Sank's Glossary of Linguistics 
 ComplexS-Compound

* COMPLEXSEGMENT

  1. (Optimality Theory) A constraint:
    * COMPLEXSEGMENT:
    Assign one violation for every output segment with more than one articulator feature.
     | Larry Lyu, 2026
  2. (Optimality Theory) 


     | Kathleen M. O'Connor, 1999
  3. (Optimality Theory) A segmental markedness constraint:
    * COMPSEG
    No complex segments.
     | Jaye Padgett, 1995
  4. (Example)
     ○ An assumed constraint like *ComplexSegment (e.g. in Padgett 1995) would presumably assign a violation to any segment with more than one place. Its violation profile is shown below, compared with m.KPT ("Don't be dorsal, labial, or coronal").
    m.KPT versus Hypothetical * ComplexSegment
      m.KPT *ComplexSegment
     T   1   0
     P   1   0
     K   1   0
     KP   2   1
     TP   2   1
     !   2   1
     Among these candidates, the two constraints are effectively identical; each only differentiates between complex stops and simple stops. However, m.KPT is independently motivated by the constraint building mechanism from the universal markedness scale. The *ComplexSegment constraint would have to be assumed separately. | Nick Danis, 2017

COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS

  1. (Semantics) According to the theory of semantic components, semantic features have positive (marked) and negative (unmarked) values. If we take for example the words women and flower we do not seem to be able to relate their values because lexical semantics establishes the value (+female) to women and (−human) to flower. These two lexical units may have further values such as [(affection), (beauty), (care), (love), (protection)] to women and [(beauty), (love), (smell)] to flower. The recurrent values in both cases are (love) and (beauty). The two can be an exemplification to the lexical units women and flower instead of (+female) and (−human). In general, lexical units have a lexical creativity not seen in their independent form but retained from the paradigmatic interaction between their values.

    The meaning of each term can be analyzed by a set of meaning components or properties of a more general order, some of which will be common to various terms in the lexicon. There may also be specific restrictions, for instance the nature and structure of features, and the procedures by which they are selected. However, the term componential analysis is often used to refer not only to simple decomposition into semantic components, but to models with much more powerful theoretical assumptions. (Patrizia Violi, 2001)
     | Khadija Belfarhi, 2013
  2. (Semantics) Or, lexical decomposition. In the broadest sense, any attempt to formalize and standardize procedures for the analysis of word meanings. Componential analysis often aspires to represent the cognitive or psychological reality of the speakers, and to shed light on correlations between language and culture.
     The idea that word meanings may be broken down into combinations of simpler components is an ancient one, supported by a range of facts. These include:


     The assumption of decomposability underlies the definitional side of traditional lexicography. | Cliff Goddard, 2009
  3. (Examples)
     ○ Traditional Linguistics: Semantic Structure
    Componential Analysis
    Name   Female   Neuter   Adult 
    Mare   +   −   +
    Stallion   −   −   +
    Gelding   −   +   +
    Foal   −   +   −
    Filly   +   −   −
    Colt   −   −   −

     | Reinier de Blois, 2025
     ○ That the methods of componential analysis as they have been developed for analyzing linguistic forms are applicable in principle for analyzing other types of cultural forms is a proposition toward whose demonstration I have for some time sought to orient my ethnographic researches. | Ward H. Goodenough, 1956

COMPOSITE PROBE

  1. (Syntax) In recent approaches to the A′ / A-distinction and how it is related to features (rather than structural positions alone), the call for composite probes grew stronger. Composite probes, as van Urk (2015) labels them, are two probes located on a single head, forming a probe conglomerate—an assumption that has been made for TMA-features on T or Infl already for a while (e.g., the combination of tense and φ-features on a single head). | Magdalena Lohninger, Iva Kovač, and Susanne Wurmbrand, 2022
  2. (Syntax) Person and number are sometimes forced to probe in unison. Person and number can form a composite probe and select a target together (Coon and Bale 2014).
     If two features on the same head can form a composite probe, we might find a composite probe made up of φ-features and A′-features: [Wh, φ] (a composite A / Ā probe). | Coppe van Urk, 2015
  3. (Syntax) The phenomenon where two (or more) features present on the same head probe together in unison, searching for the closest goal bearing both of the features involved in the probe, and ignoring goals with only one or the other of the features (Chomsky 2001, Bruening 2001, Pesetsky and Torrego 2001, Haegeman 2012, Rezac 2013, Coon and Bale 2014, Kotek 2014, Deal 2014). | Nicholas Longenbaugh, 2017

