Skip to main content
Log in

Peeling away the layers of the onion: on layers, inflection and domains in Icelandic compounds

The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In Icelandic there are two different types of modifiers within compounds, inflected and uninflected, and the inflected modifiers appear to be peripheral to the uninflected ones. In this article, it is proposed that this is an effect of compounding being required to combine elements of the same type or size. The inflected modifiers, containing more structure than the uninflected ones, cannot be merged at the same level as uninflected modifiers. This article also explores two other issues of domainhood within the compound. One being the establishment of domains for morphophonological processes, where it is proposed that the boundaries of morphophonological domains are determined by the edge of the extended projection of the root. The second one being that of special meaning, where it is shown that exocentric compounds with inflected modifiers have exclusively non-compositional meaning, whereas exocentric compounds with uninflected modifiers could have either compositional or non-compositional meaning.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Alexiadou, Artemis. 2014. Roots don’t take complements. Theoretical Linguistics 40(3–4): 287–297.

    Google Scholar 

  • Allen, Margaret Reece. 1978. Morphological investigations. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Connecticut.

  • Anderson, Stephen. 1974. The organization of phonology. New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Árnason, Kristján. 1985. Icelandic word stress and metrical phonology. Studia Linguistica 39(2): 93–129.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Árnason, Kristján. 1987. The stress of prefixes and suffixes in Icelandic. In Nordic Prosody IV. Papers from a symposium, ed. Kristen Gregersen, and Hans Basbøll, 137–146. Odense: Odense University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Árnason, Kristján. 2005. Hljóð. Reykjavík: Almenna bókafélagið.

    Google Scholar 

  • Árnason, Kristján. 2009. Phonological domains in Modern Icelandic. In Phonological domains: Universals and deviations, ed. Janet Grijzenhout, and Bariş Kabak, 283–314. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Árnason, Kristján. 2011. The phonology of Icelandic and Faroese. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies Written Language Archive (Ritmálssafn Orðabókar Háskólans. (n.d.) The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies. Accessed November 19, 2012 from www.arnastofnun.is/page/ritmal.

  • Baker, Mark. 1988. Incorporation: A theory of grammatical function changing. Cambridge, MA: MIT.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bauer, Laurie. 1977. On teaching compound nouns. Moderna Språk 71: 325–336.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bauer, Laurie. 2009. Typology of compounds. In The Oxford handbook of compounding, ed. Rochelle Lieber, and Pavol Štekauer, 343–356. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo. 2013. The Spanish lexicon stores stems with theme vowels, not roots with inflectional class features. Probus 25(1): 3–103.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bhatt, Rajesh, and Martin Walkow. 2013. Locating agreement in grammar: An argument from agreement in conjunctions. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 31(4): 951–1013.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bjarnadóttir, Kristín. 1990. Stofnhlutagreining samsettra orða. B.A. thesis, Reykjavík: University of Iceland.

  • Bjarnadóttir, Kristín. 1996. Afleiðsla og samsetning. M.A. thesis, Reykjavík: University of Iceland.

  • Bjarnadóttir, Kristín. 2000. Þágufallssamsetningar í ritmálssafni Orðabókar Háskólans. Reykjavík: Orðabók Háskólans. http://www.lexis.hi.is/kristinb/datsams.html.

  • Bloomfield, Leonard. 1933. Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bobaljik, Jonathan. 1994. What does adjacency do? MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 22: 1–32.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bobaljik, Jonathan. 2000. The ins and outs of contextual allomorphy. University of Maryland Working Papers in Linguistics 10: 35–71.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bobaljik, Jonathan. 2002. Realizing Germanic inflection: Why morphology does not drive syntax. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 6: 129–167.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bobaljik, Jonathan. 2012. Universals in comparative morphology: Suppletion, superlatives and the structure of words. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bobaljik, Jonathan, and Höskuldur Thráinsson. 1998. Two heads aren’t always better than one. Syntax 1(1): 37–71.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bobaljik, Jonathan, and Susi Wurmbrand. 2005. The domain of agreement. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 23: 809–865.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bobaljik, Jonathan, and Susi Wurmbrand. 2013. Suspension across domains. In Distributed morphology today: Morphemes for Morris Halle, ed. Ora Matushanski, and Alec Marantz, 185–198. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Bošković, Željko. 2005. On the locality of left branch extraction and the structure of NP. Studia Linguistica 59: 1–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bošković, Željko. 2013. Phases beyond clauses. In Nominal structures in Slavic and beyond, ed. Lilia Schürcks, Anastasia Giannakidou, and Urtzi Etxeberria, 75–128. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bošković, Željko. 2014. Now I’m a phase, now I’m not a phase: On the variability of phases with extraction and ellipsis. Linguistic Inquiry 45(1): 27–89.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, N. 1993. Minimalist program for linguistic theory. In The view from building 20, ed. Kenneth Hale, and Samuel J. Keyser, 1–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by phase. In Ken Hale: A life in language, ed. Michael Kenstowicz, 1–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, Noam. 2013. Problems of projection. Lingua 130: 33–49.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, Noam. 2000. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. In Step by step: Essays on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik, ed. R. Martin, David Micheals, and Juan Uriagereka, 89–155. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, Noam, and Morris Halle. 1968. The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row.

