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Word-compounding






Compounding, or word-composition, is one of the productive methods of word-formation in Modern English. It involves bringing together at least two stems already existing in the language as free forms; thus motor + car = motor-car; coal + black = coal-black; aircraft (itself a-compound) + carrier (derived stem) = aircraft carrier. The result, however, is not a mere sum of components, but a new lexical unit possessing a semantic, phonemic, graphic, morphological and syntactic integrity. Unlike a phrase, a compound word is characterized by impenetrability – i.e. no word or morpheme can stand between its elements.

Compounding is one of the most ancient ways of word-building: suffixation and prefixation are believed to have developed from it. Compounding has always been, and is, productive in English – especially in forming nouns and adjectives. About 50 per cent of Old English words were compound words – but many of those lost their original morphological character due to various factors (note that both woman and lady were compounds in Old English).

Apart from the process of word-composition described above, there are other, if minor, ways of forming compound words:

a) conversion from another compound word (e.g. to week-end);

b) back-formation on an analogy with the existing form (e.g. to vacuum-clean);

c) fusion or merging of a free combination of words, known also as lexicalization of a free phrase (e.g. a stay-at-home).

Two features of English compounds make them different from those in other Indo-European and Germanic languages: a) unlike Russian, they are made up of free forms coinciding with words (in Russian they are usually bound forms); b) unlike German, where there are no limits – in theory at least – to a number of stems involved in a compound, English compounds are usually binary, i.e. they are made up of two components only, with rare exceptions (e.g. waste-paper basket, aircraft carrier).

Classification of compounds

There are several possible classifications of compound words:

1) a functional, or part-of-speech classification;

2) a classification by the way or method of combination;

3) according to the relations between the components;

4) according to the order and arrangement of the components;

5) according to the type of compounding, etc.

Functionally, English compounds belong to different parts of speech, nouns and adjectives being the most common: arm-chair, baby-sitter, knee-high, rain-driven, etc. Adverbs and connectives (prepositions, particles) are hardly ever formed by composition: indoors, within, outside, etc., and it is not productive with verbs either.

There are two main methods oflinking the parts of a compound word together. One is juxtaposition, or merely placing them side by side in a definite order, with no linking element: door-handle, football – which is the most typical for English. The other is morphological compounding, which makes use of a linking element – a vowel, a consonant, or a syllable. Such words are rare in English, appearing mostly in special terminology: electromagnetic, magnetometer, handicraft, Anglo-French, – or with certain components: salesman, sportswoman. In a number of compound words originating from phrases, the linking elements are former prepositions or conjunctions: mother-in-law, man-of-war, bread-and-butter.

A peculiar method of compound word formation is derivational composition, which involves turning a phrase into a compound words by joining its parts together and adding an affix simultaneously: red-haired from red hair, pleasure-seeker from to seek pleasure etc. The two productive suffixes used for this purpose are -ed, to form compound-derivative adjectives, and -er, to form compound-derivative nouns. Derivational compound may also be formed by conversion from a verbal phrase with a post-position adverb: t o hold up – a holdup, to cast away – a castaway, and verbs are similarly formed from noun phrases: week-end – to week-end, blackmail – to blackmail.

There are two types of relations between the components in an English compound word – coordination and subordination. Coordinative compounds consist of components equal in their importance, so that neither of them dominates the other. The meaning of such compounds is the meaning of the sum of their components: actor-manager, secretary-stenographer, bread-and-butter. The coordinative model is not very productive in English. A subordinative compound, on the other hand, is based on the domination of one component, usually the second, which is the structural and semantic centre of the word (taxi-driver, text-book). It is the second component that refers a compound word to a certain lexico-grammatical class.

The order and arrangement of components in a compound are rigidly fixed in English and can’t be changed at will. They usually resemble the order of words in a phrase or a sentence. The choice of stems and the rules of their arrangement are known as distributional formulas or structural patterns of compound words.

There are two types of English compounds according to their structural arrangement – syntactic and asyntactic. In syntactic compounds the order of their components is parallel to the order of words in a phrase, so it doesn't contradict the rules of Modern English syntax. An (adj. stem + noun stem) combination in blackbird obviously reminds one of (adj + noun) combination in black piano; a structure of (verbal stem + noun stem) in tell-tale is the same as in tell tales (verb + noun), etc. In an asyntactic compound, however, the order of components is impossible for, or contrary to, English syntax: oil-rich (noun stem + adj. stem) / rich in oil (adj + noun), or incompatible with it: bluish-black (adj. stem + adj. stem).

According to their morphemic composition, compounds in Modern English may be classified into consisting: 1) of two simple stems (e.g. home-made, blackbird); 2) of one simple and one derived stem (eg. land-owner, looking-glass); 3) of a simple stem added to a compound (e.g. wastepaper-basket, aircraft-carrier).

