Naslov
Synthetic Compounds and Thematic Roles – a Construction Morphology Analysis of Word-Formation in Croatian and English

Autori
Malenica, Frane

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, neobjavljeni rad, znanstveni

Skup
4. ZADARSKI LINGVISTIČKI FORUM. Istraživačke metode u primijenjenoj lingvistici

Mjesto i datum
Zadar, Hrvatska, 09.09.-10.09.2017

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Domaća recenzija

Ključne riječi
construction morphology, synthetic compounds, thematic roles, word‐formation

Sažetak
The aim of my PhD topic is to investigate the formation of synthetic compounds in English and Croatian (e.g. truck driver, house builder in English and najmodavac, brodograditelj in Croatian) and the possible argument structure configurations within them in terms of thematic roles relations between the deverbal head and the nominal complement. The study of argument structure in synthetic compounds has a rich history in contemporary linguistic theory and one of the first major generalizations to be put forward was the so‐ called First Sister Principle in Roeper and Siegel (1978), later refined and restructured in various other works (inter alia, Lieber 1980 & 1983, Rappaport Hovav & Levin 1992, DiSciullo & Williams 1987, Selkirk 1982). This strand of research is contrasted by the model of “Competition between Syntax and Morphology” proposed in Ackema & Neelman (2004), and argued for by, among others, Melloni & Bisetto (2010). However, the common denominator in all of these studies is the assumption that the syntactic structure is the underlying factor responsible for the creation of these compounds and the possible argument structure configurations, which seems to lead to categorical exclusion of some thematic roles, especially among the first strand. My intention is to approach this issue from the perspective of Construction Morphology as put forward by Booij (inter alia, 2005 &2010) and Gaeta (2010). I aim to use data from Croatian and English corpora to create a tentative hierarchy of thematic roles attested as possible and use experimental data gathered via IBEX Farm to verify the results obtained by the corpus analysis. I intend to show that a constructional approach based on the conceptual structure of the base verbs offers more predictive and explanatory power in comparison to syntax‐oriented accounts and I hope to achieve this goal by answering the following research questions: 1. Which thematic roles can appear as arguments of the head in verbal synthetic compounds? 2. Which thematic roles are more acceptable and which are less acceptable, i.e. what does the hierarchy of acceptability of thematic roles look like? 3. Does the hierarchy of thematic roles apply to all verbs equally or is it verb‐dependent? 4. Do Croatian and English synthetic compounds differ in terms of possible thematic roles and to what extent?

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija

POVEZANOST RADA