Lingvistics: word formation

1. COMPOUNDING
Prezentation by: Šulc M.,
Chudada O.,
treti jmeno ktery nvm..

2. 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 (life-threatening)
• two separate words (football stadium).

3. 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)

4. 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.

5. FORMATION OF COMPOUNDS
• In a synthetic language, the relationship between the elements of a compound
may be marked with a case or other morpheme.
– For example, the German compound Kapitänspatent consists of the
lexemes Kapitän (sea captain) and Patent (license) joined by an -s-
(originally a genitive case suffix)
• The latter pattern is common throughout the Semitic languages, though in
some it is combined with an explicit genitive case, so that both parts of the
compound are marked.
– in the Hebrew language compound, the word bet
sefer (school), it is the head that is modified: the compound literally
means "house-of book", with bayit (house) having entered
the construct state to become bet (house-of).

6. • Agglutinative languages tend to create very long words with derivational
morphemes. (The longest compounds in the world may be found in
the Finnic and Germanic 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 : Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmütze
(Danube steamboat shipping company Captain'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
that lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas (
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.

7. 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.

8. 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

9. SUBCLASSES OF COMPOUND WORDS.
Semantic classification:
Type Description Examples
A+B denotes a special
endocentric darkroom, smalltalk
kind of B
A+B denotes a special
kind of an skinhead, paleface (hea
exocentric
unexpressed semantic d: 'person')
head
A+B denotes 'the sum'
copulative of what A and B bittersweet, sleepwalk
denote
A and B provide
actor-
appositional different descriptions
director, maidservant
for the same referent
A and B each being a word within the compound.

10. • An endocentric compound consists of:
– a head.
– the categorical part that contains the basic meaning of the
whole compound.
– modifiers which restrict it‘s 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.

11. • 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.

12. • 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)

13. 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).

14. 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)

15. ADJECTIVE COMPOUND
Two or more words that act as a single idea to modify a noun.
– part-time: part-time employee
– high-speed: high-speed chase
• As a general rule, the words in a compound adjective are hyphenated when they
come before a noun (a well-known actor) but not when they come after (The actor
is well known).
• Also, compound adjectives formed with an adverbending in -ly (such asrapidly
changing) are usually not hyphenated.
• Adverbs that do not end in -ly may take the hyphen to form a compound adjective.
The reason is obvious. A fast-moving script suggests a roller coaster plot while
a fast moving script might have pace but it is emotionally charged
(i.e., emotionally moving) at the same time.

16. 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 to windowshop, pausing in front of a little store jammed with
racks of costume jewelry."
(Sophie Littlefield, Unforsaken. Delacorte Press, 2011)

17. • 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...
I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace
and beauty."
(President John Kennedy)

18. • A lexical verb plus its auxiliaries: in traditional grammar.
– "And then I was playing over and under and through
all of this, and the pianist and bass were
playing somewhere else."
(Miles Davis, Miles: The Autobiography, with Quincy Troupe. Simon &
Schuster, 1989)

19. RHYMING COMPOUND
• A compound word that contains rhyming elements, such as:
– blackjack, fuddy duddy, pooper-scooper, and voodoo.
• Most commonly found in songs, baby talk and nursery rhymes.
– Examples: kissy wissy, piggy wiggy.
• Characteristics: melodic, easy to remember and pronunce.

20. SUSPENDED COMPOUND
• 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 the pre- and post-test scores is the so-
called learning gain.
More injuries are caused by falls from a three- or four-
foot height than by falls from tall extension ladders.

21. EXAMPLES AND OBSERVATIONS
• As observed earlier, compounds are 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...

22. DISTINGUISHING FEATURES OF
COMPOUNDS
• In most compounds the rightmost morpheme determines the
category of the entire word.
– Thus, greenhouse is a noun because its rightmost
component is a noun.
– Spoonfeed is a verb because feed also belongs to this
category.
– Nationwide is an adjective just as wide is. . . .

23. 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.

24. 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"

25. 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-Unterführung
(railway underpass) or Kraftfahrzeugs-Betriebsanleitung (car manual).

26. 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)

27. 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