A more detailed classification of English compounds is also possible. Thus English compound nouns are usually classified into endocentric and exocentric. Endocentric compounds possess an obvious semantic centre which names the referent, while the second component modifies and narrows the meaning of the first: sunbeam, maid-servant. In exocentric compounds, however, the referent is not named but rather implied; what is named is a characteristic aspect or feature of the referent. The meaning of such a compound is never equivalent to that of any of its parts; it lies, as it were, outside the word (hence the name). For example, scarecrow in not a kind of crow, nor is it a kind of scare: it is something used for scaring the crows away, while cutthroat and pickpocket are somebody performing the criminal acts named. Many exocentric compound nouns are converted from verbs combining with postpositions: black-out, splash-down, go-between.

A special type of exocentric compounds is bahuvrihi compounds. The word bahuvrihi itself is borrowed from Sanskrit, an ancient Indian language. It could be translated as much-riced but actually meant rich. Compound words of this type are based on a metonymical relation between an object named and an object implied, and name an object by pointing to some striking feature it possesses – usually a striking feature in its appearance: thus a redbreast is not any special kind of breast, but a small bird with a prominent red spot on its breast. Similarly, a blackshirt is not the shirt itself, but what’s inside it (in the 1920s it was an Italian Fascist, a follower of Mussolini), and a greenhorn is not a horn but an inexperienced person.

Another important classification of Modern English compounds is according to their motivation, i.e. according to the way the morphological structure of a compound is related to its meaning. The compounds are accordingly divided into: 1) motivated, or non-idiomatic, and 2) idiomatic, or non-motivated. With motivated compounds, the meaning can be easily deduced from the meaning of their components: e.g. land-owner is undoubtedly one who owns land. In idiomatic compounds, however, there is no direct connection between the structure and the meaning; metaphorically speaking, they are not transparent. A blackboard, for example, need not be either a board or black. It might have been originally, but now it s usually brown or green – even white! – and made of linoleum or plastic or some other suitable material. What is important is its actual use as a teaching aid. According to Geoffrey Leech, what we see here is a shrinking of denotation: a compound word, unlike a free combination of independent elements, becomes restricted in sense and use, i.e. applies to fewer objects. Thus a trouser suit is no longer any suit of clothes with trousers – but “a suit with trousers for women”. This brings us directly to a complex problem of distinguishing between a compound word and a free combination.

Criteria of compounding. The stone wall problem

As most English compounds consist of free forms, a question naturally arises of distinguishing between a compound word and a free combination of the same roots. In other word, how do we know that blackbird is a compound word and black bird is a phrase? Numerous criteria and their combinations have been suggested by various linguistic schools. Eugene Nida, for example, suggested that a combination of phonological, morphological and syntactic criteria be used for this purpose, no single factor being normally sufficient.

The phonological criterion, and the related graphical criterion, are among the least reliable, since the spelling of English compound words is by no means consistent. Not only different authors, but also even the same author may spell headmaster as a solid word, or with a hyphen in the middle (head-master), or as two separate words (head master). The same applies to most compound words in Modern English. The phonetic criterion is in itself not too reliable, either. True, there is a definite stress pattern for Modern English compounds – a heavy stress on the first element. This pattern, however, is followed by compound nouns mostly, while compound adjectives show double even stress (i.e. both elements are stressed equally heavily); besides, the stress pattern may be influenced by the phrasal stress, or the syntactical function of the compound.

The semantic criterion seems more reliable. Indeed, a compound word is usually defined as expressing a single idea, while a phrase expresses something like a sum of meanings of components; so dirty work is a compound as long as its meaning is idiomatic, unlike clean work. But stating whether phrase expresses one integrated idea is no easy task, involving a number of intermediate stages. Besides, this criterion fails to distinguish between a compound word and an idiomatic expression, most of which are definitely not compound words (e.g. it's raining cats and dog).

The morphological criterion of formal integrity, which emphasizes the presence of connecting elements, bound forms, or structural indivisibility, is of little use for English: black market is indivisible, and yet the stress patterns show that it is a phrase.

The numerous borderline cases between compounds and word-groups have given rise to one of the most controversial problems in English word-composition, known as the stone wall problem. Briefly, it is whether the combinations of the stone wall type should be regarded as compound words or free combinations. Even if this difficulty is solved, the status of the first element is still not clear: is it a noun used as an attribute, or a noun that has been converted into an adjective?

According to most linguists, a noun-to-adjective conversion is hardly productive in Modem English, and there are veryfew such adjectives in independent use. On the other hand, the possibility of combining two nouns in an attributive phrase is now almost universally recognized. This seems to bring us to a conclusion that both free combinations of the noun + noun type and compound words of the noun stem + nounstem type co-exist in present-day English. The criterion in distinguishing compound words from word-groups of the N + N type seems to be the spelling, which in most cases fluctuates between the use of a hyphen, and spelling as two separate words. Those N + N units which have become registered by vocabularies tend to solid or hyphenated spellings.

 

 






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