Plurals as modifiers in Dutch and English noun-noun compounds express plurality in production

Abstract

The present study investigates the relation between conceptual plurality and the occurrence of a plural morpheme in novel Dutch and English noun-noun compounds. Using a picture-naming task, we compared the naming responses of native Dutch speakers and native English speakers to pictures depicting either one or multiple instances of the same object serving as a possible modifier in a novel noun-noun compound. While the speakers of both languages most frequently produced novel compounds containing a singular modifier, they also used compounds containing a plural modifier and did this more often to describe a picture with several instances of an object than to describe a picture with one instance of the object. Speakers of English incorporated some regular plurals into the noun-noun compounds they produced. These results contradict the words-and-rules theory of Pinker (1999) and also the semantic constraints for compounding put forth by Alegre and Gordon (1996). Interestingly, it appears, however, that the acceptability constraints put forth by Haskell, MacDonald, and Seidenberg (2003) apply to the production of compounds.Nominal compounding is a productive way of creating new words. Two or more existing nouns can be combined to create a single novel noun, like slipper with bandit to form bandit slipper in English or bandietenslipper in Dutch.The formation of compound words in Dutch and English differs, however. In English, the modifier typically takes the singular (mouse-eater and rat-eater) or an 54 Arina Banga, Esther Hanssen, Anneke Neijt, and Robert Schreuder irregular plural (mice-eater); the regular plural form is rare for such a modifier in English, if not ungrammatical (*rats-eater). In Dutch, the regular plural is quite common in such modifiers: boek 'book' + kast 'case' = boekenkast, with en as linking element. This element is homophonous with the plural suffix -en (Hanssen, Banga, Neijt, & Schreuder, 2012). The other main linking element in Dutch is s. The present paper focuses only on linking element en. Dutch Noun-noun CompoundsIn Dutch, certain compound words always appear with a so-called linking element en, which is identical to the regular plural suffix in Dutch (Baayen, Schreuder, De Jong, & Krott, 2002). In Dutch, thus, one can have boekenkast 'book + en + case' and boekenlegger 'book' + en + 'mark' but also boektitel 'book title' and boekhandel 'book shop' . Interestingly, certain Dutch compounds may exhibit two forms, one with en and one without. For example, both viskom 'fish bowl' and vissenkom 'fish' + en + 'bowl' are grammatical in Dutch and refer to the same concept: a round bowl with one or more fish in it.The Dutch linking element en is homophonous with the Dutch plural suffix -en (Hanssen et al., 2012), and the question arises whether this is a coincidence or not. Stated differently: Are the linking en and plural -en just homophones in Dutch or can words in their plural forms serve as modifiers in Dutch compounds? According to Mattens (1970), linking elements are suffixes that do not ex...

Morphology constrains native and non-native word formation in different ways

“…For example, Wörterliste 'words list' is as acceptable as the corresponding compound with a singular modifier (Wortliste 'word list'); Autosliste 'cars list' , however, with an -s plural non-head sounds much worse than Autoliste 'car list'. Hence, while the constraint against -s plural non-heads holds for both English and German, the constraint against non-heads with plural number semantics applies in English but not in German; see also Banga, Hanssen, Neijt & Schreuder (2013) for the relation between conceptual plurality and compound-internal plurals in Dutch and English. 1 In language acquisition and processing research, evidence from the pluralsin-compounds effect has played a crucial role in a number of broader theoretical controversies.…”