The study shows that adjectival synthetic compounds in English come in two categories. Eventive compounds behave in a way pointing to the presence of the verbal structure in their syntactic representation. On the other hand, stative compounds are shown to behave in a manner typical of simple adjectives; they are derived directly from the root.
This volume presents research into the syntax and semantics of English deverbal compound adjectives based on the passive and active participles, e.g. pencil-drawn, action-packed, risk-taking, time-consuming. The study, couched in the current Distributed Morphology framework, uses rich linguistic data to investigate the syntactic behaviour of English participial compounds, in particular their ability to occur in typically adjectival and verbal contexts. The main claim of this work is that the verbal syntactic layers are not universally projected in the internal structure of adjectival synthetic compounds, the most important consequence of which is that linguistic formations derived from lexical verbs, even in combination with their arguments, need not be deverbal in the morphosyntactic sense.
Word formation in Distributed Morphology - Argument structure in deverbal adjectives - The syntax of English synthetic compounds based on the passive participle - The syntax of English synthetic compounds based on the active participle - Inner and outer cycle derivation
Sebastian Wasak is a research associate in the Institute of Linguistics at The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. His main research interests include word formation in Distributed Morphology (in particular, argument structure in deverbal adjectives and nominalizations) as well as synthetic and nominal compounding in English.
