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Acompound is a word composed of more than onefree morpheme.[1] TheEnglish language, like many others, uses compounds frequently.English compounds may be classified in several ways, such as theword classes or thesemantic relationship of their components.
English inherits the ability to form compounds from its parent theProto-Indo-European language and expands on it.[2] Close to two-thirds of the words in theOld English poemBeowulf are found to be compounds.[3] Of all the types of word-formation in English, compounding is said to be the most productive.[4]
Most English compoundnouns arenoun phrases (i.e. nominal phrases) that include a noun modified byadjectives ornoun adjuncts. Due to the English tendency towardconversion, the two classes are not always easily distinguished. Most English compound nouns that consist of more than two words can be constructedrecursively by combining two words at a time. Combining "science" and "fiction", and then combining the resulting compound with "writer", for example, can construct the compound "science fiction writer" or "science-fiction writer". Some compounds, such assalt and pepper ormother-of-pearl, cannot be constructed in this way, however.
English uses many open compound nouns, a large subclass of which, by convention in acceptedEnglish orthography, are not closed up (not solidified) and are sometimes optionally hyphenated in attributive position (that is, when functioning as anoun adjunct). Examples arehigh school,kidney disease, andfile format. Although some other languages would close up these nouns' components (for example, German usually does so), English has a tendency whereby it closes up only certain ones, usually only ones in which thehead noun is monosyllabic (and even within that category, only sometimes, and in a way that is not fullystandardized). For example,data set anddataset, orfile name andfilename, are accepted alternative forms, butfile format,data format, anddata analysis can only be spelled as open in accepted English orthography. This pattern holds for countless nouns with few exceptions; notice that the latter pair involve multisyllabic heads. For the class with monosyllabic heads, there is a tendency that "compounds tend to solidify as they age,"[5]: 368 which is how a term such asdata set becomesdataset,pin-up becomespinup,[5]: 368 coal mine becomescoalmine,bottle cap becomesbottlecap, and so on. Such alternative forms usually continue to coexist in accepted use;style guides often convene on preferred dictionaries as a way of achieving consistency, by declaring that theheadword form there will be the default styling for each such term.
Since English is a mostlyanalytic language, unlike most otherGermanic languages, it creates compounds by concatenating words withoutcase markers.
| Modifier | Head | Compound |
|---|---|---|
| noun | noun | football |
| adjective | noun | blackboard |
| verb | noun | breakwater |
| preposition | noun | underworld |
| noun | adjective | snow white |
| adjective | adjective | blue-green |
| verb | adverb | tumbledown |
| preposition | adjective | over-ripe |
| noun | verb | browbeat |
| adjective | verb | highlight |
| verb | verb | freeze-dry |
| preposition | verb | undercut |
| noun | preposition | love-in |
| adverb | preposition | forthwith |
| verb | adverb | takeout |
| preposition | adverb | without |
Most noun-verb compounds denoting people are of the formnoun + verb + -er, where the noun is the object of the verb, for examplefire-fighter. Ḥowever, there are a few dozen common verb-object compounds – mostly dating from the 16th century and mostly with negative connotations – which have the opposite French order and which do not have a suffix-er. These have been labeledcutthroat compounds because 'cutthroat' is a typical example.[6]
As in other Germanic languages, the compounds may be arbitrarily long.[a] However, this is obscured by the fact that the written representation of long compounds always contains spaces. Short compounds may be written in three different forms, which do not correspond to different pronunciations, though:
Usage in the US and in the UK differs and often depends on the individual choice of the writer rather than on a hard-and-fast rule; therefore, spaced, hyphenated, and solid forms may be encountered for the same compound noun, such as the tripletsplace name/place-name/placename andparticle board/particle-board/particleboard.
In addition to this native English compounding, there is theneo-classical type, which consists of words derived fromClassical Latin, ashorticulture, and those ofAncient Greek origin, such asphotography, the components of which are inbound form (connected byconnecting vowels, which are most often-i- and-o- in Classical Latin and Ancient Greek respectively) and cannot stand alone.[10]
In general, the meaning of a compound noun is aspecialization of the meaning of its head. Themodifier limits the meaning of the head. This is most obvious indescriptive compounds (known askarmadharaya compounds in the Sanskrit tradition), in which the modifier is used in an attributive or appositional manner. Ablackboard is a particular kind of board, which is (generally) black, for instance.
Indeterminative compounds, however, the relationship is not attributive. For example, afootstool is not a particular type of stool that is like a foot. Rather, it is astool for one's foot or feet. (It can be used for sitting on, but that is not its primary purpose.) In a similar manner, anoffice manager is the manager of an office, anarmchair is achair with arms, and araincoat is acoat against the rain. These relationships, which are expressed byprepositions in English, would be expressed bygrammatical case in other languages. (Compounds of this type are known astatpurusha in the Sanskrit tradition.)
