Compound

Compound parade
The third method of forming new lexical items is to use COMPOUNDING. In this
section I will present a brief outline of compounding in English. For more extensive
coverage of compounds see Marchand (1969), Adams (1973), Roeper and Siegel (1978),
Selkirk (1982), Lieber (1983), Bauer (1983) and Katamba . As mentioned already, a
compound is formed by combining two bases, which may be words in their own right, to
form a new lexical item. This is shown in [4.20a] where the two bases are separated by a
hyphen:
a. shop-steward ink-pot
room-mate road-show
moon-light shoe-string
b. strong-mind=ed book-sell=er
old-fashion=ed market-garden=er
As we saw at the end of section compounding and affixation are by no means
incompatible. An affixed base may serve as input to a compounding process, and vice versa.
In [4.20b], the suffix is separated by ‘=’ from the base.
Compounds differ in their structure. The majority of English compounds are nouns.
Common types of noun compounds include the following:
red tape bathroom schoolteacher

High Court ball-point head-hunter
blackberry briefcase speech-writer
greenfly bulldog housekeeper
hothouse ashtray firelighter
White House desktop matchmaker
.
Normally in compound nouns primary stress falls on the first word and the second
word gets secondary stress, as in the `White ‘House (the residence of the US President in
Washington) and the other words in [4. 23a]. However, in the phrases in [4.23b] like a
white house (as opposed to any house that is painted green, purple or pink) both content
words receive primary stress, and neither has its stress suppressed.
Another aspect of compounding that has interested linguists in recent years is the
place of compounds in the lexicon. The question that has been raised is whether or not
compounds should be listed in the dictionary. The consensus is that compounding is very
widely and productively used in word-formation and many headed compound words do
not need to be listed in the dictionary because their meanings are so transparent that they
can be worked out using standard rules in the grammar.
COMPOSITIONALITY holds the key. Normally we can work out the meaning of
the whole from the meanings of its parts. If we know the meanings of the smaller units
which the larger unit contains, we can work out the meaning of the whole. In syntax we
do not need to list sentences with their meanings since they are predictable from the
meanings of the words they contain and the grammatical and semantic relationships
between them. If we know what the words mean, using our knowledge of syntactic and
semantic rules we can work out the meanings of sentences like The dog chased the cat and
The cat chased the mouse; The unicorn kicked the yeti and The yeti was kicked by the
unicorn. Similarly, in morphology, where the meaning of compound words can be
predicted with a high degree of accuracy by general rules from the meaning of the
elements they contain, we do not need to list them in the dictionary. (See the discussion of
compositionality in section below.)
The number of grammatical sentences in English (or any other language) is
unlimited. So, it would be futile to try to memorise all the sentences that are sanctioned by
the rules of English grammar. The same is true of verbal compounds, since they have
sentences as their source. It would be futile to attempt to list all verbal compounds. So,
how do speakers of English cope? The answer is that they do not attempt to memorise all
verbal compounds any more than they try to memorise all sentences by brute force.
Rather, they master a system of grammatical rules that allows them both to construct and
to understand an indefinitely large number of sentences. One refinement is necessary:
often the general interpretation of compounds provided by the grammar requires a little
fine tuning. For instance, given a deverbal compound noun with a locative meaning, e.g.
waiting room, the grammar enables us to determine that it is a room where people wait.
But it will not enable us to know that it is a room in a public place like a railway station
designated especially for that purpose.
To conclude, the fact that deverbal compounding usually operates in a predictable way
means that it is not necessary to list all the compounds in the lexicon and memorise them.
Just as it is possible to use phrase structure rules in syntax to produce an indefinitely large
number of sentences, it is also possible, when dealing with lexical items, to use phrase
structure rules in morphology to produce an indefinitely large number of compound
words. Morphology is no different to syntax in the rules it employs for this purpose.
TYPES OF COMPOUND
1. Compound Nouns
This classification of compound word has nine forms in classifying the compounds
according to the parts of speech of its constituent, they are:
a. Noun + Noun: bath towel; boy-friend; death blow
b. Verb + Noun: pickpocket; breakfast
c. Noun + Verb: nosebleed; sunshine
d. Verb + Verb: make-believe
e. Adjective + Noun: deep structure; fast-food
f. Particle + Noun: in-crowd; down-town
g. Adverb + Noun: now generation
h. Verb + Particle: cop-out; drop-out
i. Phrase Compounds: son-in-law
2. Compound Verbs
There are four classification of forming of compound verbs, which can be formulated as
follow:
a. Noun + Verb: sky-dive
b. Adjective + Verb: fine-tune
c. Particle + Verb: overbook
d. Adjective + Noun: brown-bag
3. Compound Adjectives
In compound adjectives, there are twelve process of forming the compounds, they are:
a. Noun + adjective: card-carrying; childproof
b. Verb + adjective: fail safe
c. Adjective + adjective: open-ended
d. Adverb + adjective: cross-modal
e. Particle + adjective: over-qualified
f. Noun + noun: coffee-table
g. Verb + noun: roll-neck
h. Adjective + noun: red-brick; blue-collar
i. Particle + noun: in-depth
j. Verb + verb: go-go; make-believe
k. Adjective + verb: high-rise;
l. Verb + particle: see-through; tow-away

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