English Compounds with ing-form heads

Abstract

This paper investigates the properties of compounds with right-hand elements that have the form of present-participles, i.e. ing-forms. After a survey of the recent literature on argumental relations in compounds in which the ing-form is an event nominalisation, the paper looks at compounds embedded before another noun. Evidence from attested patterns is used to argue that argumental relations in such sequences can be explained via the embedding of different constructions.