A note on the function of Dutch linking elements

Abstract

Many Dutch noun—noun compounds contain linking elements, namely either -s- (e.g., schaap + s + kooi ‘sheep fold’) or one of the orthographic variants -en- (e.g., boek + en + kast ‘book shelf’) and -e- (zonn + e + schijn ‘sun shine’). In this paper, we will refer to these variants as -en- Of the 23,000 Dutch noun—noun compounds that are listed in the celex lexical database (Baayen, Piepenbrock, & Gulikers, 1995), 31% contain either a linking -s- (20%) or a linking -en-(11%). This distribution is different for compounds in which a derived noun appears as left constituent (17% of the 23,000 compounds). Derived left constituents almost always occur with a linking element (-s-: 62.7%; -en- 32.8%; -ø-: 4.6%). Linking elements are thus typical for derived forms, although they also occur with other left constituents. In addition to this general preference of derived forms to occur with linking elements, specific suffixes also tend to occur with particular linking elements. For instance, the diminutive suffix -tje and its allomorphs are always followed by the linking -s-.The suffix -heid (similar to English -ness), even though it appears with all three linking possibilities (-s-, -en-,and -ø-), evidences a very strong preference: 99% of all such compounds select -s-. These strong restrictions are also effective in the case of novel compounds (Krott, Baayen, & Schreuder, 2001; Krott, Schreuder, & Baayen, in press).