In the field of comparative German-Dutch linguistics, there is a preconception that AN-compounds are much more productive in German than in Dutch (Booij 2019: 10, Hüning 2004: 160). After analyzing...Show moreIn the field of comparative German-Dutch linguistics, there is a preconception that AN-compounds are much more productive in German than in Dutch (Booij 2019: 10, Hüning 2004: 160). After analyzing a list of German and Dutch AN-compounds, this does not seem true. Both languages have a substantial number of AN-compounds. In the framework of Construction Morphology, the productivity of a pattern is defined as the openness of one ore more ‘slots’ (Booij 2010, Jackendoff & Audring 2020). AN-compounds have two slots: in the first slot we find adjectives, in the second slot we find nouns. A pattern is productive if the slots are open for new words, so new combinations (new AN-compounds) can easily be made and understood. In this MA thesis, the lists of attested German and Dutch AN-compounds, collected from the Celex database (http://celex.mpi.nl), will be analyzed for each variable slot (A and N respectively). The goal is to find out which of the slots in the [AN]N pattern is more open and to identify potential restrictions for each slot. We could assume that some adjectives are more frequent than others, for instance that there are a lot of compounds which start with half-/ Halb- but not so many with the Dutch adjective astraal- or the German adjective achter-. This will raise the question whether the pattern [AN]N is productive or if it is just the subpattern [half-N]N and if those subpatterns influence our perception of the productivity of the [AN]N pattern. It might be possible that those subpatterns are in fact the productive ones instead of the [AN]N pattern itself. In this thesis I will research how productive the compounding of adjectives and nouns is in German and Dutch, what the differences are between the two languages and what the subpatterns tell us about the productivity of a word formation.Show less
This master’s thesis focuses on comparing and contrasting Property Concept Words (PCWs) in six Amazonian languages. PCWs are usually referred as ‘adjectives’ in Indo-European languages, words that...Show moreThis master’s thesis focuses on comparing and contrasting Property Concept Words (PCWs) in six Amazonian languages. PCWs are usually referred as ‘adjectives’ in Indo-European languages, words that have a semantic denotation of properties or features. However, they vary in different languages regarding whether they belong to a morphosyntactically distinct word class or not. In other words, whether these PCWs should all be included in an adjectival class (if exist) or some may be categorized in subclasses of nouns or verbs. In my sample of six Amazonian languages: Panare, Hup, Karajá, Jarawara, Kwaza and Cavineña, PCWs are found behaving differently in each language. When discussing whether adjectives should be classified as a separate syntactic class or not, semantics is quite often involved. Moreover, the introduction of copula clauses complicates this discussion. Payne & Payne (2013) argues for a separate word class of AD-forms instead of adjectives in Panare to represent words that are usually characterized as either ‘adjectives’ or ‘adverbs’ in Indo-European languages. However, AD-forms are quite similar to nouns in Panare. Epps (2008) agrees on a closed set of adjectives in Hup that is quite similar to verbs regarding their TAM-marking, and similar to bound nouns when occurring postnominally. According to Ribeiro (2012), Karajá lacks an independent part of speech for ‘adjectives’ where PCWs are considered a subclass of nouns without much difference from other types of nouns. Dixon’s (2004) grammar distinguishes a small closed class of adjectives from other word classes in Jarawara and at the same time argues that PCWs can also be expressed through possessed nouns and stative verbs. In Kwaza, Van der Voort (2004) claims that it is unnecessary to exhibit a distinct class of adjectives whereas PCWs behave quite similar to verbs. Lastly, Guillaume (2008) introduces two distinct subclasses of adjectives, predicative and attributive adjectives in Cavineña, where the former function as copula complements and the latter are postnominal modifiers. The six languages vary in whether adjectives should be identified as a distinct word class or not. Even though these analysis may be of different approaches, PCWs show certain similarities across languages: they can both modify nouns and function in predicative constructions; they usually can take TAM-markers; the noun-modifier construction most likely parallels possessive construction. In a nutshell, these Amazonian languages are different from prototypical Indo-European languages regarding the syntactic distribution of PCWs. However, within Amazonian languages, syntactic variability of PCWs is large but possibly limited.Show less
This thesis reports about two studies on what the preferred order of stacked adjectives is in noun phrases, according to native speakers of English and Dutch. Recent theoretical research on this...Show moreThis thesis reports about two studies on what the preferred order of stacked adjectives is in noun phrases, according to native speakers of English and Dutch. Recent theoretical research on this topic (Scott 2002, Truswell 2004, 2009, Szendrői 2010, 2013) use this domain of investigation as a basis for theoretical claims concerning the nature of adjectives (being specifiers vs. adjuncts) and NP-internal displacement, but they seriously lack when it comes to reporting about native speaker consultation about the data. This thesis aims to fill this gap by presenting the results of two online questionnaire studies of adjectival ordering, specifically testing the proposals above against native speaker judgements in two contexts: noun phrases with neutral orders and those with contrastive contexts. The results predominantly validate the findings of Truswell (2004, 2009) as opposed to those of Scott (2002) when it comes to neutral orders, and the claims of Szendrői (2010, 2013) as opposed to Truswell (2005) when it comes to contrastive orders. This in turn suggests that (i) adjectives should not be thought of as specifiers but rather as adjuncts, and (ii) some types of A-bar displacement in noun phrases are optional.Show less
