Ad-hoc-compounds in spoken German

Abstract

Abstract Occasionalisms, i.e., non-lexicalized ad-hoc-expressions that are coined for a specific occasion, are a recurrent phenomenon in verbal interactions. Even though recipients have not heard those novel word formations before, they can still understand them. This paper reports on a study from an Interactional Linguistics perspective which explores ad-hoc-expressions in spoken German, such as streichelmichbärchenpärchen (‘stroke-me-little-bear-couple’) and windeldroge (‘diaper-drug’). It draws on an analysis of 934 ad-hoc-compounds in a corpus of German interaction. These typically do not cause a problem of understanding, because their meaning is inferable due to different resources that help recipients understand unfamiliar expressions: a specific word formation with a high degree of compositionality, cues or anchoring in the prior context or common ground. While a compositional word formation is not always necessary to sufficiently understand meaning in interaction due to other resources, opaque word formation has its limits when it comes to understanding the meaning of an expression especially when recipients cannot rely on other resources to understand the expression.