COMPOUNDING

Prezentation by: ulc M.,

Chudada O.,
treti jmeno ktery nv

What is
compounding?
In linguistics, the process of combining two
or more words (free morphemes) to create
a new word (commonly a noun, verb, or
adjective).
Example: black+board=blackboard.
Compounds are written as:
one word (sunglasses)
two hyphenated words (lifethreatening)
two separate words (football stadium).

What is
compounding?
Compounding is a process by which a
compound lexeme is derived from two or
more simpler lexemes.
Blackbird ->
Black + Bird = Blackbird
[X]a + [Y]n = [X+Y]n
Compounding is a lexical process deriving
lexemes from lexemes (BLACK + BIRD =
BLACKBIRD)

Compounds in syntax
In syntax, compound words behave like simple words:
There is a dead bird on the doorstep.
->
There is a dead blackbird on the doorstep.
IDIOSYNCRATIC MEANING
Some of the derived compounds tend to have idiosyncratic
meaning.
GENERATION (GENERATE)
DIRECTION (DIRECT)
Blackbird is not every black bird, it is a bird of one particular
species. Also, females are brown. Same aplies to compound
greyhound which doesnt literally mean grey hound.

FORMATION OF
COMPOUNDS
In asynthetic language, the relationship between the elements of
a compound may be marked with a case or other morpheme.

For example, theGermancompoundKapitnspatentconsists

of the lexemesKapitn(sea captain) andPatent(license)
joined by an-s-(originally agenitive casesuffix)

The latter pattern is common throughout theSemitic languages,

though in some it is combined with an explicit genitive case, so
that both parts of the compound are marked.
in theHebrew languagecompound, the word


bet
sefer(school), it is the head that is modified: the compound
literally means "house-of book", with bayit(house) having
entered theconstruct stateto become
bet(house-of).

 Agglutinative languagestend to create very long words with derivational

morphemes. (The longest compounds in the world may be found in
theFinnicandGermanic languages.)

In German, extremely extendable compound words can be found in

the language of chemical compounds, where in the cases of
biochemistry and polymers, they can be practically unlimited in
length.

German
examples :Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitnsmtze
(Danube steamboat shipping companyCaptain's hat).
In Finnish there is no theoretical limit to the length of compound words,
but in practice words consisting of more than three components are rare
Internet folklore sometimes suggests
thatlentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppila
s(Airplane jet turbine engine auxiliary mechanic non-commissioned
officer student) would be the longest word in Finnish, but evidence
of it actually being used is scant and anecdotic at best.

IDENTIFICATION OF COMPOUND
WORDS.
They can be identified by:
1) Meaning:
Sometimes with a meaning that is simply the sum of the parts.
light switch
Sometimes with some sort of figurative new sense.
Moonshine
The semantic relationships of the parts can be of all kinds: a
window cleaner cleans windows, but a vacuum cleaner does
not clean vacuums.
We can be sure we have a compound when the primary stress
moves forward; normally a modifier will be less heavily
stressed than the word it modifies, but in compounds the first
element is always more heavily stressed.

2) Stress:
We can be sure we have a compound when the primary stress
moves forward; normally a modifier will be less heavily
stressed than the word it modifies, but in compounds the first
element is always more heavily stressed.
Example: STONE Age, HOT dog
This changes with Phrasel verbs, where the verb is tressed.
Example: come IN, go ON

SUBCLASSES OF COMPOUND WORDS .

Semantic classification:
Type

endocentric

exocentric

copulative

appositional

Description

Examples

A+B denotes a
special kind of B
A+B denotes a
special kind of an
unexpressed
semantic head
A+B denotes 'the
sum' of what A and
B denote
A and B provide
different
descriptions for
the same referent

darkroom,smalltal
k
skinhead,paleface
(head: 'person')
bittersweet,sleep
walk
actordirector,maidserv
ant

A and B each being a word within the compound.

