Review of
Heinz J. Giegerich, Lexical structures. Compounding and the modules of grammar (Edinburgh Studies
in Theoretical Linguistics 1). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015. Pp. viii + 142. ISBN
9780748624614.
Reviewed by Geert Booij, University of Leiden
This book deals with two related topics: the difference between English compound nouns and phrases,
and the relation between lexicon and syntax in a lexicalist approach to word formation.
As to the first topic, Heinz Giegerich raises the question whether the difference between tóy
shop (a shop where toys are sold) and toy shóp (a shop which is a toy) can be characterized as the
distinction between compound and phrase, parallel to a dáncing instructor (someone who teaches
dancing, a compound) versus a dancing instrúctor (an instructor who dances, a phrase). The relation to
the second topic is that, if certain word combinations are phrases but have at the same time lexical
status, the lexicalist position that syntax and lexicon form different modules of grammar has to be
weakened.
In the first chapter, a number of useful semantic categories are introduced for the
characterization of the semantic relation between modifier and head in N+N and in Adj+N
combinations. The most important classification for the argumentation of this monograph is the
distinction between ascriptive and associative attribution. For instance, in beautiful house there is
ascriptive attribution, as the property of being beautiful is ascribed to the head noun house. In the
Adj+N combination dental decay, on the other hand, we see associative attribution: the decay is not
qualified as dental, but the decay is related to the referent of dental, namely teeth. This semantic
distinction is well known from the linguistic literature, often under another label, the distinction
between qualitative and relational adjectives (Booij 2002b: 108-109).
Chapter 2 focuses on the morphology and lexical semantics of associative adjectives. Whereas
ascriptive adjectives can occur in predicative position, and be modified, as in a very beautiful house,
the house is beautiful, this does not hold for associative adjectives: *very dental decay, *the decay is
dental. Hence, one may conclude that ascriptive adjectives project adjectival phrases, but associative
adjectives do not. Giegerich argues that the Adj+N combinations with associative adjectives might
therefore be considered to be lexical in nature (p. 34). However, a test with pro-one-anaphora reveals
that they are not subject to Lexical Integrity, as we can have sentences like (p. 36):
(1) Is he a rural policeman or an urban one?
in which the part policeman is accessible for pro-one-replacement. Giegerich points out that the
location of main stress cannot be used to decide if a word combination is a compound or a phrase: not
all English compounds have forestress, and many Adj+N combinations of the type polar bear have
forestress.
A first comment on Giegerich’s reasoning is necessary here. From related Germanic languages
such as German and Dutch we can learn that Adj+N combinations with associative adjectives are
phrases, because they exhibit agreement between the adjective and the head. For instance, given the
assumption of Lexical Integrity (“syntactic rules cannot manipulate pieces of words”), the Dutch
construction de financiël-e adviseur ‘the financial advisor’ must be assumed to contain an independent
adjective financiëel, as it is inflected by means of the suffix-e. Hence, such Adj+N combinations
cannot be compounds (Booij 2002a; 2009; Schlücker 2014). English does not provide this evidence, as
English adjectives are not inflected. However, the corresponding data in related Germanic languages
make clear that the notions ‘word’ and ‘lexical item’ should not be identified: all words are lexical
items, but not all lexical items are words. The phrasal status of the English Adj+N combinations with
associative adjectives is confirmed by the pro-one-anaphora test.
Before taking up again this issue, Giegerich makes two detours. In Chapter 3 he provides a
lengthy, and very informative analysis of the stress pattern of English compounds, with a convincing
conclusion: the location of main stress cannot be used as a decisive criterion for determining if a word
combination is a compound or a phrase. In particular, compounds may have either forestress or final
stress, and Giegerich speaks of “the stress mess of compounds” (p. 75).
The second detour, in Chapter 4, is entitled: “Interlude: the porous nature of lexical
stratification”. In this chapter, Giegerich discusses the theory of lexical strata, in particular the idea
that the English lexicon consists of two strata. This topic has been dealt with extensively in the
linguistic literature, and the empirical and conceptual problems for this theory are well known (see
Booij 2000 and Bauer et al. 2013: Chapter 27). Giegerich is aware of these problems, but wants to
stick to the stratal theory. What he concludes is that the two strata partially overlap, and that some
morphological processes can apply in both strata. This leads Giegerich to a more general conclusion
concerning the organization of grammars: modules may partially overlap. Just as stratum 1 and 2 of
the English lexicon can partially overlap, so can stratum 2 and syntax: word combinations like dental
decay are lexical but at the same time phrasal in nature.
