“Morphological transposition” as the onset of recategorization: the case of luxe in Dutch

Category change and recategorization processes have received renewed attention in recent years. In this paper, we focus on the shift from noun to adjective on the basis of a corpus-based study of the Dutch lexical item luxe ‘luxury; luxurious’. What is particularly interesting about this case is that in some contexts luxe combines nominal and adjectival properties (e.g., een erg luxe hotel ‘a very luxury/luxurious hotel’) and displays some intersective gradience. We will investigate to what extent luxe exhibits the typical profile of an adjective in present-day Dutch by applying a specific set of synchronic and diachronic criteria and by taking into account regional variation between Belgian and Netherlandic Dutch. This detailed data analysis will allow us to examine which type of recategorization process is responsible for the N>A shift. Since the category change is not formally marked, we will examine whether we are dealing with a case of conversion (a regular morphological process of category change) or syntactic transposition (the ad hoc use of a lexical item in a syntactic context typical of another category). We will conclude that this particular type of change cannot be correctly attributed to either conversion or syntactic transposition and that a new type of category change should be considered responsible for this case and similar ones, i.e. “morphological transposition”. This process takes place within attributive compounds and is followed by a process of debonding and further context expansion