Morphology

- The term generally attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the German poet, novelist,
playwright and philosopher.
- Goethe coined it in a biological context – etymology is Greek: ‘morph’ means shape, form
- Morphology is the study of form or forms (structure of organisms/land forms)
- First used for linguistic purposes by German linguist August Schleicher, in 1859, referring to
the study of the form of words.
- In linguistics, it refers to the branch of linguistics that deals with words, their internal
structure, and how they are found. (Also, morphemics)
- Morphologists investigate words, word formation and their internal structures by identifying
and studying morphemes.

Morphemes:

- The smallest linguistic pieces with a grammatical function.

- The word – the smallest free-standing sign in language.
- Morpheme – the smallest sign in language – smallest form with a meaning. Or, the smallest
meaningful unit in the structure of a language.
- A word (for e.g. phone), or a meaningful piece of a word (the –ed as in talked).
- Eg. Unkind (word) is formed of two morphemes – un and kind. i.e. un+kind
renewable – re+new+able, unlikely – un+lik(e)+ly
- But, the word carpet is a single morpheme, though car and pet are individual morphemes.
Carpet has no relation to car and pet.

Morphophonemics

- The relation between morphemes and phonemes – the phonemic shapes which represent
morphemes, or how phonemes form morphemes.
- The phonemic structure of morphemes – the plural morpheme -s is realized as /z/ in cabs, as
/s/ in cats and as /iz/ in catches.
- Morpheme is different from phoneme in that phonemes have no relationship with the
content or meaning of language, while morphemes have meaning. While the phoneme
belongs to the sound system of langg, morpheme belongs to the grammatical system.
- A morpheme could be built of a single phoneme, or more than one.

Allomorphs

- The term ‘morph’ – the phonological variation of a morpheme.

- Each morph represents a particular morpheme, but each morpheme doesn’t have a morph.
- ‘Mice’ has one morph, but two morphemes – ‘mouse’ + ’plural morpheme’
- ‘smaller’ has two morphs, and two morphemes.
- For e.g. the English past tense morpheme spelled as ‘-ed’ has various morphs.
- It is realized as /t/ in walked, as /d/ in bagged and as /id/ in batted.
o /t/ after a voiceless sound except /t/ - jump – jumped/ fished, passed, booked
o /d/ after a voiced sound except /d/ - repel – repelled/ buzzed, begged, seemed
o /id/ after either /t/ or /d/ - root – rooted/ batted, banded, hunted

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 - These are called allomorphs or variants.
- The English Plural Morpheme: adds -s or –es:
o /-s/ When a noun ends in a voiceless consonant other than /s/, /ʃ/ or /tʃ/:
 Steps, laps, cats, cuffs, deaths, blocks, paths etc.
o /-z/ When a noun ends in a vowel or a voiced consonant other than /z/, /ʒ/ or /dʒ/:
 Boys, girls, chairs, bees, legs, cubs, digs etc.
o /-iz/ When a noun ends in /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/ or /dʒ/:
 Glasses, phases, roses, fishes, garages, judges, batches etc.

- The relationship between morph, allomorph and morpheme is similar to that between
phone, allophone and phoneme.
- ‘morph’ means shape. Any minimal phonetic form that has meaning is a morph.
- Those morphs which belong to the same morpheme are called allomorphs of that
morpheme. /s/, /z/ and /iz/ are allomorphs of the plural morpheme {e(s)}
- Allomorphs are in complementary distribution.
- Brought = {bring} + {ed}; played = {play} + {ed}
- Worse = {bad} + {er}; taller = {tall} + {er}
- Negative morpheme: im-possible, ir-regular, il-legible, in-sane are all allomorphs of the
same negative morpheme, ‘in’

Phonological Conditioning

- When allomorphs are conditioned by the phonetic nature of the preceding phoneme
- The Past Tense (/t/, /d/ and /id/) and Plural Morphemes (/s/, /z/ and /iz/)are phonologically
conditioned.

Morphological Conditioning

- The English Plural Morpheme and Past Tense Morpheme present instances of Morphological
Conditioning as well.
- In pairs like man-men, child-children, ox-oxen, criterion-criteria and deer-deer, allomorphs
are determined by specific morphemes, rather than by phonological features.
- The Past Tense and Past Participle Morphemes, go-went-gone, speak-spoke-spoken, begin-
began-begun etc also show morphologically conditioned allomorphs.
- The choice of allomorph is unpredictable.

