NN Combinations in Greek

Abstract

In this paper, multiword NN combinations in Greek are explored within the framework of construction morphology (Booij 2009, 2010a, 2010b). I understand NN combinations as multiword sequences constructed by two inflected words, such as: arxitéktonas-arxeoló γ os ‘architect-archeologist’; taksí δ i-astrapí lit. ‘trip-lightning’, thus ‘very fast and sudden trip’; sáltsa manitárja lit. ‘sauce mushrooms’, thus ‘mushroom sauce’. I use the classification of Gavriilidou (1997) in order to account for possible different subtypes of NN combinations. I claim that all three types of NN combinations (coordinate, attributive and complementation NN combinations) are visible to syntactic operations, they exhibit, however, various degrees of tightness which are due to whether they exhibit a naming function or not.