Über die Morphosyntaktische Struktur von Nominalkomposita im Deutschen und in Yoruba

Abstract

This thrust of this paper is identification and analysis of the major types of nominal compounds in both German and Yoruba languages. This is with a view to bringing out the differences and similarities that exist in the word formation processes of nominal compounds of the two languages under consideration. For the purpose of this analysis, 217nominal compounds (110 from Yoruba and 107 from German) were considered. The paper identified the types of nominal compounds in the two languages under consideration and discussed the peculiar morphosyntactic features leading to their formation. It was concluded that the nominal compounds from both languages have some linguistic characteristics in common. One of the major similarities in the two languages is the binary structure of their nominal compounds. This characteristic is evidently noticed even in compounds possessing more than two constituents. However, the nominal compounds in the two languages differ syntactically. While German maintains the Determiner – Determined word order, Yoruba however maintains the Determined - Determiner word order.

Keywords: Contrastive Linguistics, Word Formation, Nominal Compounds