Free and Bound Morphemes

- In words like unhappy, disregarded, boyhood etc., morphemes such as happy, regard and
boy can stand on their own as independent words. – Free Morphemes.
- Morphemes like un-, dis-, -ed, -hood etc. cannot stand on their own and are always attached
to a free morpheme – Bound Morphemes.
- Morphemes such as like un-, dis-, -ed, -hood etc. are also called Affixes.
- The form to which an affix is attached is called a base or a stem.
- Consider the word ‘reconsideration’.
- Re+consider+ation.

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 - A stem is a base morpheme to which another morphological piece is attached. The stem can
be simple – ie made up of only one part or complex itself made up of more than one piece.
- We could call the stem ‘consider’ as the Root also.
- A root is like a stem in constituting the core of the word to which other pieces attach but the
term refers only to morphologically simple units.
- For eg. Disagree is the stem of disagreement as it is the base to which –ment attaches, but
agree is the root.
- In disagree agree is both the stem to which dis- attaches and the root of the entire word.
Unknowingly
Un- (affix) + knowingly (base)
Knowing (base/stem) + -ly (affix)
Know (stem/root) +-ing (affix)
- The stem that cannot be further split up is called the root.

Affixes

- Affixes may be divided into prefixes and suffixes.

Set A

Unhappy un-
Immobile im-
Enable en-
Illegal il-

Set B

Friendship -ship
Childhood -hood
Boys -s
Nicely -ly

- Prefixes appear at the beginning of the base

- Suffixes at the end of a base.

Affixes are classified as Inflectional affixes and derivational affixes.

- Inflection is a change made in the form of a word to express its relation to other words in
the sentence.
- Derivation is the process by which new words are formed from existing words.
- Derivation is class maintaining if the original word and the new word belong to the same
class.
- Eg. boy and boyhood – nouns. Play and replay. Etc.
- It is class-changing if the two words belong to different categories. –
- Eg. Able and enable. Verb from adj.
season and seasonal. Sing/singer

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Inflectional Suffixes

- 1. Do not change the class of the word.

o Eg. Slide-slides, hot-hotter, girl-girls, play-playing
- 2. They come last in a word and appear only as suffixes.
- 3. They do not pile up – one suffix ends a word.
o Eg. pens, higher, laughing, written
o Losing –(but, teachings – teach+ing+s, a gerund, like sayings)

Morpheme

1. Free 2. Bound

Prefixes Suffixes
Derivational Inflectional Derivational

Class changing/Class maintaining Class changing/maintaining

enable rewrite teacher friendship

Morphemes Continued
Other types of morphemes identified by grammarians include full and emptymorphemes, additive,
replacive and zeromorphemes.

Full morphemes are elements that are identified as content words while empty morphemes are
those that will be identified as grammatical words.

Additive morphemes are affixes, added to the free morphemes.

Replacive morphemes replace other morphemes (manager/managress, emperor/empress) while

zero morphemes are ‘unseen’ morphemes (e.g fish, sheep, as plural nouns).

Zero Morph
An allomorph of a morpheme without any phonetic form. It is represented by the symbol ‘’. Also,
null morpheme.

Eg.‘Three sheep’ as against ‘three goats’. ‘Sheep’ here contains the root ‘sheep’ + plural morpheme.
So, sheep (root) +.

In ‘I like it’ – the verb conjugation ‘like’ has a zero affix as against in ‘He likes it’.

Portmanteau morph
Portmanteau – French for suitcase/hand luggage – in linguistics, a morph expressing the presence of
several morphemes.

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A portmanteau morph is a single morph that is analyzed as representing two or more underlying
morphemes. Or, a single morph that is analyzed as representing two or more underlying
morphemes.

A phonological unit of more than one morpheme, as French ‘au’ which means ‘to (him)’ from ‘a’ (to)
+ ‘le’ (masculine article), which realizes a preposition and the definite article.

Also French du ‘of him’ from de ‘of’ and le the masculine article.

She sings. –s stands for third person, singular, indicative and present tense.

She is singing. The word ‘is’ represents the morphemes of third person, singular, present tense and
the lexeme ‘be’.

