compounds are in fact two
words in a syntactic phrase that co-inflect (Di Sciullo and Williams 1987, Zwanen-
burg 1990). One very common type of genitive compounds in Icelandic is of special
theoretical interest here because neither of these explanations can account for it. It has
strong semantical and formal relations to syntactic phrases with genitive complem-
ents. This type of compounding is very productive and the first part of such com-
Pounds is identical to the genitive form of the corresponding word.
The theoretically and descriptively interesting questions discussed in this paper
include the following:
(2) a. Where (i.e. “where” in the grammar) and how are compounds in Icelandic
formed?
b. Does compounding in Icelandic provide evidence for the claim that some
morphological processes take place “in the syntax”?
The findings presented here point to the following: Stem compounds are formed in
ihe lexicon prior to inflection. That explains why their first part is uninflected. On the