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date: 17 October 2019

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter deals with the predictability of meanings of novel context-free compounds. It interrelates the word-formation and word-interpretation models in order to explain the predictability of the meanings of novel context-free compounds; the model explores the idea that there is always one or two dominant meanings ‘winning’ the competition among different potential meanings as a result of interplay between linguistic and extralinguistic factors.

Keywords: compounds, word formation, word interpretation

Pavol Štekauer

Pavol Štekauer is Professor of English linguistics at P.J. Šafárik University, Košice, Slovakia. His research has focused on an onomasiological approach to word-formation, sociolinguistic aspects of word-formation, meaning predictability of complex words, and crosslinguistic research into wotrd-formation. He is the author of A Theory of Conversion in English (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1996), An Onomasiological Theory of English Word-Formation (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1998), English Word-Formation. A History of Research (1960-1995). Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2000), and Meaning Predictability in Word-Formation (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins). He co-edited (with Rochelle Lieber) Handbook of Word-formation (Springer 2005) and Oxford Handbook of Compounding (OUP 2009).

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