COMPOSITIONAL SEMANTICS

  1. (Semantics) How the meanings of smaller expressions (including individual words) combine to give the meanings of larger expressions. | Pauline Jacobson, 2014
  2. (Semantics) Usually defined as a functional dependence of the meaning of an expression on the meanings of its parts. | Wlodek Zadrozny, 1995
  3. (Semantics) Since Frege stated his "Principle of Semantic Compositionality", researchers have pondered both how the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its parts, and how those parts are combined. (Frege 1892, Pelletier 1994). Over a hundred years on, the choice of representational unit for this process of compositional semantics, and how these units combine, remain open questions. | Karl Moritz Hermann and Phil Blunsom, 2013
  4. (Semantics) The building up of phrasal or sentence meaning from the meaning of smaller units by means of semantic rules. To account for speakers' knowledge of the truth, reference, entailment, and ambiguity of sentences, as well as for our ability to determine the meaning of a limitless number of expressions, we must suppose that the grammar contains semantic rules that combine the meanings of words into meaningful phrases and sentences. In other words, semantic rules are principles for determining the meaning of larger units like sentences from the meaning of smaller units like noun phrases and verb phrases.
     Our semantic rules must be sensitive not only to the meaning of individual words but to the structure in which they occur. Two rules:

    1. The meaning of [ S NP VP ] is the following truth condition:
      If the meaning of NP (an individual) is a member of the meaning of VP (a set of individuals), then S is true. Otherwise it is false.
    2. The meaning of [ VP V NP ] is the set of individuals X such that X is the first member of any pair in the meaning of V whose second member is the meaning of NP.

     These two semantic rules handle an essentially infinite number of intransitive and transitive sentences, and they account for our knowledge of the truth value of sentences by taking the meanings of words and combining them according to the syntactic structure of the sentence. | Hatice Eroğlu, 2012
  5. (Semantics) Compositional semantics is largely about working out who did what to whom, where, when, how, and why.
     As noted in Bender (2013), "[m]orphosyntax is the difference between a sentence and a bag of words." In other words, the meaning of a sentence isn't just the amalgamation of the meaning of its component words. Rather, the semantic contributions of the words combine with each other in a structured way that is dependent on the morphosyntactic scaffolding and on the semantic argument structures provided by each word. The description of this semantic structure (often called predicate-argument structure) and of mechanisms for deriving it, given syntactic analyses, is the heart of compositional semantics.
     Across different theories of compositional semantics, we find that "who did what to whom" is represented via a Boolean combination of "atomic" formulae, each consisting of a predicate symbol with variables and / or constants as arguments. Some predicate symbols express the "doing what," in which case its arguments identify the individuals that are the "who" and the "whom". Other predicate symbols express properties (and indeed relations) among those individuals—identity among the arguments to these predicate symbols is what ensures that the semantic representation as a whole ascribes particular properties (and relations) to the "who" and the "whom" that are doing the "what". These atomic formulae are expressed in a particular Boolean combination in the semantic representation, which is dependent on the presence, or absence, of "logical" words like negation. Thus, (1a) can be represented as (1b), and (1c) as (1d):

    1. a. Cats chase dogs.
      b. chase (e, x, y) ∧ cat (x) ∧ dog (y)
      c. Cats don't chase dogs.
      d. ¬ (chase (e, x, y) ∧ cat (x) ∧ dog (y) )

     In the semantic representation, each predicate is associated with an intrinsic variable: e stands for the chasing event, x for the cats, and y for the dogs. This is because formal semantics exploits set theory to represent meaning: the meaning of the predicate symbol cat is the set of things that are cats and the meaning of chase is a set where each element is a triple consisting of the chasing event, the chaser and the chasee. Thus, the representation in (1b) is true just in case the event e is a chasing event where the chaser is a member of the set of cats and the chasee is a member of the set of dogs. | Emily M. Bender and Alex Lascarides, 2020

COMPOSITIONALITY

  1. (Semantics) A symbolic system is compositional if the meaning of every complex expression E in that system depends on, and depends only on

    1. E's syntactic structure, and
    2. The meanings of E's simple parts.

     If a language is compositional, then the meaning of a sentence S in that language cannot depend directly on the context that sentence is used in or the intentions of the speaker who uses it. So, for example, in compositional languages, the meanings of sentences don't directly depend on:


