Compounding

The combination of lexical categories called compounding. It consists of nouns, adjectives, verbs, or prepositions. The morpheme which determines the category of the entire word is called the head.

Examples:

a)      Noun compounds

• greenhouse
• bluebird
• fire engine
• oil well

b)      Verb compounds

• overlook
• underestimate
• dropkick
• breakdance 
•  

c)      Adjective compounds

• red hot
• deep blue
• sky blue
• nation wide

Compound can be combined with other lexical categories to create larger compounds. The word formation processes responsible for derivation and compounding can interact with each other.

• dog food box
• baseball bat rack

Structure above is compounds formed from smaller compounds.

Structure below is the combining of a simple word (debate) with the derived word abortion.

• abortion debate

Properties of Compound

Compounds are not consistent since they are written as single words, or with an intervening hyphen, or as separate word sometimes. There is an important generalization to be made in terms of pronunciation.

Compounds (1^st element generally stressed) versus non-compounds (2^nd element generally stressed):

COMPOUND	WORD	NON-COMPOUND	EXPRESSION
Greénhoùse	‘an indoor garden’	Greèn hoúse	‘a house painted green
Bláckboàrd	‘a chalkboard	Blàck boárd	‘a board which is black’
Wét suìt	‘a diver’s costume’	Wèt suít	‘a suit that is wet’

Tense and plural markers can typically not be attached to the first element though they can be added to the compound as a whole.

• Tense on the 1^st element in a compound         à [dropped kick]

Tense on the entire compound                        à [drop kick]ed

• Plural marking on the 1^st element in a compound is usually disallowed

à [foxes hunter] ; [roads map]

(there a few exceptions such as passers-by, parks supervisor and mothers-in-law)

Plural on the entire compound is the norm à [fox hunter]s ; [road map]s

An A-N compound can be identified with the help of a different test. As illustrated below, the A in a compound cannot be preceded by a word such as very.

• Compound with very à We live to a very [greenhouse].
• Very with adjective that isn’t part of compound à We live next to a very green fence.

Types of compounds

Compounds are used to express a wide range of semantic relationships in English.

1.      Endocentric compounds :

 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.

Some N-N compounds called endocentric:

EXAMPLE	MEANING
Steamboat	‘a boat powered by steam’
Air hose	‘a hose that carries air’
Fire truck	‘a vehicle used to put out fires’
Fire drill	‘a practice in the event of a fire’
Bath towel	‘a towel used after bathing’

In most cases, component of compound identifies the general class to which the meaning of the entire word belongs. In a smaller number of cases, the meaning of the compound does not follow from the meanings of its parts in this way. Thus, examples below called exocentric,

• Greenbottle = a fly of the genus lucilia (not a type of bottle)
• Redneck = an ultra-conservative; white working-class person (not a type of neck)
• Sugar-daddy = a woman’s lover who is deemed to be both overgenerous and much too old for her (not a type of sugar-coated father)

Examples below are very striking differences between endocentric and exocentric compounds where the head of the compound has an irregular plural.

IN ENDOCENTRIC COMPOUNDS	IN EXOCENTRIC COMPOUNDS
Oak leaves	Maple leafs (Toronto’s NHL hockey team)
Wisdom teeth	Sabre tooths (extinct species of tiger)
Club feet	Bigfoots (members of an extinct tiger species)
policemen	Walkmans (a type of portable audio cassette player)

2.      The exocentric compounds permit the plural suffix –s for words such as leaf, tooth, foot, and Exocentric compound

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 collars colour is a metaphor for socioeconomic status). – Other examples include firefly and openminded.

3.      Copulative Compounds

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)