Constructional schema

In Construction Morphology (CM), a compound is treated as a construction at the word level with a systematic correlation between its form and meaning, in the sense that any change in the form is accompanied by a change in the meaning. Compound words as one type of complex words are coined by compounding patterns or templates which are called abstract schemas in CM. These abstract constructional schemas generalize over sets of existing compound words and specify how new compound words can be created. The schemas dominate the compounds so that these words inherit all predictable morphological and semantic properties from these schemas. In fact, this is mainly the constructional schema which determines the properties for every compound word not individual constituents of a compound word. Therefore, the form and meaning of a compound, as a whole, are affected by formal and semantic/syntactic properties of the construction itself. Also, the dominance of schemas and subschema as over the compound words reinforces the idea of hierarchical lexicon. In addition, CM adopts a paradigmatic approach to word formation; that is, the creation of new compound words is caused by the extension of a systematic form-meaning relationship in a set of existing compound words to new cases resulting in new compound words. Regarding these properties of CM, This paper aims to study one type of Persian compounds, that is, compound nouns in the framework of Construction Morphology. From this perspective, two types of compound nouns including endocentric and exocentric compound nouns are treated in a rather similar way because the compound noun construction as a holistic schema plays the main role in specifying the syntactic features, head(if any) and semantic content of compound nouns, not their constituents. According to findings of this study, the analysis of Persian compound nouns based on this model increases the degree of generality in compound noun formation and develops the concept of holisticity in the form and meaning of compound nouns as well as it highlights the paradigmatic relationship in Persian compound noun formation templates.

Much research has been done on semantics of the verbal element of complex predicates (CPr), usually referred to as light verb (LV). Most researchers have confined their studies to a few limited features of light verbs. After criticizing major views proposed by scholars on the semantics of light verbs, this article presents a hypothesis on the formation of complex predicates, arguing that all of which directly or indirectly have roots in incorporation process. This process starts with a complete sentence, incorporating two elements into it and ends in eliminating other elements. Formation of each complex predicate leads to the formation of the constructional schema X+LV0 which sanctions formation of new complex predicates with the same light verb and in the same semantic field. Accordingly, the meaning of light verb in direct incorporation case is the same meaning as its heavy verb, and in indirect incorporation case is dissolved in constructional meaning of the sanctioning schema. The meaning of light verb in each of these two cases could be different and each of them is taken or similar to one of its heavy meanings. There is a third case in which the light verb plays the role of verbalizing element and makes possible for a nonverbal predicate to inflect as a verb. Thus light verbs vary from having completely schematic and non-thematic meanings to their own primary heavy meanings.