Eintrag

Titel

Expressive Compounds in German

Personen

Jörg Meibauer

Jahr

2013

Typ

Aufsatz

Periodikum

Word structure

ISSN

1750-1245

Seiten

21 - 42

Band

6

Heft

1

Schlagwörter

Komposition
Morphologie

Abstract

German adjectival and nominal compounds like rattenscharf ('rat sharp') sauschlecht, ('sow bad')Hammerauftritt ('hammer performance'), Arschgesicht ('arse face') contain meliorative or pejorative elements as part of their structure. The left-hand evaluative members of these compounds are usually considered as so-called semi-prefixes. Contrary to recent approaches within constructional morphology (Booij 2009, 2010), I will argue that these elements are still lexemes, but that they have undergone metaphorical extension. Evidence stems from the consideration of right-hand members like Kommunistenschwein ('communist pig'), which have never been considered as semi-suffixes in a similar way. The metaphorical meaning of these heads and non-heads is systematically connected with expressive meaning. It will be shown that the criteria for expressive meaning proposed by Potts (2007) by and large apply. Furthermore, I will argue against a possible analysis in terms of conventional implicature, as proposed by Williamson (2009, 2010) with respect to the meanings of ethnical slur terms like spic.

https://grammis.ids-mannheim.de/bdg/81257