     In compositional languages, the meaning of a sentence S directly depends only on the meanings of the words composing S, and the way those words are syntactically related to one another.
     Of course, simple expressions in a compositional language might have meanings that depend on the context or on the intentions of their users, as the referent of the English pronoun she can depend on who the speaker intends to be referring to. As such, sentences containing expressions such as she will indirectly depend on the intentions of their speakers, because the meaning of the sentence depends on the meanings of its simple parts and the meanings of some of those parts depend on the speaker's intentions.
     Several arguments purport to show that not only is natural language compositional, but that it must be, since we could not have the linguistic abilities we in fact do have, unless the languages we speak are compositional. | Michael Johnson, ?
  2. (Semantics) Particular semantic analyses that are in fact compositional were given already in antiquity—e.g., in Sophist (Plato c. 360 BC)—but apparently without any corresponding general conception. Notions that approximate the modern concept of compositionality did emerge in medieval times. In the Indian tradition, in the 4th or 5th century CE, Śabara says that
    The meaning of a sentence is based on the meaning of the words.
    and this is proposed as the right interpretation of a sūtra by Jaimini from sometime 3rd-6th century BCE (cf. Houben 1997). The first to propose a general principle of this nature in the Western tradition seems to have been Peter Abelard (Abelard 2008, 3.00.8) in the first half of the 12th century, saying that
    Just as a sentence materially consists in a noun and a verb, so too the understanding of it is put together from the understandings of its parts.
     Gottlob Frege (1892) is generally taken to be the first person to have formulated explicitly the notion of compositionality and to claim that it is an essential feature of human language. | Peter Pagin and Dag Westerståhl, 2010
  3. (Example)
     ○ After looking at previous approaches, Wulff (2008) adopts Berry-Rogghe's view (1974) that compositionality can be measured by comparing the phrase's collocates with those of the constituent parts. She justifies this view by pointing out that if the phrase and part(s) have many collocates in common, then the construction is highly compositional. | Antoine Consigny, 2013
     ○ Classical approaches of formal semantics (see Partee 1997) are characterized by the adoption of a type of compositionality that may be defined as strict, using a bottom-up calculation: a formal expression (for instance a term of lambda calculus) corresponds to each unit and the logical formula (in a given logical theory) representing the meaning of the whole utterance is obtained by the composition of these formal expressions thanks to algebraic operations. The order in which these algebraic operations have to be applied is generally dictated by the syntactic tree structure associated with the utterance.
     The principle of strict compositionality comes up against a fundamental problem: the omnipresence of polysemy in natural languages. | Gilles Col, Jeanne Aptekman, Stéphanie Girault, Thierry Poibeau, 2012
     ○ There are limits to compositionality. Perhaps the most famous early work in Construction Grammar was Fillmore, Kay and O'Connor (1988), which explored idiomaticity. In the case of idioms, it is clear that there is partial regularity, and partial compositionality. But there is also an element to the meanings of idioms which is not predictable, and which suggests that they are not simply compositional. | Graeme Trousdale, 2008

COMPOUND

  1. (Morphology) Compounding consists of the combination of two or more lexemes, whereas derivation is characterized by the addition of an affix, that is, a bound morpheme, to a lexeme.
     Compounding is accounted for by a set of Word Structure Rules which form part of syntax and combine lexical stems into compounds.
     Compounds have an internal structure that is accessible to other rules of grammar. For instance, there are rules for introducing linking elements into German compounds that must have access to the internal structure of such complex words (Anderson 1992).
     There is no sharp boundary between compounding and affixal derivation, since there are many borderline cases. | Geert Booij, 2005
  2. (Morphology)  Compounding, prima facie, presents a seemingly paradigm case of morphology-as-syntax. It is productive, and it manipulates items which are canonically themselves free morphemes and clearly independent terminal nodes. As shown by Lieber (1992), nominal compounding in English and other Germanic languages can even include syntactically complex phrases, as in the following four examples from Tucson Weekly film reviews by James DiGiovanna:

    1. a. These aren't your standard stuff-blowing-up effects. (06/03/2004)
      b. When he's not in that mode, though, he does an excellent job with the bikini-girls-in-trouble genre. (11/30/2006)
      c. I've always found it odd that the people who complain most about realism are comic-book and science-fiction fans. (12/23/2004)
      d. There's the aforementioned bestiality and drooling-stroke-victim jokes. (03/29/2001)

     | Heidi Harley, 2011
  3. (Morphology) Most linguists would agree that the following items are compounds: football, grey-green, people mover, research professor, stir-fry. Although these items differ in a number of ways (whether they are written as one or two orthographic words, whether they function as nouns, verbs or adjectives, how the relations between their elements each of which is used elsewhere in the language as a word in its own right.
     The precise borderline of what counts as a compound may be fuzzy, but central to the notion is that it is possible to make lexical entities out of words, which are themselves lexical entities. The process by which these compounds are formed is termed compounding (sometimes composition). | Laurie Bauer, 2017
  4. (Morphology) Compounding is a linguistic phenomenon that might at first glance seem straightforward: in his introductory text Bauer (2003) defines a compound as "the formation of a new lexeme by adjoining two or more lexemes". But Marchand (1967) presents another view, in effect saying that compounds don't exist as a separate part of word formation; indeed, he distinguishes only two basic categories of word formation: expansion and derivation. | Rochelle Lieber and Pavol Štekauer, 2009
  5. (Examples)
     ○ Could Washoe the chimpanzee display any of the properties of human language? Could she use American Sign Language to creatively combine the form-meaning relationships that characterize words in order to produce new units of meaning? For much of the decade of the 1970s (and a good number of years thereafter) the answer to this question seemed to hinge on a single compound word, waterbird, which Washoe reportedly created upon seeing a swan. | Gary Libben, 2006
     ○ Most Chinese words are compound words, composed of two or more constituent morphemes.
     Morphemes used as constituents in compounds are usually words by themselves, although there are also bound morphemes in the language. | Xiaolin Zhou, William Marslen-Wilson, Marcus Taft, and Hua Shu, 1999
     ○ What sorts of formal mechanisms are needed within the lexicon to account for the fact that the compounds in (1) are easily coined and readily interpreted, whereas those in (2) are unacceptable or uninterpretable?

    1. truckbook, branch-brown, green-crazy, door-leveler, ballad-singing, over-ground, slow-dry, draw-sheet.
    2. * fresh-smell, * carefully-considering, * during-happy, * put-box, * green-dry, * appear-give.

     | Rochelle Lieber, 1983

 

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