Semantic influence on linkers in Dutch noun-noun compounds”, Folia Linguis

As in many other languages, the constituents of nominal compounds in Dutch are often separated by a linking element. This study investigates to what extent form and semantic properties of the right constituents in Dutch compounds affect the choice of the linker Using both lexical statistics and experimentation, we show that the left and right constituent families affect the choice of the linker independently of the semantic categories of the left and right constituents themselves. We also show that the choice of the linker is co-determined by the animacy and concreteness of the left constituent. No role for the semantic class of the head constituent was observed in the experiment. Apparently, linkers are non-canonical Suffixes in the sense that their occurrence is codetermined by the form properties of the constituent to their right. 1