Defining Nominal Compounding as a Productive Word-Formation Process in Chuxnabán Mixe

Abstract

Proposed criteria for defining nominal compounds cross-linguistically are not universally accepted. Moreover, in some languages, nominal compounds share properties with phrases and possessive constructions and are not easily identified in all instances (Aikhenvald 2007, Bauer 2006; 2009, Lieber and Štekauer 2009, and Scalise and Vogel 2010). This paper examines the phonological, morphosyntactic, and semantic properties of nominal compounds in Chuxnabán Mixe and argues that defining criteria for compound-hood are best viewed language-specifically. In Chuxnabán Mixe, nominal compounds are best discerned phonologically. In addition, they are distinct morphosyntactically by being treated as a whole for infection and by showing a fixed order with respect to their parts.This work further establishes that nominal compounding is a productive word-formation process in Chuxnabán Mixe. While nominal compounding has been noted in Mesoamerican (Campbell, Kaufman, and Smith-Stark 1986) and other Mixean languages (Romero-Méndez 2008, Ruiz de Bravo Ahuja 1980, Schoenhals and Schoenhals 1982, and Van Haitsma and Van Haitsma 1976), there are no studies examining its formal properties or its productivity, possibly due to the fact that nominal compounding is a lesser-studied topic in polysynthetic languages where most information is encoded in verbs.