Both of the above types of compounds are calledendocentric compounds because the semantic head is contained within the compound itself—a blackboard is a type of board, for example, and afootstool is a type ofstool.
However, in another common type of compound, theexocentric (known as abahuvrihi compound in the Sanskrit tradition), the semantic head is not explicitly expressed. Aredhead, for example, is not a kind of head, but is a personwith red hair. Similarly, ablockhead is also not a head, but a person with a head that is as hard and unreceptive as a block (i.e. stupid). And alionheart is not a type of heart, but a person with a heart like a lion (in its bravery, courage, fearlessness, etc.).
There is a general way to tell the two apart. In a compound "[X . Y]":
Exocentric compounds occur more often in adjectives than nouns. AV-8 car is a carwith aV-8 engine rather than a car thatis a V-8, and atwenty-five-dollar car is a carwith a worth of$25, not a car thatis $25. The compounds shown here are bare, but more commonly, asuffixal morpheme is added, such as-ed: atwo-legged person is a personwith two legs, and this is exocentric.
On the other hand, endocentric adjectives are also frequently formed, using the suffixal morphemes-ing or-er/or. Apeople-carrier is a clear endocentric determinative compound: it is a thing thatis a carrier of people. The related adjective,car-carrying, is also endocentric: it refers to an object whichis a carrying-thing (or equivalently, whichdoes carry).
These types account for most compound nouns, but there are other, rarer types as well.Coordinative,copulative ordvandva compounds combine elements with a similar meaning, and the compound meaning may be ageneralization instead of a specialization.Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example, is the combined area of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but afighter-bomber is an aircraft that is both a fighter and a bomber.Iterative oramredita compounds repeat a single element, to express repetition or as an emphasis.Day by day andgo-go are examples of this type of compound, which has more than one head.
Analyzability may be further limited bycranberry morphemes and semantic changes. For instance, the wordbutterfly, commonly thought to be ametathesis forflutter by, which the bugs do, is actually based on an old wives' tale that butterflies are smallwitches that stealbutter fromwindow sills.Cranberry is a part translation fromLow German, which is why we cannot recognize the elementcran (from the Low Germankraan orkroon, "crane"). Theladybird orladybug was named after the Christian expression "ourLady, theVirgin Mary".
In the case of verb+noun compounds, the noun may be either thesubject or theobject of the verb. Inplayboy, for example, the noun is the subject of the verb (the boy plays), whereas it is the object incallgirl (someone calls the girl).
Stress patterns may distinguish a compound word from a noun phrase consisting of the same component words. For example, ablack board, adjective plus noun, is any board that is black, and has equal stress on both elements.[b] The compoundblackboard, on the other hand, though it may have started out historically asblack board, now is stressed on only the first element,black.[c] Thus a compound such astheWhite House normally has a falling intonation which a phrase such asa white house does not.[d]
English compound modifiers are constructed in a very similar way to the compound noun.Blackboard Jungle,leftover ingredients,gunmetal sheen, andgreen monkey disease are only a few examples.
Acompound modifier is a sequence of modifiers of a noun that function as a single unit. It consists of two or more words (adjectives, gerunds, or nouns) of which the left-hand component modifies the right-hand one, as in "the dark-green dress":dark modifies thegreen that modifiesdress.
There are some well-established permanent compound modifiers that have become solid over a longer period, especially in American usage:earsplitting,eyecatching, anddowntown.
However, in British usage, these, apart fromdowntown, are more likely written with a hyphen:ear-splitting,eye-catching.
Other solid compound modifiers are for example:
Major style guides advise consulting a dictionary to determine whether a compound modifier should be hyphenated; the dictionary's hyphenation should be followed even when the compound modifier follows a noun (that is, regardless of whether in attributive or predicative position), because they are permanent compounds[11][12] (whereas the general rule with temporary compounds is that hyphens are omitted in the predicative position because they are used only when necessary to prevent misreading, which is usually only in the attributive position, and even there, only on a case-by-case basis).[13][14]
Generally, a compound modifier is hyphenated if the hyphen helps the reader differentiate a compound modifier from two adjacent modifiers that modify the noun independently. Compare the following examples:
The hyphen is unneeded when capitalization or italicization makes grouping clear:
If, however, there is no risk of ambiguities, it may be written without a hyphen:Sunday morning walk (a "walk on Sunday morning" is practically the same as a "morning walk on Sunday").
Hyphenated compound modifiers may have been formed originally by an adjective preceding a noun, when this phrase in turn precedes another noun:
Others may have originated with a verb preceding an adjective or adverb:
Yet others are created with an original verb preceding apreposition.
