Subject: [ n + v ] verbal compounding

content - length : 2725 we are two researchers at the universitat de girona ( sp ) and we are working on a kind of catalan verbal compounding . we sumarize the characteristics of these compounds here below . we are interested in other vo languales with the same ( or similar ) process of verb formation . moreover , we wonder if anybody knows references related , in some way , to our subject that could be helpful to us ( we already know rosen , s . t . ( 1989 ) , miller ( 1993 ) ) . [ n + v ] verbal compounding to be more clear we enumerate the relevant characteristics of our compounds . 1 . first of all , we must say that catalan is a vo language . 2 . our compounding looks like a process of noun incorporation where the incorporated noun within the lexical item is the internal argument in the syntactic structure . observe ( 1 ) ( 1 ) a . el cacador trenca la cama de l ' ocell " the hunter breaks the leg of the bird " b . el cacador camatrenca l ' ocell " the hunter leg + breaks the bird " 3 . nevertheless , the noun-incorporation does n't affect to the capacity of the verb of assigning acusative case , this is , the complex verb remains transitive . 4 . generally , this kind of " noun-incorporation " is only possible when the noun incorporated is an inalienable possession noun ( ipn ) and the new internal argument of the complex verb is the possessor . observe ( 2 ) and ( 3 ) : ( 2 ) a . corferir " to heart + hurt " b . colltorcer " to neck + twist " ( 3 ) a . * cadiratrencar " to chair + break " b . * ferrotorcer " to iron + twist " 5 . we hypothesise that the ipn acts as a kind of modifier in the complex verbal form and doestn ' t act as a verbal argument . olga fullana noell lluisa gracia pl . ferrater mora n . 1 universitat de girona e-17071 girona spain fullana @ skywalker . udg . es gracia @ skywalker . udg . es