    Google Scholar 

  • Citko, Barbara. 2006. On the nature of merge: External merge, internal merge, and parallel merge. Linguistic Inquiry 36(4): 475–496.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Corver, Norbert. 1992. Left branch extraction. In Proceedings of NELS 22, ed. K. Broderick, 67–84.

  • Embick, David. 2010. Localism Versus globalism in morphology and phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Embick, David, and Rolf Noyer. 2007. Distributed morphology and the syntax/morphology interface. In The Oxford handbook of linguistic interfaces, ed. Gillian Ramchand, and Charles Reiss, 289–324. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Falk, Yehuda N. 1991. Bracketing paradoxes without brackets. Lingua 84(1): 25–42.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Faarlund, J.T. 2009. On the history of definiteness marking in Scandinavian. Journal of Linguistics 45(3): 617–639.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fukui, Naoki. 1986. A Theory of category projection and its applications. PhD. Dissertation. MIT.

  • Gouskova, Maria. 2010. The Phonology of boundaries and secondary stress in Russian compounds. The Linguistic Review 17(4): 387–448.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gouskova, Maria, and Kevin Roon. 2009. Interface constraints and frequency in Russian compound stress. Proceedings of FASL 17: 49–63.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grimshaw, Jane. 2000. Locality and extended projection. In Lexical specification and insertion, ed. Martin Everaert, and Jane Grimshaw, 115–133. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Halle, Morris, and Alec Marantz. 1993. Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection. In The view from Building 20: Essays in linguistics in honor of Sylvain Bromberger, ed. Kenneth Hale, and Samuel Kayser, 111–176. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Halle, Morris, and Alec Marantz. 1994. Some key features of distributed morphology. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 21: 275–288.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harðarson, Gísli Rúnar. 2014. Tumbling down the Icelandic Noun Phrase. Ms. University of Connecticut. [https://gislihardarson.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/generals-ii-final.pdf].

  • Harley, Heidi. 2002. Possession and the double object construction. Linguistic Variation Yearbook 2(1): 31–70.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harley, Heidi. 2005. One-replacement, unaccusativity, acategorial roots, and Bare Phrase Structure. Harvard Working Papers in Linguistics 11: 59–78.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harley, Heidi. 2009. Compounding in distributed morphology. In The Oxford handbook of compounding, ed. Rochelle Lieber, and Pavol Štekauer, 129–144. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harley, Heidi. 2014. On the identity of roots. Theoretical Linguistics 40(3–4): 225–276.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harley, Heidi, and Rolf Noyer. 2003. Distributed morphology. The second Glot international state-of-the-article book, 463–496. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Indriðason, Þorsteinn. 1994. Regluvirkni í orðasafni og utan þess: Um lexíkalska hljóðkerfisfræði íslensku. Reykjavík: Málvísindastofnun Háskóla Íslands.

    Google Scholar 

  • Indriðason, Þorsteinn. 1999. Um eignarfallssamsetningar og aðrar samsetningar í íslensku. Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði 21: 107–150.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jackendoff, Ray. 2009. Compounding in the parallel architecture and conceptual semantics. In The Oxford handbook of compounding, ed. Rochelle Lieber, and Pavol Štekauer, 105–128. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, Kyle. 1990. On the syntax of inflectional paradigms. Madison: University of Wisconsin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, Kyle. 2007. LCA + alignment = RNR. Paper presented at Workshop on Coordination, Subordination and Ellipsis, University of Tübingen. [http://people.umass.edu/kbj/homepage/Content/ tuebingen.pdf].

