A Descriptive and Experimental Investigation of Recursive Compounds in English: Their Semantic, Syntactic, and Phonological Characterization

The aim of this study is to experimentally capture the semantic, syntactic, and phonological properties of recursive compounds in English. We asked 22 native speakers of English to judge the semantic, syntactic, and phonological properties of 20 recursive compounds that are inherently ambiguous in interpretation (e.g., university entrance exam). We found variations among the participants in each of these three basic aspects. For semantic interpretation, there was a tendency among the participants to prefer left-branching interpretation (‘an exam for university entrance’) over right-branching interpretation (‘an entrance exam in a university’). Using a lexical integrity effect for the syntactic tests, it was found that certain recursive compounds allow for coordination inside. Phonologically, speaker variation was observed in whether and how recursive compounds were pronounced, with 16 participants obeying the Lexical Category Prominence Rule.