Compounding as a type of word-formation.

Structure of compound words: their inseparability.

Meaning of compound words. Motivation in
compounds.
Classification of compounds.
Compounding as a Type
of Word-Formation
Compounding (or word-
composition) is a productive type of
word-formation. Compounds are made 1. Noun + noun
up by joining together at least two sun + flower
stems, mostly stems of notional parts basket + ball
kitchen + room
of speech. Compounds have different 2. Noun + adjective
degree of complexity: they may consist snow + white
of simple and derived stems. 3. Adjective + noun
black + board
blue + eyed
4. Noun + verb + ing
card + play + ing
Structure of Compound
Words: Their
Inseparability
Compounds are structurally and
phonetically inseparable.
Structurally compounds are characterized
by the specific order and arrangement of
stems.
The order in which the two stems are
placed together within a compound is
strictly fixed in Modern English and it is
the second stem which is the structural
and semantic centre of the compound, e.g.:
baby-sitter, writing-table.
Phonetically compounds are also
marked by a specific structure of their
own. No phonetic changes of stems
take place in composition, but the
compound word gets a new stress
pattern, different from the stress in
the words with similar stems, e.g.: 'key,
'hole -> 'key-hole.
Compounds have three stress
patterns:
A high or unity stress on the first
component: 'doorway,
'drawback,'blackboard.
A double stress: with a primary stress on
the first component and a
weaker, secondary stress on the second
component: 'blood,vessel, 'washing-ma,chine.
A level stress: 'open-'eyed, 'icy-'cold,
'grass-'green
Graphically most compounds have two
types of spelling: they are written either
solidly or with a hyphen. It differs from
author to author and from dictionary to
dictionary,
e.g.: war-path = warpath;
blood-transfusion = bloodtransfusion
word-group = wordgroup
Meaning of Compound
Words. Motivation in
Compounds
Semantically the majority of compounds
are motivated units: their mean­ing is
derived from the combined lexical
meanings of their components. The
semantic centre of the compound is the
lexical meaning of the second compo­nent
modified and restricted by the meaning
of the first,
e.g.: a handbag = a bag carried in the hand;
an ear-ring = a ring to wear in the ear.
But the meaning of a compound is not a simple
sum of lexical meanings of its components: the
new meaning dominates over the individual
meanings of the components. The lexical
meanings of both components are closely fused
together to create a new semantic unit,
e.g.: a time-bomb = a bomb designed to explode at a
certain time.
A simple change in the order of stems with the
same lexical meanings re­sults in a drastic
change in the lexical meaning of the compound,
e.g.: fruit-market is different from market-fruit;
boat-life is different from life-boat.
Тhe lexical meaning of a compound is derived
from the combined lexical meanings of its
components and the structural meaning of its
distributional pattern.
According to different degrees of
motivation compounds are:
completely motivated - both components
are used in their direct meanings: shoe-
maker, sportsman;
partially motivated - one component - in
the direct, the other - in indirect meaning:
flower-bed, castle-builder;
completely nonmotivated (with lack of
motivation) - there is no connec­tion
between the meaning of the compound
and the lexical meanings of the
components: fiddlesticks (nonsense), eye-
wash (smth. said or done to deceive a person).
Classification of
Compounds
According to the degree of
semantic independence of stems;
 according to the part of speech;
according to the means of
connection of stems;
according to the types of stems.
According to the degree of
semantic independence of stems
compounds are:
1) subordinative - the components are
neither structurally nor semantically
equal in importance, the head member is
the 2nd component:
baby-sitter, speedometer;
2) coordinative - both stems are
semantically equally important, both
words are structural and semantic
centres.
Coordinative compounds may be:
reduplicative - made up by repetition of
the same word: fifty-fifty, quack-quack
hush-hush, goody-goody;
phonetically variated rhythmic twin
forms: chit-chat, zig-zag, clap­trap, helter-
skelter;
additive - are formed from stems of the
independently functioning words of the
same part of speech. They denote a
person or an object that is two things at
the same time.
Functional classification -
compounds are viewed as
different parts of speech, which is
indicated by the second stem:
nouns: birthday, week-end, mother-in-law;
adjectives: peace-loving, long-legged;
adverbs: somewhere, indoors, inside;
pronouns: somebody, something;
connectives: within, without;
verbs: verbal and adverbial stems: to
bypass, to inlay, to offset,
verbs formed by means of conversion:
to week-end, to gooseflesh, to blacklist.
According to the means of connection:
-formed by placing one simple stem with a
linking element after the other:
speedometer, Afro-Asian (o), handicraft (i);
statesman, sales-man (s);
-without any linking element: headache, man-
made.
According to the type of stems joined
together:
-compounds proper: formed by joining
together stems of words available in the
language, with or without the help of special
linking element, e.g. street-lamp, age-long;
-derivational compounds: one of the stems is
derived, e.g. bed-sitter, type-writer, long-legged.
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:
 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,
and compounds with indirect order, e.g.
nuclear-free, rope-ripe .
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) back formation 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.