From "Corner Shop" to "Corner Man" : Conceptual Relations and Context in the Creation and Interpretation of Noun-Noun Sequences
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.172Keywords:
Noun compounds, noun phrases, semantic relations, thematic relations, conceptual combination, contextAbstract
In this paper it will be argued that there are two different and equally relevant factors intervening in the creation and interpretation of noun-noun sequences in English. On the one hand, the concepts denoted by the nouns involved will determine some preferences to combine with other nouns, since certain semantic relations are cognitively salient with each semantic type of noun and are therefore privileged. By means of corpus data it will be shown that there are two main types of conceptual relations holding between the two nouns in a sequence, depending on the semantics of the nouns, namely argument relations and adverbial relations. On the other hand, it will be claimed that conceptual combination is a dynamic process that must take context (either world-knowledge, co-text, or situational context) into account.Downloads
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