  • Jóhannesson, Alexander. 1929. Die Komposita im Isländischen. Vol. 4. Vísindafélag Íslendinga.

  • Jónsson, Baldur. 1984. Samsett orð með samsetta liði. Fáeinar athugasemdir. In Festskrift til Einar Lundeby, 3. oktober 1984, eds. Bernt Fossestøl, Kjell Ivar Vannebø, Kjell Venås & Finn-Erik Vinje,158–174. Oslo: Novus Forlag.

  • Jónsson, Baldur. 1987. Íslensk orðmyndun. Andvari 112: 88–103.

    Google Scholar 

  • Julien, Marit. 2003. Double definiteness in Scandinavian. Nordlyd 31(1): 230–244.

    Google Scholar 

  • Julien, Marit. 2005. Nominal phrases from a Scandinavian perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kenstowicz, Michael, and Charles Kisserberth. 1979. Generative phonology. New York: Acdemic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kester, Ellen-Petra. 1996. The nature of adjectival inflection. Ph.D. Dissertation. Utrecht: University of Utrecht.

  • Kiparsky, Paul. 1984. On the lexical phonology of Icelandic. In Nordic Prosody III: Papers from a symposium, ed. Claes-Christian Elert, Iréne Johansson, and Eva Strangert, 135–164. Umeå: University of Umeå.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kratzer, Angelika. 1996. Severing the external argument from its verb. In Phrase structure and the lexicon, ed. Johan Rooryck, and L. Zaring, 109–138. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Krott, Andrea, R. Robert Schreuder, Harald Baayen, and Wolfgang U. Dressler. 2007. Analogical effects on linking elements in German compound words. Language and Cognitive Processes 22(1): 25–57.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kvaran, Guðrun. 2005. Orð, vol. II. Reykjavík: Almenna Bókafélagið.

    Google Scholar 

  • Larson, Richard K. 1988. On the double object construction. Linguistic Inquiry 19(3): 335–391.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lebeaux, David. 1988. Language acquisition and the form of the grammar. Ph.D. Dissertation. Amherst: University of Massachusetts.

  • Lieber, Rochelle. 2005. English word-formation processes. In Handbook of word-formation, ed. Pavol Štekauer, and Rochelle Lieber, 375–427. Dordrecht: Springer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Lieber, Rochelle. 2004. Morphology and lexical semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Lobeck, Anne C. 1995. Ellipsis: Functional heads, licensing, and identification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marantz, Alec. 1997. No escape from syntax: Don’t try morphological analysis in the privacy of your own lexicon. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 4(2): 201–216.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marantz, Alec. 2001. Words. In West coast conference on formal linguistics. Los Angeles: University of Southern California. http://web.mit.edu/marantz/Public/EALING/WordsWCCFL.pdf.

  • Marantz, Alec. 2007. Phases and words. In Phases in the theory of grammar, ed. Sook-Hee Choe, Dong-Wee Yang, Yang-Soon Kim, Sung-Hun Kim, and Alec Marantz, 191–222. Seoul: Dong In.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marantz, Alec. 2013. Locality domains for contextual allomorphy across the interfaces. In Distributed morphology today: Morphemes for Morris Halle, ed. Ora Matushanski, and Alec Marantz, 95–115. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • McIntyre, Andrew. 2009. Synthetic compounds and argument structure. http://www3.unine.ch/repository/ default/content/sites/andrew.mcintyre/files/shared/mcintyre/synth.cpd.stuttgart.pdf.

  • Merchant, Jason. 2001. The syntax of silence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mithun, Marianne. 2010. Constraints on compounds and incorporation. In Cross-disciplinary issues in compounding, ed. Sergio Scalise, and Irene Vogel, 37–56. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Moskal, Beata. 2015a. Domains at the border: Between morphology and phonology. Ph.D. Dissertation. Storrs: University of Connecticut.

  • Moskal, Beata. 2015b. Limits on allomorphy: A case study in nominal suppletion. Linguistic Inquiry 45(2): 363.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Müller, Stefan. 2003. The morphology of German particle verbs: Solving the bracketing paradox. Journal of Linguistics 39(2): 247–266.