 An endocentric compound consists of:

a head.
the categorical part that contains the basic
meaning of the whole compound.
modifiers which restrict its meaning.
For example: Doghouse
where house is the head and dog is the
modifier, is understood as a house intended
for a dog.
Endocentric compounds tend to be of the same part of
speech (word class) as their head, as in the case of
doghouse.

 Exocentric compounds are hyponyms of some unexpressed semantic

head (e.g. a person, a plant, an animal...), and their meaning often
cannot be transparently guessed from its constituent parts.
For example, the English compound white-collar is neither a kind
of collar nor a white thing.
In an exocentric compound, the word class is determined lexically,
disregarding the class of the constituents.
For example, a must-have is not a verb but a noun. The meaning
of this type of compound can be glossed as "(one) whose B is A",
where B is the second element of the compound and A the first.
A bahuvrihi compound is one whose nature is expressed by neither
of the words: thus a white-collar person is neither white nor a collar
(the collar's colour is a metaphor for socioeconomic status).
Other examples include firefly and openminded.

 Copulative compounds are compounds which have two

semantic heads.
Can be recognize by possibility of adding "and" between
the two
heads.
Examples: bittersweet, sleepwalk.

Appositional compounds refer to lexemes that have two

(contrary) attributes which classify the compound.
Example: Player-coach (someone who is a player as well as
a coach)

NOUN COMPOUNDING
Two or more nouns combined to form a single noun.
Compound nouns are written as:
separate words (grapefruit juice)
linked by a hyphen (sister-in-law)
one word (schoolteacher)
A compounded noun whose form no longer clearly
reveals its origin (such as bonfire or marshall) is
sometimes called an amalgamated compound.
Many place names (or toponyms) are amalgamated
compounds: e.g., Norwich (north + village) and
Sussex (south + Saxons).

The compound noun structure is extremely varied in the types

of meaning relations it can indicate.
It can be used to indicate:
what someone does (language teacher)
what something is for (waste-paper basket, grindstone)

what the qualities of something are (whiteboard)

how something works (immersion heater)

when something happens (night frost)
where something is (doormat)
what something is made of (woodpile)

ADJECTIVE COMPOUND
Two or more words that act as a single idea tomodifyanoun.
part-time:
high-speed:

part-timeemployee
high-speed chase

As a general rule, the words in a compound adjective arehyphenated

when they come before a noun (awell-knownactor) but not when
they come after (The actor iswell known).
Also, compound adjectives formed with anadverbending in-ly(such
asrapidly changing) are usually not hyphenated.
Adverbsthat do not end in-lymay take thehyphento form
acompound adjective. The reason is obvious. Afast-moving
scriptsuggests a roller coaster plot while afast moving scriptmight
have pace but it is emotionally charged (i.e., emotionallymoving) at
the same time.

VERB COMPOUND
The process of compounding verbs can be
distinguished into 3 methods.
Two or more words combined to form a single verb. Conventionally,
verb compounds are written as either one word ("to housesit") or
two hyphenated words ("to water-proof").
Example:
"I pretended towindowshop, pausing in front of a little store
jammed with racks of costume jewelry."
(Sophie Littlefield,Unforsaken. Delacorte Press, 2011)

 A unit,such as a phrasal verb or a prepositional verb,

that behaves either lexically or syntactically as a
single verb. In such cases, a verb and its particle may
be separated by other words. Now more commonly
known as a multi-word verb.
Example:

"drop the essay off or...

Ilook forward toan America which will not be afraid

of grace and beauty."
(President John Kennedy)

 A lexical verb plus its auxiliaries: in traditional

grammar.
"And then Iwas playingover and under
and through all of this, and the pianist and
basswere playingsomewhere else."
(Miles Davis,Miles: The Autobiography, with Quincy Troupe.
Simon & Schuster, 1989)

RHYMING COMPOUND
Acompound wordthat containsrhymingelements,
such as:
blackjack, fuddy duddy, pooperscooper,andvoodoo.
Most commonly found in songs, baby talk and nursery
rhymes.
Examples: kissy wissy, piggy wiggy.
Characteristics: melodic, easy to remember and
pronunce.

