From the periphery to the core of Romance [VN] compounds

Romance [VN] compounds are still a matter of different hypotheses concerning input and output categories as well as their classification as exocentric or endocentric structures. Formal approaches typically focus on the regular and productive core of word formation processes, considering problematic cases as residues of earlier stages and as marginal phenomena. Data drawn from different languages, however, reveal a number of non-prototypical compounds, where the noun constituent does not behave as the direct object of the verbal constituent. Approaching the issue from a functional-typological perspective, this study endeavors to demonstrate that the investigation of such “irregular” patterns in the periphery can help to explain the properties of the “regular” core of the category, and that compound structures and functions are shaped by semantic relations based on valid cross-linguistic implications such as the animacy and definiteness scales.