대한영어영문학회

This study aims to provide a Construction Morphology analysis of Old English (OE) typical (TP) exocentric type of bahuvrihi (BAH) adjectival compounds with the data of 211 compounds collected and described in Park (2018). Within the theoretical framework of Construction Morphology (CM) (Booij 2010c), this study shows four things, which are distinguished from a traditional descriptive analysis (Kastovsky 1992, 2002, 2009, Park 2018). First, an OE TP BAH adjectival compound can be considered as a construction or a constructional idiom with a specific form and meaning. Second, the compounds' properties of form and meaning can be simply and straightforwardly represented by four subschemas, 'TP-Bah1 (Df)', 'TP-Bah1 (Df.O-F)', 'TP-Bah2 (Df.O-M)', and 'TP-Bah2 (Df.O-F/M)'. Third, by means of the mechanism, 'Default Inheritance' in CM, the four Df and Df.O subschemas can be generalized over and unified into one abstract schema ([[A]k[N]i]Aj ↔ [Having SEMk SEMi]j) for OE TP BAH adjectival compounds; idiosyncratic types of the compounds are not treated as 'exceptions'. Fourth, the inheritance tree contributes a simple and systematic classification of the compounds; the most abstract schema at the top and the four subschemas at the bottom construct a hierarchical network. This article is the first study that tries to account for the holistic, and thus idiosyncratic properties found in OE TP BAH adjectival compounds based on Construction Morphology.