SUSPENDEDCOMPOUND

A set of compound nouns or compound adjectives in

which an element common to all members is not
repeated.
A hyphen and a space follow the first element of a
suspended compound. (A hyphen with a space after it is
called a hanging hyphen.)
Examples:
The difference between thepre- and post-testscores is
the so-called learning gain.
More injuries are caused by falls from athree- or fourfootheight than by falls from tall extension ladders.

EXAMPLES AND
OBSERVATIONS
As observed earlier, compoundsare not limited to two
words:
Examples: bathroom towel-rack, community center
finance committee.
The process of compounding seems unlimited in English:
starting with a word like:
sailboat
which we can easily expand to the compound sailboat
rigging
sailboat rigging design
sailboat rigging design training
sailboat rigging design training institute, and so on...

DISTINGUISHING FEATURES
OF COMPOUNDS
In most compounds the rightmostmorphemedetermines
the category of the entire word.
Thus,greenhouseis a noun because its rightmost
component is a noun.
Spoonfeedis a verb becausefeedalso belongs to
this
category.
Nationwideis an adjective just aswideis. . . .

OTHER FEATURES OF COMPOUND

WORDS.
In terms of pronunciation there is an important
generalization to be made:
adjective-noun compounds are characterized by a
more prominent stress on their first component. . . .
A second distinguishing feature of compounds in English
is that tense and plural markers cannot typically be
attached to the first element, although they can be
added to the compound as a whole.
There are some exceptions, however, such as
passers-by and parks supervisor.

Plurals of Compounds
Compounds generally follow the regular rule by adding the
regular -s inflection to their last element. . . .
The following two compounds are exceptional in taking the
inflection on the first element:
passer-by/passers-by
listener-in/listeners-in
A few compounds ending in -ful usually take the plural
inflection on the last element, but have a less common plural
with the inflection on the first element:
mouthful/mouthfuls or mouthsful
spoonful/spoonfuls or spoonsful
Compounds ending in -in- law allow the plural either on the
first element or (informally) on the last element:
sister-in-law/sisters-in-law or sister-in-laws"

RECENT TRENDS
Although there is no universally agreed-upon guideline regarding
the use of compound words in the English language, in recent
decades written English has displayed a noticeable trend
towards increased use of compounds.
Syllabic abbreviation: made by taking syllables of words and
compounding them, such as pixel (picture element) and bit
(binary digit).
The German spelling reform of 1996 introduced the option of
hyphenating compound nouns when it enhances
comprehensibility and readability.
This is done mostly with very long compound words by
separating them into two or more smaller compounds, like
Eisenbahn-Unterfhrung (railway underpass) or
Kraftfahrzeugs-Betriebsanleitung (car manual).

COMPOUNDS IN THE DICTIONARY

The definition of what counts as a single dictionary entry is fluid,

thus hard to keep track of.
Many compound words have unique entries in the dictionary.
Any attempt at further precision is impossible because of the
unlimited potential for compounding and derivation.
The OED [Oxford English Dictionary] policy on compounds
and derivatives is indicative of how blurred the line between
a 'headword' and a compound or a derivative can be.
Clearly, the size of the dictionary records exceeds by far the
vocabulary of an individual speaker."
(Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell, "English Words."The Handbook of English Linguistics, ed.
by Bas Aarts and April McMahon. Blackwell, 2006)

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ronald Carter and Michael McCarthy, Cambridge Grammar of English.
Cambridge University Press, 2006
Francis Katamba, English Words: Structure, History, Usage, 2nd ed.
Routledge, 2005
Bruce Grundy,So You Want to be a Journalist?Cambridge University
Press, 2007
Adrian Akmajian et al.,Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and
Communication. MIT Press, 2001
Sidney Greenbaum,Oxford English Grammar. Oxford University Press,
1996