@inproceedings{mosteiro-etal-2025-west,
title = "{W}est {G}ermanic noun-noun compounds and the morphology-syntax trade-off",
author = "Mosteiro, Pablo and
Blasi, Dami{\'a}n and
Paperno, Denis",
editor = {Nicolai, Garrett and
Chodroff, Eleanor and
Mailhot, Frederic and
{\c{C}}{\"o}ltekin, {\c{C}}a{\u{g}}r{\i}},
booktitle = "Proceedings of the The 22nd SIGMORPHON workshop on Computational Morphology, Phonology, and Phonetics",
month = may,
year = "2025",
address = "Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2025.sigmorphon-main.2/",
doi = "10.18653/v1/2025.sigmorphon-main.2",
pages = "15--22",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-231-2",
abstract = "This paper examines the linguistic distinction between syntax and morphology, focusing on noun-noun compounds in three West Germanic languages (English, Dutch, and German). Previous studies using the Parallel Bible Corpus have found a trade-off between word order (syntax) and word structure (morphology), with languages optimizing information conveyance through these systems. Our research question is whether manipulating English noun-noun compounds to resemble Dutch and German constructions can reproduce the observed distance between these languages in the order-structure plane. We extend a word-pasting procedure to merge increasingly common noun-noun pairs in English Bible translations. After each merge, we estimate the information contained in word order and word structure using entropy calculations. Our results show that pasting noun-noun pairs reduces the difference between English and the other languages, suggesting that orthographic conventions defining word boundaries play a role in this distinction. However, the effect is not pronounced, and results are statistically inconclusive."
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<abstract>This paper examines the linguistic distinction between syntax and morphology, focusing on noun-noun compounds in three West Germanic languages (English, Dutch, and German). Previous studies using the Parallel Bible Corpus have found a trade-off between word order (syntax) and word structure (morphology), with languages optimizing information conveyance through these systems. Our research question is whether manipulating English noun-noun compounds to resemble Dutch and German constructions can reproduce the observed distance between these languages in the order-structure plane. We extend a word-pasting procedure to merge increasingly common noun-noun pairs in English Bible translations. After each merge, we estimate the information contained in word order and word structure using entropy calculations. Our results show that pasting noun-noun pairs reduces the difference between English and the other languages, suggesting that orthographic conventions defining word boundaries play a role in this distinction. However, the effect is not pronounced, and results are statistically inconclusive.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T West Germanic noun-noun compounds and the morphology-syntax trade-off
%A Mosteiro, Pablo
%A Blasi, Damián
%A Paperno, Denis
%Y Nicolai, Garrett
%Y Chodroff, Eleanor
%Y Mailhot, Frederic
%Y Çöltekin, Çağrı
%S Proceedings of the The 22nd SIGMORPHON workshop on Computational Morphology, Phonology, and Phonetics
%D 2025
%8 May
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
%@ 979-8-89176-231-2
%F mosteiro-etal-2025-west
%X This paper examines the linguistic distinction between syntax and morphology, focusing on noun-noun compounds in three West Germanic languages (English, Dutch, and German). Previous studies using the Parallel Bible Corpus have found a trade-off between word order (syntax) and word structure (morphology), with languages optimizing information conveyance through these systems. Our research question is whether manipulating English noun-noun compounds to resemble Dutch and German constructions can reproduce the observed distance between these languages in the order-structure plane. We extend a word-pasting procedure to merge increasingly common noun-noun pairs in English Bible translations. After each merge, we estimate the information contained in word order and word structure using entropy calculations. Our results show that pasting noun-noun pairs reduces the difference between English and the other languages, suggesting that orthographic conventions defining word boundaries play a role in this distinction. However, the effect is not pronounced, and results are statistically inconclusive.
%R 10.18653/v1/2025.sigmorphon-main.2
%U https://aclanthology.org/2025.sigmorphon-main.2/
%U https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2025.sigmorphon-main.2
%P 15-22
Markdown (Informal)
[West Germanic noun-noun compounds and the morphology-syntax trade-off](https://aclanthology.org/2025.sigmorphon-main.2/) (Mosteiro et al., SIGMORPHON 2025)
ACL