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Specific Features of English Compounds

Classification of Compounds

The Historical Development of Compounds

Not all the compound words inherited by the vocabulary of English are preserved in the language in their primary form having undergone various phonetic changes, which reduced them to simple or root words. This process is called simplification of stems (опрощение основы). It was investigated by Russian scholars V.A. Bogoroditsky, L.A. Bulakhovsky and N.N. Amosova.

The form of a compound word and its pronunciation may be changed beyond recognition. The following examples serve as illustration: daisy < OE dæZes eaZe (day’s eye), woman < OE wifmann (woman person), barn < OE bere-ærn (a place for keeping barley), elbow < OE elnboZa (the bending of the arm), gossip < OE Zodsibbe (godparent ← fellow sponsor at baptism: sib means “a kin”), husband < OE husbonda (master of the house, “bua” – to dwell).

Demotivation (деэтимологизация) is closely connected with simplification but not identical with it. This process begins with semantic change which is later accompanied by sound form change: kidnap (to seize a young goat) and then the word becomes morphologically indivisible: boatswain (OE batsweZen where archaic “swain” meant “lad”); breakfast (going without food), cupboard. Graphical simplification is not completed.

1. Structural Classification

(endocentric bookcase, sunrise,exocentric cut-throat, daredevil,bahuvrihi* bigwig, greenhorn, black-shirt,syntacticcompounds which correlate with phrases: baby-sitting).

2. According to the type of composition

a) Juxtaposition without linking elements:

heartache, bookcase, film-star.

b) Compounds with a linking vowel and consonant:

Afro-American, speedometer, handicraft, saleswoman.

c) Compounds with linking elements represented by preposition and conjunction stems:

up-to-date, father-in-law, bread-and-butter, matter-of-fact.

Also lexicalized phrases: forget-me-not, devil-may-care, stick-in-the-mud, dog-in-the-manger.

3. According to the structure of ICs

a) Compounds consisting of simple stems: bottle-neck, star-gaze, pen-knife, acid-sweet.

b) Compounds where 1 IC is derived: beaf-eater, cinema-going.

c) Compounds where 1 IC is clipped: X-mas, H-bomb.

d) Compounds where 1 IC is compound: wastepaper-basket.

The majority of English compounds consist of free forms where combining elements are rare and possess a regular two-stem pattern (except compounds of “bread-and-butter” type, which distinguish them from German with its monstrosities: Feuer-und-Unfallversicherungsgesellshaft.

Any element playing an attributive function and standing before the main word may be united with it and form a compound word: last-minute preparation, working-class morality, five-year course.

The speakers can freely create nonce-compounds as the need for them arises. They are also called quotation compounds or holophrasis: go-to-hell voice,end-of-the-day gesture,five-o’clock-in-the-morning men, let-steeping-dogs-lie approach.

Derivational compounds or compound derivatives contain 2 free stems and a suffix referring to the whole combination: blue-eyed, schoolboyishness, honeymooner. There are many nonce-words (occasionalisms) among them: Pied Piperish, save-your-own-soul-ism, not-my-cup-of-tea-ness. They meet the requirements of different situations.

A special group of compound words is constituted by reduplicative compounds: reduplicative compounds proper, ablaut combinations and rhyme combinations:

1. rush-hush, pooh-pooh, blah-blah;

2. sing-song, chit-chat, ding-dong, ping-pong;

3. boogie-woogie, harum-scarum, willy-nilly.

New word-forming patterns in composition revealing the influence of extra-linguistic factors are illustrated by such compounds as: teach-in, marry-in, burry-in, sit-in, phone-in which resemble breakdown, feedback, lockout, etc. but contain a connotation of public protest.

Compound words are mostly frequent among nouns and adjectives but scholars doubt the very existence of compound verbs in Modern English. To whitewash, to blacklist, to stage-manage, to overflow are often called compound verbs. But! To house-keep, to hitch-hike, to week-end are created not by composition but conversion and back-formation if treated diachronically.

Conversion

When a new word appears in a different part of speech without adding any derivational elements and the original and derived words coincide: silence – to silence, table – to table, sleep – to sleep we speak of conversion *.

Other terms are: zero derivation, root creation (formation), transposition, or functional change. All the terms are opened to criticism.

This way of building new words is especially productive due to the absence of formal signs of different parts of speech. Thus the word home may belong to 4 parts of speech: noun, verb, adjective, adverb.

When speaking of the historical background of conversion we go back to the period of lost endings. Diachronic approach to this phenomenon helps us to understand what made conversion so widely spread. The disappearance of grammatical endings lead to merging of verbs and nouns:

OE Mod E
lufian v – lufu n love v, n
carian v – caru n care v, n

Such cases are called patterned homonymy where words identical in sound form possess a common semantic component.

Syncronically “love – to love” and “diamond – to diamond” are not different.

In present-day English conversion is considered to be predominant in the sphere of verb-formation (compound verbs are problematic and verbal affixes are very few).

A. I. Smirnitsky regards conversion as transferring a word from one paradigm to another without considering its syntactic properties. For that reason it is necessary to look upon conversion as a combined morphological and syntactic way of word-building. (J. Zhluktenko).*

Those linguists who say that “wife- to wife”, “knife – to knife”, “to run – run” are different forms of the same word regard such cases as belonging of a word to different lexico-grammatical classes which is not true.

Converted pairs are variegated: 4,5 % is constituted by “love – to love”, “harp – to harp”, 62 % is constituted by “pencil – to pencil”, “hammer – to hammer”. 35 % is constituted by borrowings, phonetic changes. But the results of different processes form a unified word-building system.

The following cases of conversion are indisputable in linguistic literature:

· formation of verbs from nouns and rarely from other parts of speech;

· formation of nouns from verbs and rarely from other parts of speech.

The possibility of creating adjectives from nouns is being discussed. Substantivation and adjectivization, attributive usage of words, word combinations and sentences mainly stay within occasional limits. That is why “the rich”, “a Russian”, “a native” are not referred to conversion * *.

Morphological simplicity favours the process of conversion, conversion is less frequent in bimorphemic and polymorphemic words. Morphologically simple words form the bulk of material used in conversion.

Conversion may present interest from the stylistic point of view:

“Let me say in the beginning that even if I wanted to avoid Texas I could not for I am wived in Texas and mother-in-lawed and uncled and aunted and cousined within an inch of my life.” (J.Steinbec, Travels with Charley).

“No sooner was he settled anywhere than he would light unexpectedly upon a new find. ” (A. Christie, Selected Stories).


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