Abstract
This paper offers a detailed investigation of bahuvrihi compounds in Greek with a focus on their form and semantics. First, we present a classification of bahuvrihis according to the lexical category of the compound structure and the lexical category of the compound members and we provide examples of the rarest attested type, that is, verbal bahuvrihis (e.g. kalozoizo < kal(i) ‘good’ zo(i) ‘life’, ‘to have a good life’). Second, we raise the question of where the meaning ‘having/to have X’ comes from in bahuvrihis. Based on the distinction between nominal, adjectival, and verbal bahuvrihis, we propose that the former type should be accounted for by metonymy, whereas the latter two types, that is, adjectival and verbal bahuvrihis should be analyzed as “extended bahuvrihis” in that they combine compounding and derivation in this particular order. As such, adjectival and verbal bahuvrihis can be better understood if we examine the relation between compounding and derivation.
This paper is the product of the research conducted within the project “Morphology in language-contact situations: Greek dialects in contact with Turkish and Italian” which is implemented under the “ARISTEIA” Action of the “OPERATIONAL PROGRAMME EDUCATION AND LIFELONG LEARNING” and is co-funded by the European Social Fund (ESF) and National Resources.
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Notes
- 1.
Throughout the paper, the origin of the examples will be noted if they appear in the dialects but not in Standard Modern Greek.
- 2.
Examples will be given a broad phonological transcription and stress will be noted only on word forms. Parts of words which do not appear within compounds will be included in parentheses.
- 3.
It should be noted that several Greek compounds do not exhibit the same morphosyntactic features as their second constituent that is responsible for the computation of the lexical category of the compound. This casts doubts on the idea that the head should be identified with the morphosyntactic determinant (for a discussion see Andreou 2014: 45–65).
- 4.
The tables in this section aim to provide the reader with the lexemes which form part of Greek bahuvrihi formations and do not give a morpheme-by-morpheme analysis. For the structural analysis of bahuvrihis see Sect. 4.
- 5.
It should be noted that verbal exocentric compounds such as varikartízo ‘lit. to have a heavy heart, to be sad’ differ from exocentric compounds of the type misojínis ‘who hates women’, in that the latter do not belong to bahuvrihi compounds, are verbs and are formed on a different structural pattern (e.g. they are verb-first).
- 6.
The absence of [Noun Noun] verbal bahuvrihis should only be attributed to the lack of sources and not to any particular constraint.
- 7.
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Andreou, M., Ralli, A. (2015). Form and Meaning of Bahuvrihi Compounds: Evidence from Modern Greek and Its Dialects. In: Bauer, L., Körtvélyessy, L., Štekauer, P. (eds) Semantics of Complex Words. Studies in Morphology, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14102-2_9
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