On compounding in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

This paper proposes a new analysis of compound formation in Brazilian Portuguese (PB), assuming the Theory of Lexical Morphology (Kiparky: 1982, 1983: Lieber: 1980, 1983), and argues that there are two types of compounds in BP: Lexical Compounds and Post-Lexical Compounds. the former are formed in the lexicon and are syntactically opaque like simple (derived) words, since they do not permit the presence of the inflectional (plural) mark and the agreement of number and gender between their elements - they function as a unit during the morpho syntactic process. The latter are formed in the postlexical (syntactic) component and are syntactically transparent, since they permit the inflectional mark and the agreement between their elements - they are the product of the nonmorphological word formation rules proposed by Di Sciullo & Williams (1987)