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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
Regular articles

Compounds and culture

Conceptual blending in Norwegian and Russian

 | UiT The Arctic University of Norway
 | UiT The Arctic University of Norway
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).
Keywords: compound, Norwegian, Russian, blending, conceptual integration, iconicity
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
Published online: 20 August 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00034.nes
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