    Google Scholar 

  • Neef, Martin. 2009. IE, Germanic: German. In The Oxford handbook of compounding, ed. Rochelle Lieber, and Pavol Štekauer, 386–399. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Newell, Heather. 2005. Bracketing paradoxes and particle verbs: A late adjunction analysis. In Proceedings of ConSOLE XIII, ed. Luis Vicente, and Erik Schoorlemmer, 249–272. Leiden: University of Leiden.

    Google Scholar 

  • Newell, Heather. 2008. Aspects of the morphology and phonology of phases. Ph.D. Dissertation. McGill University.

  • Nissenbaum, Jonathan. 2000. Investigations of covert phrase movement. Ph.D. Dissertation. MIT.

  • Nübling, Damaris, and Renata Szczepaniak. 2008. On the way from morphology to phonology: German linking elements and the role of the phonological word. Morphology 18: 1–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nübling, Damaris, and Renata Szczepaniak. 2013. Linking elements in German origin, change, functionalization. Morphology 23: 67–89.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pesetsky, David. 1985. Morphology and logical form. Linguistic Inquiry 16(2): 193–246.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pfaff, Alexander. 2014. Inside and outside—Before and after: Weak and strong adjectives in Icelandic. In Adjectives in Germanic and Romance: Variation and change, ed. Freek Van den Velde, Petra Sleeman, and Harry Perridon, 217–244. Amsterdam: Linguistic Aktuell.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Piggott, Glyne, and Lisa Travis. 2013. Adjuncts within words and complex heads. In Syntax and its limits, ed. Raffaella Folli, Christina Sevdali, and Robert Truswell, 157–174. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pollock, Jean-Yves. 1989. Verb movement, universal grammar, and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 20(3): 365–424.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pylkkänen, Line. 2008. Introducing arguments. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Roeper, Thomas, and Muffy E.A. Siegel. 1978. A lexical transformation for verbal compounds. Linguistic Inquiry 9(2): 199–260.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rögnvaldsson, Eiríkur. 1990. Íslensk orðhlutafræði. Reykjavík: Málvísindastofnun Háskóla Íslands.

    Google Scholar 

  • Selkirk, Elisabeth O. 1982. The syntax of words. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sigurðsson, Halldór Ármann. 2006. The Icelandic noun phrase: Central traits. Arkiv för nordisk filologi 121: 193–236.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sigurðsson, Halldór Ármann. 2012. Case variation: Viruses and star wars. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 35(3): 313–342.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Snædal, Magnús. 1992. Hve langt má orðið vera. Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði 14: 173–207.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stepanov, Arthur. 2001. Cyclic domains in syntactic theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Working Papers in Linguistics.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thráinsson, Höskuldur. 2007. The syntax of Icelandic. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Thráinsson, Höskuldur, Hjalmar P. Petersen, Jógvan i Lon Jacobsen, and Zakaris Svabo Hansen. 2004. Faroese: An overview and reference grammar. Tórshavn: Føroya Fróðskaparfelag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vangsnes, Øystein A. 1999. Identification and the role of morphology in the Scandinavian noun phrase. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Bergen.

  • Warren, Beatrice. 1978. Semantic patterns of noun-noun compounds, vol. 41. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wiltschko, Martina. 2008. The syntax of non-inflectional plural marking. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 26(3): 639–694.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wurmbrand, Susi. 2013. Stripping and topless complements. Ms. University of Connecticut. Lingbuzz. http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001779.

  • Wurmbrand, Susi. 2014. Tense and aspect in English infinitives. Linguistic Inquiry 45(3): 403–447.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zaenen, Annie, Joan Maling, and Höskuldur Thráinsson. 1985. Case and grammatical functions: The Icelandic passive. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 3(4): 441–483.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zwanenburg, Wiecher. 1990. Compounding and inflection. In Contemporary morphology, ed. Wolfgang U. Dressler, Hans C. Luschutsky, Oskar E. Pfeiffer, and John R. Rennison, 133–138. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gísli Rúnar Harðarson.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Harðarson, G.R. Peeling away the layers of the onion: on layers, inflection and domains in Icelandic compounds. J Comp German Linguistics 19, 1–47 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-016-9078-5

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-016-9078-5

Keywords

Navigation