Portmanteau word is used to describe a linguistic blend, namely a word formed by blending sounds
from two or more distinct words and combining their meanings.

For eg.‘Smog’ from ‘smoke’ and ‘fog’.

Derivational morphology
Derivational morphemes are affixes which are added to a lexeme to change its meaning or function.
They are used to make a new, different lexeme (for example, -ly changes the adjective sad into the
adverb sadly).

 Most derivational morphemes change the part of speech, for example, -ance changes the
verb resemble into the noun resemblance. Note that the 'e' is deleted at the end of the verb
resemble when the suffix is added.
 The majority of derivational morphemes that don't change the part of speech are prefixes,
for example, adding un- changes the meaning of the adjective happy but it is still an
adjective unhappy.

When affixes are added to a base or stem, there is usually a specific order for adding them.
Inflectional suffixes are added last, and, once they are added, no more derivational affixes can be
added. An example of this is given below for the word deconstructions, showing the order in which
the various affixes are added:

 The derivational prefix de- is added to the verb base construct to get the verb deconstruct
 The derivational suffix -ion is added to the verb stem deconstruct to get the noun
deconstruction
 Lastly, the inflectional plural suffix -s is added to the noun to get deconstructions.

Inflectional morphology
Inflectional morphemes are affixes which carry grammatical meaning (for example, the plural -s in
cats or progressive -ing in sailing). They do not change the part of speech or meaning of the word;
they function to ensure that the word is in the appropriate form so the sentence is grammatically
correct.

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 All inflectional morphemes in English are suffixes and are added after any derivational
suffixes.
 The most common inflectional morphemes are used in verb inflection (for example, -ed in
raced, -ing in racing, -s in races) but there are suffixes for noun inflection (for example, plural
-s in horses and possessive -'s in Norma's) and adjective inflection (for example, comparative
-er in faster and superlative -est in fastest).

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MORPHOLOGICAL PROCESSES IN WORD FORMATION

Morphological processes, otherwise known as word formation processes are the major
processes by which words are formed in language. The English word formation processes are
Affixation, Compounding, Conversion, Blending, Clipping, Reduplication, Acronymy,
Coinage/Nonce Formation, Back Formation, Neologism, Inventions, Back Formation and
Borrowing.

Affixation

This is the process by which bound morphemes are added before, within or after the root/free
morphemes. In other words, it is the process of word formation by prefixation, infixation and
suffixation. Through this process, lexical and grammatical information is added to the sense
of the root. Prefixes change the meanings of the roots without altering their grammatical
statuses. Infixes and suffixes mostly do not change the meanings of the roots or the base
forms but give information about number, case, tense etc as they also change the grammatical
classes of the base forms. An affix can be made up of a letter, two, three, four, five, six or
even seven letters.

Some prefixes and their meanings are the following:

a (not, without) as in amoral, asymmetrical

ab (not), abnormal
bi (twice, having two) as in bicycle, bi-camera
contra (against) contra-distinguish
counter (against) counter-argue, counterplot
de (down from, away) as in decamp, devalue, demystify
dis (apart, asunder, not) as in disorganize, disbelief, dislodge
ex (former) as in ex-principal, ex-student
fore (before, in front) as in fore-tell, forecast, foreword
il, im, in, ir, un (not, against) as in illegal, impossible, insignificant, irresponsible,
unnecessary
mal (ill, bad) as in maladjust, maladministration

Others include mis- (against), mono-(single), pan-(all), poly-(many), post-(after), pre-

(before), pro-(for), pseudo-(false), re-(back, again), semi-(half), super-(above, over), tele-(at a
distance) trans-(across, beyond) etc.

Infixes are also referred to as replacive morphemes as they tend to replace other
morphemes/letters in the root form. They are mostly inflectional as they give grammatical
information (i.e. number, tense, case). Examples are ‘e’, ‘oo’, ‘o’, ‘ee’, ‘a’ which all replace
singular and present morphs in women, stood, wrote, teeth and sat, respectively.

Suffixes can be used as inflections or derivations. For instance, in ‘girls’ {s} is an

inflectional suffix because it does not change the word class – a noun. But in ‘beautiful’,
{ful} is a derivational suffix because it has changed the word class from the noun root to an
adjective. Suffixes are classified into types, depending on their functions. These are Noun
class, Verb class, Adjective class and Adverb class suffixes.

