From noun to evaluative adjective: conversion or debonding? Dutch top and its equivalents in German

In this study, we address the ways in which nouns can give rise to new adjectives in Dutch and German. More specifically, the focus is on words with an evaluative meaning that can be used in a wide range of morphological and syntactic constructions in recent (and informal) language use (e.g., German Hammervorstellung ‘very good performance’, hammer film ‘fantastic film’). In the literature, two distinct hypotheses can be found to account for the adjectival uses of such evaluative nouns: the ‘debonding’ hypothesis implies that the intensifying bound morpheme has developed into a free morpheme;... Mehr ...