Топик: Modern English Word-Formation

Compounding or word-composition is one of the productive types of word-formation in Modern English. Composition like all other ways of deriving words has its own peculiarities as to the means used, the nature of bases and their distribution, as to the range of application, the scope of seman­tic classes and the factors conducive to pro­ductivity.

Compounds, as has been mentioned elsewhere, are made up of two ICs which are both derivational bases. Compound words are inseparable vocabulary units. They are formally and semantically dependent on the constituent bases and the semantic relations between them which mirror the relations between the motivating units. The ICs of compound words represent bases of all three structural types. The bases built on stems may be of different degree of complexity as, for example, week-end, office-man­agement, postage-stamp, aircraft-carrier, fancy-dress-maker, etc. How­ever, this complexity of structure of bases is not typical of the bulk of Modern English compounds.

In this connection care should be taken not to confuse compound words with polymorphic words of secondary derivation, i.e. derivatives built according to an affixal pattern but on a compound stem for its base such as, e. g. school-mastership ([n + n] + suf), ex-housewife (prf + [n + n]), to weekend, to spotlight ([n + n] + conversion).

Structurally compound words are characterized by the specif­ic order and arrangement in which bases follow one another. The order in which the two bases are placed within a compound is rigid­ly fixed in Modern English and it is the second IC that makes the head-member of the word, i.e. its structural and semantic centre. The head-member is of basic importance as it preconditions both the lexico-grammatical and semantic features of the first component. It is of inter­est to note that the difference between stems (that serve as bases in com­pound words) and word-forms they coincide with is most obvious in some compounds, especially in compound adjectives. Adjectives like long, wide, rich are characterized by grammatical forms of degrees of comparison longer, wider, richer . The corresponding stems functioning as bases in compound words lack grammatical independence and forms proper to the words and retain only the part-of-speech meaning; thus com­pound adjectives with adjectival stems for their second components, e. g. age-long, oil-rich, inch-wide , do not form degrees of comparison as the compound adjective oil-rich does not form them the way the word rich does, but conforms to the general rule of polysyllabic adjectives and has analytical forms of degrees of comparison. The same difference be­tween words and stems is not so noticeable in compound nouns with the noun-stem for the second component.

Phonetically compounds are also marked by a specific structure of their own. No phonemic changes of bases occur in composition but the compound word acquires a new stress pattern, different from the stress in the motivating words, for example words key and hole or hot and house each possess their own stress but when the stems of these words are brought together to make up a new compound word, 'keyhole — ‘a hole in a lock into which a key fits’, or 'hothouse — ‘a heated building for growing delicate plants’, the latter is given a different stress pattern — a unity stress on the first component in our case. Compound words have three stress patterns:

a) a high or unity stress on the first component as in 'honeymoon, 'doorway , etc.

b) a double stress, with a primary stress on the first component and a weaker, secondary stress on the second component, e. g. 'blood-ֻvessel, 'mad-ֻdoctor , 'washing-ֻmachine , etc.

c) It is not infrequent, however, for both ICs to have level stress as in, for instance, 'arm-'chair, 'icy-'cold, 'grass-'green , etc.

Graphically most compounds have two types of spelling — they are spelt either solidly or with a hyphen. Both types of spelling when accompanied by structural and phonetic peculiarities serve as a sufficient indication of inseparability of compound words in contradis­tinction to phrases. It is true that hyphenated spelling by itself may be sometimes misleading, as it may be used in word-groups to emphasize their phraseological character as in e. g. daughter-in-law, man-of-war, brother-in-arms or in longer combinations of words to indicate the se­mantic unity of a string of words used attributively as, e.g., I-know-what-you're-going-to-say expression, we-are-in-the-know jargon, the young-must-be-right attitude. The two types of spelling typical of com­pounds, however, are not rigidly observed and there are numerous fluc­tuations between solid or hyphenated spelling on the one hand and spell­ing with a break between the components on the other, especially in nominal compounds of the n+n type. The spelling of these compounds varies from author to author and from dictionary to dictionary. For example, the words war-path, war-time, money-lender are spelt both with a hy­phen and solidly; blood-poisoning, money-order, wave-length, war-ship — with a hyphen and with a break; underfoot, insofar, underhand —solidly and with a break[25] . It is noteworthy that new compounds of this type tend to solid or hyphenated spelling. This inconsistency of spelling in com­pounds, often accompanied by a level stress pattern (equally typical of word-groups) makes the problem of distinguishing between compound words (of the n + n type in particular) and word-groups especially dif­ficult.

In this connection it should be stressed that Modern English nouns (in the Common Case, Sg.) as has been universally recognized possess an attributive function in which they are regularly used to form numer­ous nominal phrases as, e. g. peace years, stone steps, government office , etc. Such variable nominal phrases are semantically fully derivable from the meanings of the two nouns and are based on the homogeneous attributive semantic relations unlike compound words. This system of nominal phrases exists side by side with the specific and numerous class of nominal compounds which as a rule carry an additional semantic com­ponent not found in phrases.

It is also important to stress that these two classes of vocabulary units — compound words and free phrases — are not only opposed but also stand in close correlative relations to each other.