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Noun class suffixes convert the base form (usually a verb or an adjective) to a noun. They
include ‘– ance’, –ment’, ‘–ier’, ‘–er’, ‘–or’, ‘–ity’, ‘–ist’, ‘–ness’, ‘–y’, ‘–sion’, ‘–ory’, ‘–ry’,
‘–ian’, ‘–ism’, etc as in appear+ance, govern+ment, cash+ier, teach+er, sail+or, total+ity,
journal+ist, fair+ness, honest+y, revise+ion, obsverve+tory, slave+ry, politic+ian,
capital+ism respectively.

Adjective class suffixes convert the base form (usually a noun or a verb) to adjectives.
They include such examples as ‘–al, ‘–ic, ‘–ish’, ‘–ible’, ‘–able’, ‘–ful’, ‘–ous’, ‘–less’, ‘–
lent’, ‘–ive etc as in option+al, Islam+ic, fool_ish, digest+ible, comfort+able, success+ful,
comtempt+ous, fear+less, fraud+ulent and act+ive respectively.

Verb class suffixes change the root form (usually a noun or an adjective) to verbs.
Examples of these are ‘–en’, ‘–ify’, ‘–ize’, ‘–ate’, etc as in glad+en, solid+ify, actual+ize and
valid+ate respectively.

Adverb class suffixes also change the root form (often an adjective sometimes a noun)
to adverbs. Examples are ‘–ly’, ‘–ward’, ‘–wise’ as in smart+ly, way+ward, clock+wise
respectively.

Compounding

Compounding involves the combination of two or more words. The combined forms
can be with a hyphen or without it. Three types of compounds are identifiable: solid,
hyphenated or two-word forms. Solid compounds are classroom, grandchild, graveyard,
hyphenated compounds are court-martial, frame-up, half-truth and two-word compounds are
funny bone, gold plate, white house etc. To know what type is applicable or correct in a given
context, a student needs to consult current dictionaries of English. Compounds may be nouns
such as carry-over, stronghold, off day, father-in-law, or adjectives such as off-guard, first-
rate, run-of-the-mill, chicken-hearted, or adverbs such as offhand, inside out, non-stop or
verbs such as gainsay, leapfrog, jump-start etc.

Conversion

Conversion is the process of forming a new word from an existing word merely by changing
the grammatical class of the latter word. Conversion may or may not involve the change of
stress patterns. The same word assumes different classes in conversion. Examples of this
include man (n), man (v), pencil (n), pencil (v), work (n), work (v), empty(v), empty (adj),
graduate (n), graduate (v), graduate (adj).

Light: Switch on the light (noun). Light the lamp.

Back: He is carrying a bag on his back (noun)
You must back me up (verb)
The plane flew back in no time (adverb)
He left by the back door (adj)

Other types of conversion:

1. Please give me two coffees.

2. I hate this touch-me-not policy.
3. I don’t believe in any ism.

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 Conversions involving stress shift

1. CONduct (Noun) and conDUCT (verb)

2. SUBject (Noun) and subject (verb)
3. CONtrast (Noun) and contrast

Conversions due to change in spellings or if the final consonant is voiced.

1. advice (Noun) and advise (verb)

2. house

Blending

In blending, two words are brought together to form a new word. It is a process that involves
collapsing one form into the other. Examples of blends are smog (smoke+fog), transistor
(transfer + resistor), telecast (television + broadcast) motel (motor + hotel), forex (foreign +
exchange), computeracy (computer + literacy), brunch (breakfast + lunch). In forming blends,
either affixes or syllables of the words are removed to make the two words ‘agreeable’.

Clipping

Clipping is the morphological process of word shortening to the effect that words retain their
original meanings. It is different from abbreviation in the sense that a clip is not periodized as
abbreviated forms are. Clipping is done essentially by removing initial and/or final syllables.
An interesting example of clipping is in the word ‘advertisement’ which is clipped as ‘advert’
and then clipped further as ‘ad’. Clipping arises from the innate tendency to economise
words. Clips are mostly used in informal contexts. Other examples of clips are bus
(omnibus), piano (pianoforte), flu (influenza), fridge (refrigerator), exam (examination),
memo (memorandum), phone (telephone), photo (photograph), pram (perambulator), lab
(laboratory). Names are often shortened through the process of clipping. For example, Tim
(Timothy), Abdul (Abdullahi) etc.

