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date: 25 January 2021

Abstract and Keywords

The Chomskyan revolution had an almost immediate impact on the study of compounding, because one of the first works devoted primarily to applying, rather than developing, the theoretical framework addressed the issue of the analysis of compounding quite prominently. This work (Lees 1960) also set the agenda for generative research on compounding for more or less two decades. It is this period that is the focus of the present chapter. Section 4.1 starts by presenting Lees' seminal work, setting out the main points of its analysis as well as its theoretical context and the immediate reactions it provoked. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, research in generative linguistics was determined by the conflict between generative semantics and the Chomskyan response to it. The field of compounding was not exempt. The two opposing viewpoints and their consequences for compounding are discussed in Sections 4.2 and 4.3, respectively. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a gradual reorientation was observed, resulting in a change of research questions. This process and the legacy of the preceding period are described in Section 4.4.

Keywords: Chomsky, compounding, Lees, generative linguistics, semantics

Pius Ten Hacken

Pius Ten Hacken is senior lecturer at Swansea University. He is the author of Defining Morphology (Hildesheim: Olms, 1994) and a number of articles in the domains of theoretical and computational morphology. He is also the author of Chomskyan Linguistics and its Competitors (London: Equinox, 2007) and the editor of Terminology, Computing and Translation (Tübingen: Narr, 2006).

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