Linking elements in Germanic

Kurzfassung/Abstract

Linking elements are sound material or graphemes appearing at the boundary between two parts of a word-formation product, cf. -s in German Versicherung-s-vertreter ‘insurance agent’. They are usually considered to be meaningless items, but hypotheses about possible functions exist. Linking elements are frequently found in various Germanic languages, especially in nominal compounds. We pro-vide a detailed sketch of the linking system in German in section 2. Section 3 contains a comparative survey of other Germanic languages.