Reduplication

Reduplication is the process of repetition of words, a form of compounding. Reduplicatives

are either partial or total. In partial reduplication, the two forms are slightly different from
each other as only a letter or two changes. Examples of partial reduplicatives are many, some
of which are nitty-gritty, hurly-burly, helter-skelter, shilly-shally, criss-cross, dilly-dally,
hubble-bubble, willy-nilly, riff-raff, nit-wit, tit-tat, rag-tag, tick-tock, kow-tow, hoity-toity,
hocus-pocus, hobnob, chit-chat, higgledi-piggledy, etc. In total reduplication, on the other
hand, the same form is repeated. Examples of total reduplicatives are not many, some of
which include goody-goody, jaw-jaw, pooh-pooh, eye-eye, bye-bye, etc.

Acronymy

Acronymy is the process of word formation in which words are formed from the initial letters
of phrases. This is also referred to as abbronymy, a blend of abbreviation and acronymy.
Acronyms/abbronyms are either simple or complex. They are simple when they are easily
determinable from the phrases they represent. They are complex when they are not easily
determinable from their full forms. Simple abbronyms are BBC (British Broadcasting

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Corporation), UNO (United Nations Organisation) NEPA (National Electric Power
Authority), etc. Complex abbronyms, on the other hand, are FORTRAN (Formular
Translator) NITEL (Nigerian Telecommunication Limited) COMSKIP (Communications
Skills Project) etc. Many acronyms are also pronounced as words, for eg. Radar, laser etc.

Nonce Formation/Coinage

This is a morphological process by which a language user deliberately invents or accidentally

uses a particular word in a particular context. If a speaker does not remember an exact word
that can really express his thought, he coins an alternative word, known as “nounce form”. In
writing, nounce forms or coined words are always enclosed in inverted commas to indicate
their specific or special use. For example, David Crystal once wrote that a student who was
having problems with linguistics said he was ‘linguistified’ to express how confounding the
course was to him. Also, a particular lecturer was fond of putting a full stop after everything
he wrote on the chalkboard.

Back Formation

Back formation is the process of shortening longer words by removing the suffixes. Back
forms derive from bi-syllabic or poly-syllabic words, especially agentive nouns, subsequently
turned to the base forms. Examples of back forms are drive (from driver), office (from
officer) assemble (from assemblance), debt (from debtor) revise (from revision), convert
(from converter), etc.

Back-formation is the process of creating a new lexeme, usually by removing actual or

supposed affixes. The resulting neologism is called a back-formation, a term coined by James
Murray in 1889.

Examples are: ‘babysit’ from babysitter, ‘hawk’ from hawker, ‘beg’ from beggar, ‘kempt’
from unkempt.

Back-formation is different from clipping – back-formation may change the part of speech or
the word's meaning, whereas clipping creates shortened words from longer words, but does
not change the part of speech or the meaning of the word.

Neologism

Neologism is the process in which old words are made to assume new senses because of
relative semantic contiguity. In neologism, already established words are invested with new
meanings. For example, let us consider Pyrrhic victory, waterloo and marathon, the meanings
of which are originally historical. Pyrrhus was the king of Epirus who had embarked on a
number of military campaigns against Rome, Siciliy and Asculum. He almost met his doom
at the battle of Asculum in which he lost a substantial number of men and his ego was
deflated, though he routed the Roman army. Victory attained at a very high cost thus
becomes known as Pyrrhic victory. Waterloo was the name of the village in which the
famous French conqueror, Napoleon Bonarparte was defeated; hence, to meet one’s waterloo
is to meet one’s downfall. Marathon originally means a distant town where a Roman soldier
ran to; hence, a long distance race on foot. By neologism, it is now any activity which
consumes energy over a long period (e.g. marathon lecture).

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Borrowing

Borrowing involves taking lexical items from one language to another. Borrowed words are
known as loan words which are made to adapt to the phonological structure, more or less, of
the borrower (English) language. English has many loan words from virtually all languages.
Examples include restaurant (French), mosquito (Spanish) mammoth (Russian), alcohol
(Arabic), tea (Chinesse), guru (Hindi), bazaar (Persian) and tycoon (Japanese).

