O události

Research centre 

Theories, Methods, and Models in Contemporary Linguistic Research

at the Faculty of Arts, University of South Bohemia

is pleased to invite you to a workshop

Different perspectives on compounding:
works in progress

10-11 September 2026

Workshop description

Compounding is a fascinating word-formation process. While compounds represent a traditional linguistic category attested in virtually all languages, they also constitute an inherently boundary phenomenon: they lie at the interface between different levels of linguistic structure (morphology vs. syntax) as well as between linguistic and extra-linguistic knowledge (grammar vs. pragmatics). As a result, many seemingly fundamental questions remain the subject of ongoing debate, including the definition of compounds, their locus of formation, their classification, their internal structure, and the semantic relations that hold between their constituents.

Over the past decades, major synthetic works (e.g. Lieber & Štekauer 2009; Scalise & Vogel 2010; ten Hacken 2016; Bauer 2017) have provided important new perspectives on these issues. More recently, however, attention has shifted towards emerging questions. These include the comparison of the explanatory potential of different theoretical frameworks (such as rule-based models, cognitive linguistics, and paradigmatic approaches), the use of vector semantics and large language models in the study of compounding, and diachronic approaches that investigate not only individual compounds but also the development of broader compounding patterns.

Although these new directions have not yet resulted in comprehensive syntheses, they are currently at the center of lively discussions within the morphological community. In this context, the workshop Different perspectives on compounding: works in progress, to be held on September 10-11, 2026, is conceived not as a traditional conference but as an informal meeting. Its aim is to bring together linguists interested in compounding and to provide a space for presenting and discussing ongoing research, preliminary results, and new ideas in a collaborative and open setting.

Program

• Thursday, September 10, 2026

room S2 – 1st floor

• Friday, September 11, 2026

Roundtable, discussion, social trip (t.b.a.)

List of participants

Sophie Delforge is a doctoral student at the CLLE (Cognition, Languages, Language and Ergonomics) research unit at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France. She is also a part-time lecturer, teaching methodology for linguistics. Her research focuses on binominal compounds particularly in financial discourse, through a diachronic perspective. Her work integrates insights from Construction Morphology and textual terminology approaches to study the structural evolution and paradigmatic tendencies of these compounds.

Ousmane Diao is a lecturer and researcher in French grammar and linguistics at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar. Holding a doctorate in Language and Communication Sciences, he was a secondary school French teacher (PES) and then an itinerant pedagogical coordinator. Specializing in lexical semantics, he is also interested in language policies, discourse analysis, and the relationship between languages ​​and development. His main research area is constructional morphology, particularly word composition. His corpus of study is French spoken in the Francophone world (Senegal). His method is based on an empirical approach. Compositional neologisms in Senegalese political and trade union discourse constitute one of his research focuses.

Katrin Hein-Antonioli is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Lexical Studies at the Leibniz Institute for the German Language in Mannheim (IDS).  Her research focusses on complex words at the boundary between lexicon and grammar. She has worked intensively on German (phrasal) compounds and is recently preparing a project on augmentation and diminution as evaluative patterns of word-formation.

Irene Lami is a doctoral student at the Department of Italian Studies at the Centre for Languages and Literature at Lund University, Sweden. Her research focuses on morphosyntax and word formation in Italian, with special attention to the processes of compounding. Her work adopts an interdisciplinary approach integrating theoretical linguistics and psycholinguistics, with the primary aim of analyzing the rules and mechanisms governing the formation of compound words in Italian.

Mauro le Donne is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, Czechia. His PhD research focused on blending in contemporary Italian, while his current work examines the emergence of specific neoclassical compounding patterns in Italian. His approach combines theoretical insights from Construction Morphology and Natural Morphology with corpus-linguistic methods.

Silvia Micheli is an adjunct professor at the University of Milan. From 2019 to 2022 she was a research fellow at the University of Milano – Bicocca. Her research focuses on Italian word formation and evaluative morphology. She has authored a monograph on Italian compounds from a diachronic perspective published by De Gruyter.

Camille Monnot is a MA student at the Paris-Nanterre University, his thesis on French NN compounds is co-directed by Florence Villoing and Sabine Lehmann.

Fabio Montermini is a research director at CNRS in the “Cognition, langues, langages, ergonomie” laboratory, Toulouse, as well as a teacher of morphology and general linguistics at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès. His research focuses mainly on the derivational morphology of Italian, French and other languages (Spanish, Russian) and on lexical innovation from an empirical perspective, combining corpus and experimental data. 

Jaromír Pelikán is a PhD student at the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, Czechia. His doctoral project focuses on N+N Spanish compounds found in a web-based corpus.

Jan Radimský a professor of Linguistics at the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice. His research focuses on various aspects of compounding in Italian and French. He is currently leading a research project entitled How Do Word-Formation Patterns Emerge? An Empirical Diachronic Analysis of Italian N+N Compounds (2025–2027).

Franz Rainer is professor emeritus of Romance linguistics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU), Austria. His research focuses on word formation in the Romance languages, with particular emphasis on Italian and Spanish, and combines synchronic, diachronic and comparative perspectives. He has published extensively on derivation, compounding, morphological competition and semantic change in word formation. His recent work has paid particular attention to the historical development of word-formation patterns from Latin to the Romance languages.

Martin Schäfer is a professor of English Linguistics at the University of Leipzig. His work on compounding has mainly focused on Semantic transparency in English, but includes also work on the phrase/compound distinction in Mandarin Chinese and on metaphor/metonymy patterns across English, Dutch, and German. Besides compounding, he has also worked on several derivational patterns in English, most recently on the affix rivalry between -ity and -ness.

Florence Villoing is a professor of linguistics at the Paris-Nanterre University. Her research focusses on various word formation processes, from metropolitan and African French or Creole languages based on French. She has worked on French compounding, specifically on Verb-Noun compounding. She is now involved in Jan's project on the emergence of ATAP Noun-Noun compounding patterns in French, compared to those in Italian. One of her master's students is conducting research on the relevance of the notion of grammaticalization to account for this emergence.

Organizers, contact:

Jan Radimský – radimsky@ff.jcu.cz

Faculty of Arts, University of South Bohemia

Branišovská 1645/31a

České Budějovice, Czech republic

 References:

Bauer, Laurie. 2017. Compounds and Compounding. 1st edn. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108235679.

Hacken, Pius ten. 2016. The semantics of compounding. Cambridge: Cambridge university press.

Lieber, Rochelle & Pavol Štekauer. 2009. The Oxford handbook of compounding (Oxford Handbooks in Linguistics). Oxford: Oxford university press.

Scalise, Sergio & Irene Vogel. 2010. Cross-disciplinary issues in compounding (Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science 311). Amsterdam: J. Benjamins.