Compounding (Composition)

Compounding is the productive type of word-building in which new words are produced by combining 2 or more stems. There are at least 3 aspects of composition. According to the structural aspect, traditionally three types are distinguished: neutral, morphological and syntactic.in neutral compounds the process of compounding is realized without any linking elements by a mere juxtaposition of two stems, e.g. blackbird, sunflower, girl-friend, ashtray, bedroom, biinday, headache, etc. There are three subtypes of neutral compounds depending on the structure of the constituent stems. They are: simple neutral compounds (consist of simple affixless stems), e.g. airman, aircraft, tallboy, blackbird, etc.; derived (derivational) compounds have affixes in their structure, e.g. absent-mindedness, blue-eyed, lady-killer, music-lover, luncher-out (a person who has his lunch only in restaurant, not at home), goose-flesher ("murder-story"); contracted compounds (have a shortened (contracted) stem in their structure), TV-set, V-day, G-man, T-shirt, H-bag. Morphological compounds are represented by words in which two compounding stems are combined by a linking vowel or consonant. They are few in number, e.g. Anglo-Saxon, handiwork, craftsmanship, statesman. Syntactic compounds are formed from segments of speech, preserving in their structure numerous traces of syntagmatic relations typical of speech: articles, prepositions, adverbs, e.g. lily-of-the-valley,Jack-of-all-trades, good-for-nothing, mother-in-law, hook-and-eye, etc. . ■ .

According to the semantic aspect of compounds attention is focused at correlations of the separate meanings of the constituent parts and the actual meaning of the compound. Very often such compounds produce a new meaning. It is divided into 2 groups according to their degree of semantic cohesion of the constituent parts: nonidiomatic compounds (this group is represented by the compounds whose meaning can be described as the sum of their constituent meanings), e.g. classroom, bedroom, evening-gown, sleeping-car, dancing-hall; idiomatic compounds (whose meaning do not correspond to the separate meanings of their constituent parts), e.g. blackboard, blackbird, football, chatterbox.

According to the theoretical aspect it is important to distinguish between a compound and a word-combination. There are several criterions of distinguishing:

a) the graphic criterion (In most cases compounds are written together or through dash. But this criterion is not reliable because the spelling of many compounds can be varied in many dictionaries and books);

b) the semantic criterion (This case seems more reliable, because compounds express only one concept and word-groups may express several ones), e.g. a tallboy - this is a compound and it denotes a piece of furniture (one concept) and a tall boy - is a word-group which conveys 2 concepts: a young male person and big in size;

c) the phonetic criterion (Most compounds have a single stress and word-combinations - two strvses. But this rule doesn't work with compound adjectives (they have 2 stresses), e.g. slowcoach, blackbird BUT blue-eyH, absent-minded, etc.;

d) morphological and syntactic criteria (In the word group each of the constituents is independently open to grammatical changes), e,g. a tall boy> the tallest boy> a tall handsome boy. The compound is not ubject to such changes. The first "component is grammatically invariable, the plural form is added to the whole unit (tallboys), no words can be inserted between the components.

Thus, in most cases, only several criteria (semantic, morphological, syntactic, phonetic, graphic) can classify a lexical unit as either a compound word or a word group.

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