Inventions

Words like X-rays, laser, sputnik and astronaut are invented arbitrarily, but in the course of
time, become part of the language.

Echoism

Echoism results when words are formed by the sounds that suggest their meaning. Clang,,
whisper, thunder, click, tick, murmur are examples.

Autonomasia

Derivation of words from names of persons and places.

Eg: boycott from Captain Boycott, guy from Guy Fawkes.

Compounding.

Compounding is joining together 2 or more stems.

1- without a connecting element: e.g.: heartbreak, headache.

2- with the vowel/consonant like a linking element: e.g.: craftsman.

3- with the preposition/conjunction as a linking element: e.g.: down-and-out.

Traditionally three types are distinguished: neutral, morphological and syntactic.

In neutral compounds the process of compounding is realised without any linking elements:
e.g.: blackbird, shop-window, sunflower, bedroom, tallboy etc.

There are three subtypes of neutral compounds depending on the structure of the
constituent stems. It was - the subtype which may be described as simple neutral
compounds: they consist of simple affixless stems.

- Compounds which have affixes in their structure are called derived or derivational
compounds: e.g.: absent-mindedness, blue-eyed, golden-haired, broad-shouldered,
lady-killer etc.

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 - The third subtype of neutral compounds is called contracted compounds. These
words have a shortened contracted stem in their structure: TV-set, -program, -show
etc., V-day for Victory day, G-man for Government man etc.

Morphological compounds are few in number. This type is non-productive. It is represented

by words in which two compounding stems are combined by a linking vowel or consonant, e.
g. Anglo-Saxon, handiwork etc.

In syntactic compounds we once find a feature of specifically English word-structure. These

words are formed from segments of speech, preserving in their structure numerous traces of
syntagmatic relations typical of speech: articles, prepositions, adverbs, as in the nouns lily-of-
the-valley, Jack-of-all-trades, good-for-nothing, mother-in-law etc.

Composition is the way of wordbuilding when a word is formed by joining two or more
stems to form one word. The structural unity of a compound word depends upon : a) the unity
of stress, b) solid or hyphonated spelling, c) semantic unity, d) unity of morphological and
syntactical functioning. These are characteristic features of compound words in all languages.
For English compounds some of these factors are not very reliable. As a rule English
compounds have one uniting stress (usually on the first component), e.g. hard-cover, best-
seller. We can also have a double stress in an English compound, with the main stress on the
first component and with a secondary stress on the second component, e.g. blood-vessel. The
third pattern of stresses is two level stresses, e.g. snow-white, sky-blue. The third pattern is
easily mixed up with word-groups unless they have solid or hyphenated spelling.

Spelling in English compounds is not very reliable as well because they can have different
spelling even in the same text, e.g. war-ship, blood-vessel can be spelt through a hyphen and
also with a break, iinsofar, underfoot can be spelt solidly and with a break. All the more so
that there has appeared in Modern English a special type of compound words which are
called block compounds, they have one uniting stress but are spelt with a break, e.g. air
piracy, cargo module, coin change, pinguin suit etc.

The semantic unity of a compound word is often very strong. In such cases we have idiomatic
compounds where the meaning of the whole is not a sum of meanings of its components, e.g.
to ghostwrite, skinhead, brain-drain etc. In nonidiomatic compounds semantic unity is not
strong, e. g., airbus, to bloodtransfuse, astrodynamics etc.

English compounds have the unity of morphological and syntactical functioning. They are
used in a sentence as one part of it and only one component changes grammatically, e.g.
These girls are chatter-boxes. «Chatter-boxes» is a predicative in the sentence and only the
second component changes grammatically.

There are two characteristic features of English compounds:

a) Both components in an English compound are free stems, that is they can be used as words
with a distinctive meaning of their own. The sound pattern will be the same except for the
stresses, e.g. «a green-house» and «a green house». Whereas for example in Russian
compounds the stems are bound morphemes, as a rule.

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b) English compounds have a two-stem pattern, with the exception of compound words
which have form-word stems in their structure, e.g. middle-of-the-road, off-the-record, up-
and-doing etc. The two-stem pattern distinguishes English compounds from German ones.

WAYS OF FORMING COMPOUND WORDS.

