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