Compounding and construction morphology

schema. That is, both the instantiation relation and the part of-relation are based on paradigmatic relationships between words in the lexicon. The morphological structure assigned to the word sneeuwwit is a projection of such paradigmatic relationships on the syntagmatic axis of word structure. One advantage of this approach to word formation is that generalizations about subpatterns can be expressed in a straightforward way. The following generalization holds for the set of Dutch endocentric compounds (cf. Booij 2002a: Chapter 4 for the relevant data): only NN compounding (and under certain conditions to be discussed below, VN compounding as well) is recursive, both in the head position and the non-head position, that is, their constituents can be compounds themselves. Other types of endocentric compounds do not allow for recursivity. For instance, an adjectival compound such as muislichtgrijs ‘mouse light grey’ is felt as odd, although both muisgrijs ‘mouse grey’ and lichtgrijs ‘light grey’ are existing adjectival compounds of Dutch. Recursive NN compounding is illustrated in (5): (5) left constituent recursive: [[[[ziekte]N[verzuim]N]N[bestrijdings]N]N[programma]N]N illness absence fight program ‘program for reducing absence due to illness’ [[[aardappel]N [schil]V]V[mesje]N]N potato peel knife ‘knife for peeling potatoes’ right constituent recursive: [[zomer]N [[broed]V[gebied]N]N]N summer breed area ‘breeding area for the summer’ both constituents recursive: [[[grond]N[water]N]N[[over]P[last]N]N]N ground water over burden ‘groundwater problems’ Another example of a specific property of a subset of the Dutch endocentric compounds is that compounds with a nominal head allow certain types of phrases to function as the non-head constituent whereas other compounds do not. For instance, whereas oudemannenhuis ‘old men’s home’ is well-formed, an adjectival compound such as oudemannenzwak ‘lit. old men weak, weak as old men’ is odd. In short, we must be able to state generalizations about subclasses of compounds without obliterating the commonalities of all Dutch endocentric compounds. Generalizations about subsets of words can be expressed in a hierarchical lexicon, by assuming intermediate levels of abstraction in between the most general template and the