Pragmatic and Discourse Properties of Subschemas in Construction Morphology, Geert Booij (Leiden University)
The meaning side of a construction comprises more than one aspect: not only semantic properties (conceptual structure), but also pragmatic properties and discourse properties. A classic example of a morphologically expressed pragmatic property is that diminutive words may be used for expressing endearment, as in doggy and pussy. That is, the level of meaning in a parallel architecture comprises various sublevels.
Subpatterns of general word formation patterns may have specific pragmatic or discourse properties. For instance, the use of aggressive compounds is linked to specific lexical heads such as head and brain, as in airhead, blockhead, bonehead, cabbage-head, birdbrain, peabrain.
Another type are stance-compounds such as Dutch compounds in-wappie ‘crazy person’ such as complotwappie, coronawappie, kankerwappie, klimaatwappie, QAnon-wappie, stikstofwappie that express a certain stance towards a societal or political issue.
Letter compounds such as N-word are coined freely in texts, and all letters are found to be used in actual usage. The interpretation of the letter depends on context or discourse.
These examples illustrate how subpatterns of nominal compounds, a productive word formation pattern in Dutch, may carry specific pragmatic or discourse properties.