Semantically compound words are generally motivated units. The mean­ing of the compound is first of all derived from the combined lexical meanings of its components. The semantic peculiarity of the derivational bases and the semantic difference between the base and the stem on which the latter is built is most obvious in compound words. Compound words with a common second or first component can serve as illustra­tions. The stem of the word board is polysemantic and its multiple mean­ings serve as different derivational bases, each with its own selective range for the semantic features of the other component, each forming a separate set of compound words, based on specific derivative relations. Thus the base board meaning ‘a flat piece of wood square or oblong’ makes a set of compounds chess-board, notice-board, key-board, diving-board, foot-board, sign-board; compounds paste-board, cardboard are built on the base meaning ‘thick, stiff paper’; the base board– meaning ‘an author­ized body of men’, forms compounds school-board, board-room . The same can be observed in words built on the polysemantic stem of the word foot . For example, the base foot– in foot-print, foot-pump, foothold, foot-bath, foot-wear has the meaning of ‘the terminal part of the leg’, in foot-note, foot-lights, foot-stone the base foot – has the meaning of ‘the lower part’, and in foot-high, foot-wide, footrule — ‘measure of length’. It is obvious from the above-given examples that the meanings of the bases of compound words are interdependent and that the choice of each is delimited as in variable word-groups by the nature of the other IC of the word. It thus may well be said that the combination of bases serves as a kind of minimal inner context distinguishing the particular individual lexical meaning of each component. In this connection we should also remember the significance of the differential meaning found in both components which becomes especially obvious in a set of compounds containing iden­tical bases.

Compound words can be described from different points of view and consequently may be classified according to different principles. They may be viewed from the point of view:

(1) of general relationship and degree of semantic independence of components;

(2) of the parts of speech compound words represent;

(3) of the means of composition used to link the two ICs to­gether;

(4) of the type of ICs that are brought together to form a compound;

(5) of the correlative relations with the system of free word-groups.

From the point of view of degree of se­mantic independence there are two types of relationship between the ICs of com­pound words that are generally recognized in linguistic literature: the relations of coordination and subordination, and accordingly compound words fall into two classes: coordinative compounds (often termed copulative or additive) and subordinative (often termed determinative).

In coordinative compounds the two ICs are semantically equally important as in fighter-bomber, oak-tree, girl-friend, Anglo-Amer­ican . The constituent bases belong to the same class and той often to the same semantic group. Coordinative compounds make up a comparati­vely small group of words. Coordinative compounds fall into three groups:

a) Reduplicative compounds which are made up by the re­petition of the same base as in goody-goody, fifty-fifty, hush-hush, pooh-pooh . They are all only partially motivated.

b) Compounds formed by joining the phonically variated rhythmic twin forms which either alliterate with the same initial consonant but vary the vowels as in chit-chat, zigzag, sing-song, or rhyme by varying the initial consonants as in clap-trap, a walky-talky, helter-skelter . This subgroup stands very much apart. It is very of­ten referred to pseudo-compounds and considered by some linguists irrelevant to productive word-formation owing to the doubtful morphem­ic status of their components. The constituent members of compound words of this subgroup are in most cases unique, carry very vague or no lexical meaning of their own, are not found as stems of independently functioning words. They are motivated mainly through the rhythmic doubling of fanciful sound-clusters.

Coordinative compounds of both subgroups (a, b) are mostly restrict­ed to the colloquial layer, are marked by a heavy emotive charge and possess a very small degree of productivity.

c) The bases of additive compounds such as a queen-bee, an actor-manager , unlike the compound words of the first two subgroups, are built on stems of the independently functioning words of the same part of speech. These bases often semantically stand in the genus-species relations. They denote a person or an object that is two things at the same time. A secretary-stenographer is thus a person who is both a stenograph­er and a secretary, a bed-sitting-room (a bed-sitter ) is both a bed-room and a sitting-room at the same time. Among additive compounds there is a specific subgroup of compound adjectives one of ICs of which is a bound root-morpheme. This group is limited to the names of nationalities such as Sino-Japanese, Anglo-Saxon, Afro-Asian , etc.

Additive compounds of this group are mostly fully motivated but have a very limited degree of productivity.

However it must be stressed that though the distinction between coor­dinative and subordinative compounds is generally made, it is open to doubt and there is no hard and fast border-line between them. On the contrary, the border-line is rather vague. It often happens that one and the same compound may with equal right be interpreted either way — as a coordinative or a subordinative compound, e. g. a woman-doctor may be understood as ‘a woman who is at the same time a doctor’ or there can be traced a difference of importance between the components and it may be primarily felt to be ‘a doctor who happens to be a woman’ (also a mother-goose, a clock-tower ).

In subordinative compounds the components are neither structurally nor semantically equal in importance but are based on the domination of the head-member which is, as a rule, the second IC. The second IC thus is the semantically and grammatically dominant part of the word, which preconditions the part-of-speech meaning of the whole compound as in stone-deaf, age-long which are obviously adjectives, a wrist-watch, road-building, a baby-sitter which are nouns.

Functionally compounds are viewed as words of different parts of speech. It is the head-member of the compound, i.e. its second IC that is indicative of the grammatical and lexical category the compound word belongs to.