Rajendra Singh and Probal Dasgupta, Université de Montréal and University of Hyderabad
Bangla and Hindi provide particularly strong evidence that perhaps the only way to make sense of the apparent compositionality and the nityatva of words described in both traditions (classical Indian generative, contemporary generative) as compounds is to give theoretical recognition to the fact that in words of this type the freedom attributed to their constituents is remarkably limited, if not non-existent. The theoretical premises for the argument sketched in the paper include (a) a reading of lexical integrity associating it with the core generative principle that a word is a minimal free expression capable of supporting interpreting and (b) an emphasis on the context-sensitive use of commutation as a structure detector. The empirical argument works from morphologically clear to unclear examples in the manner of the parametric carry-over of notions and results from implicit to explicit morphological subsystems.