Debonding of Dutch and German compounds

This study focuses on Dutch and German adjectives (and occasionally adverbs) that arise through "debonding" from N+N- or N+A-compounds. Debonding is a type of degrammaticalization defined by Norde as "a composite change whereby a bound morpheme in a specific linguistic context becomes a free morpheme" (Norde 2009:186). It typically involves processes such as severance (i.e. decrease in bondedness), flexibilization (i.e. increase in syntactic freedom), scope expansion and recategorialization. In previous studies (Amiot & Van Goethem 2012; Van Goethem & De Smet 2012), it has been shown t... Mehr ...