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Article published In: Corpus Approaches to Language, Thought and Communication
Edited by Wei-lun Lu, Naděžda Kudrnáčová and Laura A. Janda
[Review of Cognitive Linguistics 17:1] 2019
► pp. 257–274

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Regular articles

Compounds and culture

Conceptual blending in Norwegian and Russian

 | UiT The Arctic University of Norway
 | UiT The Arctic University of Norway
Published online: 20 August 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00034.nes
Abstract
This study explores compounds from the perspective of conceptual blending (conceptual integration), and argues that the meaning of compounds arises through the interaction of three levels: (i) input spaces established for the head and non-head components, (ii) a blended space involving compression and emergent structure, i.e. elements not imported from the input spaces, and (iii) the language system as a whole and the culture this system is part of. With regard to (iii) we propose the “Culture-to-Compound Hypothesis”, according to which compounding can be recruited to represent culturally “novel” content in languages where compounding enjoys a peripheral status in the language system. The examples discussed in the article come from Norwegian (a Germanic language where compounding is a central word-formation mechanism) and Russian (a Slavic language where compounding is more marginal in the language system).
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Compounds as blends
  • 3.Emergent structure and compounds
  • 4.Compression and compounds
  • 5.The Culture-to-Compound Hypothesis
  • 6.Case study 1: Stub compounds in post-revolutionary Russian
  • 7.Case study 2: Compounds in Post-Soviet Russian
  • 8.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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