Compound words in English can be formed not only by means of composition but also by
means of :

a) reduplication, e.g. too-too, and also by means of reduplicatin combined with sound
interchange , e.g. rope-ripe,

b) conversion from word-groups, e.g. to micky-mouse, can-do, makeup etc,

c) backformation from compound nouns or word-groups, e.g. to bloodtransfuse, to

fingerprint etc ,

d) analogy, e.g. lie-in (on the analogy with sit-in) and also phone-in, brawn-drain (on the
analogy with brain-drain) etc.

Classifications of English Compounds

1. According to the parts of speech compounds are subdivided into:

a) nouns, such as : baby-moon, globe-trotter,

b) adjectives, such as : free-for-all, power-happy,

c) verbs, such as : to honey-moon, to baby-sit, to henpeck,

d) adverbs, such as: downdeep, headfirst,

e) prepositions, such as: into, within,

f) numerals, such as : fifty-five.

2. According to the way components are joined together compounds are divided into:

a) neutral, which are formed by joining together two stems without any joining
morpheme, e.g. ball-point, to windowshop,

b) morphological where components are joined by a linking element : vowels «o» or

«i» or the consonant «s», e.g. («astrospace», «handicraft», «sportsman»),

c) syntactical where the components are joined by means of form-word stems, e.g.
here-and-now, free-for-all., do-or-die .

3. According to their structure compounds are subdivided into:

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 a) compound words proper which consist of two stems, e.g. to job-hunt, train-sick,
go-go, tip-top ,

b) derivational compounds, where besides the stems we have affixes, e.g. ear-
minded, hydro-skimmer,

c) compound words consisting of three or more stems, e.g. cornflower-blue,

eggshell-thin, singer-songwriter,

d) compound-shortened words, e.g. boatel, tourmobile, VJ-day, motocross,

intervision, Eurodollar, Camford.

4. According to the relations between the components, compound words are subdivided into :

a) subordinative compounds where one of the components is the semantic and the
structural centre and the second component is subordinate; these subordinative
relations can be different:

with comparative relations, e.g. honey-sweet, eggshell-thin, with limiting relations,

e.g. breast-high, knee-deep, with emphatic relations, e.g. dog-cheap, with objective
relations, e.g. gold-rich, with cause relations, e.g. love-sick, with space relations, e.g.
top-heavy, with time relations, e.g. spring-fresh, with subjective relations, e.g. foot-
sore etc

b) coordinative compounds where both components are semantically independent.

Here belong such compounds when one person (object) has two functions, e.g.
secretary-stenographer, woman-doctor, Oxbridge etc. Such compounds are called
additive. This group includes also compounds formed by means of reduplication, e.g.
fifty-fifty, no-no, and also compounds formed with the help of rhythmic stems
(reduplication combined with sound interchange) e.g. criss-cross, walkie-talkie.

5. According to the order of the components compounds are divided into

-compounds with direct order, e.g. kill-joy,

-compounds with indirect order, e.g. nuclear-free, rope-ripe.

Sub-compounds (Tatpurusa) and Co-compounds (Dvandva)

Sub-compounds (Tatpurusa) a class of compound words having as first constituent a noun or noun
stem that modifies the second constituent by standing in the relation to it of possessor (as in
sheepskin), thing possessed (as in motorboat), object of action (as in shoemaker), location or habitat
(as in tree toad), agent (as in man-made), instrument (as in landlocked), or any of numerous other
relations.

Sanskrit.viṣņu-bali = "Vishnu-offering" = "offering to Vishnu", deva-datta = "god-given" = "given by

the gods"

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Co-compounds (also known as dvandva, coordinating compounds, and pair words). Co-compounds
are compounds whose meaning is the result of coordinating the meaning of its components, as when
in some varieties of Indian English father-mother denotes ‘parents’. Co-compounds (Dvandva)are a
class of compound words having two immediate constituents that are equal in rank and related to each
other as if joined by and : a compound word belonging to this class (asbittersweet, secretary-
treasurer, socio-political

Dvandvas are common in some languages such as Sanskrit where the term originates, as well as
Chinese, Japanese, and some Modern Indic languages such as Hindi and Urdu, but less common in
English. Eg. Sanskrit mātāpitaraufor 'mother and father', pāṇipādam'limbs', literally 'hands and feet'
etc. Greek andróyino"husband and wife".

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