Are French NNs variants of N-PREP-N constructions? A corpus-based study of two competing patterns

Abstract

This study aims to provide a thorough empirical examination of the hypothesis that French subordinate Noun-Noun compounds (stylo-bille — ‘ballpoint pen’) are mere variants of corresponding phrasal lexemes or syntactic phrases with the structure Noun-Prep-(Det)-Noun (stylo à bille). On the basis of extensive corpus data from FrWac, it will be argued that the relationship and the competition between French NNs and NPNs differ with respect to different subtypes of NNs. On the one hand, attributive NNs cannot have NPN variants, and appositive NNs as well as NNs in which the N2 has a bound meaning have synonymous NPN variants only occasionally. On the other hand, for subordinate verbal-nexus NNs the NPNs represent stylistic variants which seem to be always available. The case of subordinate ground NNs proves to be more complex since, in this case, both patterns are in competition (Aronoff 2016); data discussed in this paper indicate that this competition is steered by phenomena of constructionalization. Since French NNs tend to be organized around paradigmatic families with repeated components, we have put forward the hypothesis that such paradigmatic regularity underpins a progressive formation of ‘niches’ in which new subordinate ground NNs win the competition with NPNs. Moreover, mechanisms of constructionalization even give rise to new subpatterns of subordinate ground NNs whose NPN variants are ungrammatical. The competition between French NNs and NPNs, also documented on diachronic data from Google n-grams, reflects a change in naming strategies in French, especially from the 1960s onwards.

Keywords

• competition
• compounding
• construction morphology
• constructionalization
• french
• niche
• phrasal lexeme
• word formation