Ordering restrictions of modifiers in complex nominals

Abstract

Studies within the cartographic approach seek to contribute to the mapping of universal hierarchies of functional projections. The present work is an investigation of ordering restrictions between the modifiers within complex nominals (Levi, 1978) that express thematic roles, and which do not form a compound with the head noun. I show here that there is indeed a rigid hierarchy of semantic relations within complex nominals suggesting an extension of the functional projections proposed by Scott (2002) for adjectival modifiers (such as ColourP, LengthP, MaterialP etc.). The resulting hierarchy strongly resembles that found within the clausal syntactic domain of circumstantials argued for by Schweikert (2005) and Takamine (2010) in German and Japanese, respectively. As a consequence, my analysis provides support for the syntactic origin of many complex nominals that have often been referred to as (lexical) compounds.