Neoclassical Compounds between Borrowing and Word Formation

Abstract

In assessing the status of neoclassical compounding, we take into account the generative insight that language is ultimately based in the individual speaker’s competence and the European structuralist insight that new words are a response to naming needs. Two central questions that arise for neoclassical compounding are whether it constitutes a separate system and whether it is productive. We argue that what can be perceived as degrees of productivity and fluctuations in status can in fact be analysed as a consequence of differences between speakers in the same speech community. Speakers that are familiar with a domain in which neoclassical compounding is frequent, e.g. medicine, will be more likely to process new instances as rule-based formations. Considering the origins of neoclassical compounding, we note that borrowing has two different roles. On one hand, it is the reanalysis of borrowings from classical languages that leads to the emergence of a system. On the other hand, new neoclassical formations are borrowed between different languages. Comparing English and Russian, we argue that only for English is there evidence of a substantial set of speakers who have such as system. In Russian, neoclassical compounds are generally borrowings.