COMPOUND WORDS
A compound word is made when two words are joined to form a new word.
newsstand, newspaper, newsclip
flowerpetal, flowerbed, flowerpot
pigtail, pigpen, pignose
sandpaper, sandstorm, sandbox
ladybug, ladyfinger, ladypurse
thumbtack, thumbprint, thumbnail
copperwire, copperhead, coppercrayon
eyecolor, eyebrow, eyelid
bedrock, bedtime, bedpillow
handbag, handshake,handglove
A compound is a word (lexeme) that consists of more than one free morpheme.
An endocentric compound consists of a head, i.e. the categorical part that contains the basic meaning of the whole compound, and modifiers, which restrict this meaning. For example, the English compound doghouse, where house is the head and dog is the modifier, is understood as a house intended for a dog. Obviously, an endocentric compound tends to be of the same part of speech (word class) as its head.
Exocentric compounds do not have a head, 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.
In the Sanskrit tradition, the type of exocentric compound exemplified by white-collar is called a bahuvrihi compound. 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. Thus a white-collar person is one whose collar is white (as a metaphor for socioeconomic status). Other English examples include barefoot and Blackbeard.
Composition should not be confused with derivation, where bound morphemes are added to free ones.
A special kind of composition is incorporation, of which noun incorporation into a verbal root (as in English backstabbing, breastfeed, etc.) is most prevalent (see below).
Compound formation rules vary widely across language types.
In a perfectly analytic language, compounds are simply elements strung together without any markers. In English, for example, science fiction is a compound noun that consists of two nouns and no markers. A corresponding example from the Chinese language would be Hànyǔ (漢語; simplified: 汉语), or "the Han Chinese language", which also consists of two nouns and no markers.
In a more synthetic language, the relationship between the elements of a compound may be marked. In German, for example, the compound Kapitänspatent consists of the lexemes Kapitän (sea captain) and Patent (license) joined by the genitive case marker -s. In the Latin language, the lexeme paterfamilias contains the (archaic) genitive form familias of the lexeme pater (father).
Agglutinative languages tend to create very long words with derivational morphemes. Compounds may or may not require the use of derivational morphemes also. The well-known Japanese compound 神風 kamikaze consists only of the nouns kami ("god, spirit") and kaze ("wind"). The longest compounds in the world may be found in Finnish and Germanic languages, such as Swedish. German examples include Kontaktlinsenverträglichkeitstest ("contact-lens compatibility test") and the jocular Rheindampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsstellvertreter ("Rhine steamship-company vice-captain"). In theory, even longer compounds are possible, but they are usually not found in actual discourse.
Compounds can be rather long when translating technical document from English to, for example, Swedish. "Motion estimation search range settings" can be directly translated to "rörelseuppskattningssökningsrymdsinställning"; the length of the word is theoretically unlimited.
[edit] Compound types in different languages
[edit] Compound nouns
Most natural languages have compound nouns and sometimes compound adjectives. The positiong of the language, i. e. the most common order of constituents in phrases where nouns are modified by adjectives, by possessors, by other nouns, etc. While Germanic languages, for example, are left-branching when it comes to noun phrases (the modifiers come before the head), the Romance languages are usually right-branching.
In French, compound nouns are often formed by left-hand heads with prepositional components inserted before the modifier, as in chemin-de-fer ("railway", lit. "road of iron") and moulin à vent ("windmill", lit. "mill (that works)-by-means-of wind").
[edit] Verb-noun compounds
A type of compound that is fairly common in the Indo-European languages is formed of a verb and its object, and in effect transforms a simple verbal clause into a noun.
In Spanish, for example, such compounds consist of a verb conjugated for third person singular, present tense, indicative mood followed by a noun (usually plural): e.g., rascacielos (modelled on "skyscraper", lit. "scratches skies"), sacacorchos ("corkscrew", lit. "removes corks"). These compounds are formally invariable in the plural (but in many cases they have been reanalyzed as plural forms, and a singular form has appeared). French and Italian have these same compounds with the noun in the singular form: Italian grattacielo ("skyscraper"), French grille-pain ("toaster", lit. "toasts bread").