The following compound modifiers arealways hyphenated when they are not written as one word:
The following compound modifiers are not normally hyphenated:
Special rules apply when multiple compound nouns with the same "head" are used together, often with a conjunction (and withhyphens and commas if they are needed).
| modifier | head | examples |
|---|---|---|
| adverb | verb | overrate, underline, outrun |
| adverb | verb | downsize,upgrade |
| adjective | verb | whitewash, blacklist |
| adjective | noun | badmouth |
| noun | verb | browbeat, sidestep, manhandle |
| preposition | noun | out-Herod, outfox |
Acompound verb is usually composed of anadverb and averb, although other combinations also exist. The termcompound verb was first used in publication in Grattan and Gurrey'sOur Living Language (1925).
Some compound verbs are difficult to analyze morphologically because several derivations are plausible.Blacklist, for instance, might be analyzed as an adjective+verb compound, or as an adjective+noun compound that becomes a verb throughzero derivation. Most compound verbs originally have the collective meaning of both components, but some of them later gain additional meanings that may supersede the original, emergent sense. Therefore, sometimes the resultant meanings are seemingly barely related to the original contributors.
Compound verbs composed of a noun and verb are comparatively rare, and the noun is generally not thedirect object of the verb.
Examples of compound verbs following the pattern of indirect-object+verb include "hand wash" (e.g. "you wash it by hand" ~> "you handwash it"), and "breastfeed" (e.g. "she feeds the baby with/by/from her breast" ~> "she breastfeeds the baby").
Examples of non-existent direct-object+verb compound verbs would be *"bread-bake"[f] (e.g. "they bake bread" ~> *"they bread-bake") and *"car-drive" (e.g. "they drive a car" ~> *"they car-drive").
Note the example of a compound like "foxhunt": although this matches the direct-object+verb pattern, it isnot grammaticallyused in a sentence as a verb, but rather as a noun (e.g. "they're hunting foxes tomorrow" ~> "they're going on a foxhunt tomorrow", but "not" *"they're foxhunting tomorrow").
Compound verbs with single-syllable modifiers are often solid, or unhyphenated. Those with longer modifiers may originally be hyphenated, but as they became established, they became solid, e.g.
There was a tendency in the 18th century to use hyphens excessively, that is, to hyphenate all previously established solid compound verbs.American English, however, has diminished the use of hyphens, whileBritish English is more conservative.
Englishsyntax distinguishes betweenphrasal verbs andadverbialadjuncts. Consider the following sentences:
Each of the foregoing sentences implies a contextually distinguishable meaning of the word, "up," but the fourth sentence may differ syntactically, depending on whether it intends meaning (a) or (b). Specifically, the first three sentences renderheld up as aphrasal verb that expresses an idiomatic, figurative, or metaphorical sense that depends on the contextual meaning of theparticle, "up." The fourth sentence, however, ambiguously rendersup either as (a) aparticle thatcomplements "held," or as (b) anadverb that modifies "held." The ambiguity is minimized by rewording and providing more context to the sentences under discussion:
Thus, the fifth sentence renders "up" as the head word of an adverbial prepositional phrase that modifies, the verb,held. The first four sentences remain phrasal verbs.
TheOxford English Grammar (ISBN 0-19-861250-8) distinguishes seven types of phrasal verbs in English:
English has a number of other kinds of compound verb idioms. There are compound verbs with two verbs (e.g.make do). These too can take idiomatic prepositions (e.g.get rid of). There are also idiomatic combinations of verb and adjective (e.g.come true,run amok) and verb and adverb (make sure), verb and fixed noun (e.g.go ape); and these, too, may have fixed idiomatic prepositions (e.g.take place on).
"Compound verb" is often confused with:
Compounds defined. An open compound is spelled as two or more words (high school,lowest common denominoator). A hyphenated compound is spelled with one or more hyphens (mass-produced,kilowatt-hour,non-English-speaking). A closed (or solid) compound is spelled as a single word (birthrate,smartphone).
The compound can be a closed compound, where the two words are written together (e.g.,blackboard), an open compound, where they are written separate (e.g.,ice cream), or hyphenated, with a hyphen in between (e.g.,short-term).
Hyphenation. Compound words take many forms. [...] The dictionary is an excellent guide for such decisions. [...] When a compound can be found in the dictionary, its usage is established and it is known as a permanent compound.
Permanent compound adjectives are usually written as they appear in the dictionary even when they follow the noun they modify
Where no ambiguity could result, as inpublic welfare administration orgraduate student housing, hyphenation is unnecessary
In general, Chicago prefers a spare hyphenation style: if no suitable example or analogy can be found either in this section or in the dictionary, hyphenate only if doing so will aid readability