Compositionality in N + N compounds in Jordanian Arabic and English

Abstract

Abstract This article aims to examine to what extent English and Jordanian Arabic (JA) have the same classification of N + N compounds based on their degree of compositionality. It also attempts to propose a universally applicable classification of compositionality in N + N compounds. I suggest a modified version of the degree of compositionality based on previous classifications by Fernando (1996), Dirven and Verspoor (1998), and Kavka (2009). The new classification is based on the semantic contribution of the head and the non-head to the meaning of the whole compound. After I have applied the new scale to the JA data, I argue that English and JA have compounds that exhibit the four degrees of compositionality; namely completely compositional, semi-compositional, semi non-compositional and completely non-compositional. The article concludes with some recommendations for future research.