This construction exists in English, generally with the verb and noun both in uninflected form: examples are spoilsport, killjoy, spendthrift, cutthroat, and know-nothing.
Also common in English is another type of verb-noun compounds, in which an argument of the verb is incorporated into the verb, which is then usually turned into a gerund, such as breastfeeding, finger-pointing, etc. The noun is usually an instrumental complement.
[edit] Compound adpositions
Compound prepositions formed by prepositions and nouns are common in English and the Romance languages (consider English on top of, Spanish encima de, etc.). Japanese shows the same pattern, except the word order is the opposite (with postpositions): no naka (lit. "of inside on", i.e. "on the inside of").
[edit] Other examples
Spanish:
Ciencia-ficción ("science fiction"): ciencia, "science", + ficción, "fiction" (This word is a calque from the English expression science fiction. In English, the head of a compound word is the last morpheme: science fiction. Conversely, the Spanish head is located at the front, so ciencia ficción sounds like a kind of fictional science rather than scientific fiction.)
Ciempiés ("centipede"): cien, "hundred", + pies, "feet"
Ferrocarril ("railway"): ferro, "iron", + carril, "lane"
Italian:
Centopiedi ("centipede"): cento, "hundred", + piedi, "feet"
Ferrovia ("railway"): ferro, "iron", + via, "way"
Tergicristallo ("windscreen wiper"): tergere, "to wash", + cristallo, "crystal, (pane of) glass"
German:
Wolkenkratzer ("skyscraper"): wolken, "clouds", + kratzer, "scraper"
Eisenbahn ("railway"): Eisen, "iron", + bahn, "track"
Kraftfahrzeug ("automobile"): Kraft, "power", + fahren/fahr, "drive", + zeug, "machinery"
Stacheldraht ("barbed wire"): stachel, "barb/barbed", + draht, "wire"
Finnish:
sanakirja ("dictionary"): sana, "word", + kirja, "book"
tietokone ("computer"): tieto, "knowledge, data", + kone, "machine"
keskiviikko ("Wednesday"): keski, "middle", + viikko, "week"
maailma ("world"): maa, "land", + ilma, "air"
Icelandic:
járnbraut ("railway"): járn, "iron", + braut, "path" or "way"
farartæki ("vehicle"): farar, "journey", + tæki, "apparatus"
alfræðiorðabók ("encyclopædia"): al, "everything", + fræði, "study" or "knowledge", + orða, "words", + bók, "book"
símtal ("telephone conversation"): sím, "telephone", + tal, "dialogue"
[edit] Russian language
In Russian language compounding is a common type of word formation, and several types of compounds exist, both in terms of compounded parts of speech and of the way of the formation of a compound. [1]
Compound nouns may be agglulinative compounds, hyphenated compounds (stol-kniga, folded table, literally: "table-book", i.e., "book-like table"), or abbreviated compounds (acronyms: kolkhoz). Some compounds look like acronyms, while in fact they are an agglutinations of type stem + word: "Akademgorodok" (from "akademichesky gorodok", or "Academic Townlet", i.e., Academic Village). In agglutinative compound nouns, and agglutinating infix is typically used: parokhod (steamship): par + o + khod. Compound nouns may be created as noun+noun, adjective+noun, noun+adjective (rare), noun+verb (or, rather, noun+verbal noun).
Compound adjectives may be formed eiter per se, e.g., "belo-rozovy" (white-pink) or as a result of compounding during the derivation of an adjective from a multiword term: Каменноостровский проспект /kamenːoːstrovskʲij prospʲekt/ "Stone Island Avenue", a street in St.Petersburg.
Reduplication in Russian language is a rich source of compounds.
Quite a few Russian words are borrowed from other languages in an already compounded form, including numerous "classical compounds": "avtomobil" (automobile).
[edit] 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.