Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 2010
Co-compounds (sometimes termed “copulative compounds”) are com-pounds whose elements are of equivalent status and which can be glossed as having coordinated meaning (usually linked by and, but occasionally, in some languages, by or). There are several distin-guishable kinds of co-compounds, including dvandvas, appositional compounds, co-participant compounds, and so on (Wälchli 2005, Bauer 2008a). These were not available in early Germanic. Accordingly, co-compounds in modern Germanic languages are innovations, and it is scarcely surprising to see that there is much agreement about the types that are available. However, this apparent unity hides a host of differ-ences across languages. This paper focuses on the differences between Danish, English, and German in the use of co-compounds.*