Giegerich’s discussion of the stratal overlap between stratum 1 and stratum 2 is not always
clear or convincing. An example of stratal overlap is the use of the noun-forming suffix -er in words
like fiddler and bottler. According to Giegerich, fiddler is bisyllabic, but bottler (presumably)
trisyllabic with a syllabic /l/ (but phonetic forms of these words are not given, so the reader is kept
uncertain about the data). This difference would follow from fiddler being formed on stratum 1, where
syllabicity of the /l/ is lost, and bottler on stratum 2, where the syllabicity of the /l/ of the base verb is
preserved. Giegerich argues that this corresponds with a difference in degree of semantic idiosyncrasy
of the resulting nouns, but these differences remain unclear (p. 85).
Chapter 5 returns to the main issue of this book, the distinction between compounds and
phrases, by broaching the issue of Lexical Integrity. One concern often related to Lexically Integrity is
whether phrases can be function as building blocks of words. First Giegerich seems to accept the
(empirically wrong) idea that only lexicalized phrases can appear within compounds. Later on, he
modifies this view by claiming that “English compounds can breach lexical integrity in the sense of
phrase-inside-compound if they are nonce formations, provided that information about the precise
nature of the semantic association of the head with the embedded phrase is given by the preceding
context” (p. 115). Giegerich’s example to illustrate this restriction is the compound wooden door
policy to refer to a (fictitious) “policy not to fit wooden doors in premises licensed for the storage of
inflammable materials” (p. 114). It is not clear to me whether this contextual requirement is a real
restriction, since the use of new complex words usually requires an appropriate context, and hence this
restriction may be vacuous after all. Anyway, Giegerich does acknowledge that phrases can be used as
building blocks of compounds. He therefore concludes that modules can overlap, at least in English (p.
120). Giegerich proposes that word combinations of the type dental decay are “generated in an ‘area’
of the modularized derivation which is simultaneously part both of (stratum 2 of) the lexicon and of
the syntax […]” (p. 122). Ascriptive adjectival attribution on the other hand only takes place in syntax,
and hence ascriptive adjectives will be ordered before associative adjectives in noun phrases, as in
terrible dental decay.
My problem with this conclusion is that it does not provide us with a clear and principled view
of the relation between syntax and lexicon, but only says that there is some overlap. I have formulated
my own view of this issue in a monograph on Construction Morphology (Booij 2010), and refer the
reader to this study. As far as Adj+N combinations of the associative type are concerned, we could
think of treating them as tight syntactic combinations, in which an Adjective is Chomsky-adjoined to a
head Noun, resulting in a syntactic compound. The crucial property of associative adjectives is that
they are non-projecting, do not project a phrase of their own. Arguments for this analysis are given in
(Booij 2009).
In sum, Giegerich’s monograph raises interesting questions, gives a careful description of
semantic patterns of interpretation, and the complicated stress facts concerning English compounds,
but keeps us still in the dark as to how precisely we have to conceive of the relation between syntax
and lexicon. It is also a pity that in discussing this issue, Giegerich makes only use of English, whereas
his conclusions pertain to the theory of the architecture of grammar in general. A comparison with
related Germanic languages such as German could have made the analysis stronger.
References
Bauer, Laurie, Rochelle Lieber & Ingo Plag. 2013. The Oxford Reference Guide to English
Morphology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Booij, Geert. 2000. The phonology-morphology interface. In Lisa Cheng & Rint Sybesma (eds.), The
first Glot International state-of-the-article book. The latest in linguistics, , 287-306. Berlin: De
Gruyter.
Booij, Geert. 2002a. Constructional idioms, morphology, and the Dutch lexicon. Journal of Germanic
Linguistics 14, 301-27.
Booij, Geert. 2002b. The morphology of Dutch. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Booij, Geert. 2009. Phrasal names: a constructionist analysis. Word Structure 3, 219-40.
Booij, Geert. 2010. Construction morphology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schlücker, Barbara. 2014. Grammatik im Lexicon. Adjektiv-Nomen-verbindungen im Deutschen und
Niderländischen. Berlin: De Gruyter.