Complementation and Headedness in Ibibio Nominal Compounds

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter examines complements and heads in Ibibio (New Benue-Congo) nominal compounds including the syntactic and semantic bond between constituents of a nominal compound. It adopts the Minimalist Program (MP) of (Chomsky, The minimalist program. MIT Press, 1995) and conceptualizes on (Kayne, The antisymmetry of syntax. MIT Press, 1994) Linear Corresponding Axiom (LCA) which assumes that universal word ordering between a head and its dependent, to be Specifier-Head-Complement (S-H-C), and provides a unified account for the optimal and plausible nominal compounds in the language. Data were elicited from native speakers of Ibibio to form a list of compound words. This work postulates that nominal compounds are left-headed driven in the language. Analysis of the data reveals that in a noun plus noun compound, the first noun, which occurs at the left-periphery of the compound functions as the operator and heads the compound while the other noun, which occurs to the right assumes a complement function. It is also observed that in every noun-plus-noun construction there is a relative clause reduction mechanism (delete) in which what converges at the spell-out is the optimal constituent. For instance, the compound úfộk- ítìààd ‘block house’ is derived from úfộk ákè ítìààd, ‘the house that is made of blocks’. For adjective plus noun compounds, we argue that what is spelled out at both PF and LF interface levels undergoes some leftward movement of the adjective and a subsequent deletion of the relative clause in overt syntax. For instance, àbúbíd ébòd, ‘black goat’ is derived from the constituents ‘ébòd ádòohò àbúbíd ‘a goat that is black’, that actually entered the derivation at the computation stage. Also revealed is the interplay between syntax and semantics disclosing certain ordering of lexical items in which meanings can be altered. Even when the head of an exocentric compound does not subcategorize for its syntactic value, it is observed that the semantics of the left (head) noun predicts the overall meaning of the derived nominal compound.KeywordsComplementConvergenceEndocentricOperatorOptimal