A course In Modern English Lexicology

§ 23. Summary and Conclusions of forming words in Modern English, is treated differently in linguistic literature. Some linguists define it as a morphological, others as a morphological-syntactic way of forming words, still others consider conversion from a purely syntactic angle.
2. There are several criteria of semantic derivation within conversion pairs. The most universal are the semantic and the frequency criteria.
3. On the synchronic plane conversion is regarded as a type of derivative correlation between two words making up a conversion pair.
4., On the diachronic plane conversion is a way of forming new words on the analogy of the semantic patterns available in the language. Diachronically distinction should be made between cases of conversion as such and those of homonymy due to the disappearance of inflections in the course of the development of the English language.
Word-Composition
C o m p o u n d i n g
or
w o r d -
§ 24. Compounding c o m p o s i t i o n 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 m e a n s u s e d , t h e n a t u r e of b a s e s a n d t h e i r d i s t r i b u -
t i o n , as to t h e r a n g e of a p p l i c a t i o n , t h e s c o p e of s e m a n t i c c l a s s e s a n d t h e f a c t o r s c o n d u c i v e to prod u c t i v i t y .
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.1 The bases built on stems may be of different degree2 of complexity as, e.g., 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.
1 See ‘Word-Structure’, § 8, p. 97.
2 See ‘Word-Formation’, § 6, p. 114.
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).
Compound words like all other inseparable vo-
§ 25. Structure cabulary units take shape in a definite system of grammatical forms, syntactic and semantic features. Compounds, on the one hand, are generally clearly distinguished from and often opposed to free word-groups, on the other hand they lie astride the border-line between words and word-groups and display close ties and correlation with the system of free word-groups. The structural inseparability of compound words finds expression in the unity of their specific distributional pattern and specific stress and spelling pattern.
S t r u c t u r a l l y compound words are characterised by the specific order and arrangement in which bases follow one another. T h e or-d e r in which the two bases are placed within a compound is r i g i d ly f i x e d 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 1 is most obvious in some compounds, especially in compound adjectives. Adjectives like long, wide, rich are characterised 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.
Phоnetiсallу 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 ‘hot-house — ‘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.
1 See ‘Word-Structure’, § 8, p. 97,
141
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 — ‘a psychiatrist’, ´washing-màchine, etc. These two stress patterns are the commonest among compound words and in many cases they acquire a contrasting force distinguishing compound words from word-groups, especially when the arrangement and order of ICs parallel the word-order and the distributional pattern of a phrase, thus a
‘greenhouse — ‘a glass house for cultivating delicate plants’ is contrasted to a ‘green ‘house — ‘a house that is painted green’; ‘dancing-girl — ‘a dancer’ to a ‘dancing ‘girl — ‘a girl who is dancing’; a ´mad-`doctor —
‘apsychiatrist’ to ‘mad ‘doctor — ‘a doctor who is mad’. The significance of these stress patterns is nowhere so evident as in nominal compounds built on the n+n derivational pattern in which the arrangement and order of the stems fail to distinguish a compound word from a phrase.
c) It is not infrequent, however, for both ICs to have level stress as in, e.g., ‘arm-'chair, ‘icy-'cold, ‘grass-'green, etc.
The significance of the stress pattern by itself should not be overestimated though, as it cannot be an overall criterion and cannot always serve as a sufficient clue to draw a line of distinction between compound words and phrases. This mostly refers to level stress pattern. In most cases the level stress pattern is accompanied by other structural and graphic indica-tions of inseparability.
G r a p h i c a l l y 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 emphasise 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.1 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
1 The spelling is given according to Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, 1956 and H. С Wyld. The Universal English Dictionary, 1952.
142
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 recognised 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.1
S e m a n t i c a l l y compound words are
§ 26. Meaning 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, carboard are built on the base meaning
‘thick, stiff paper’; the base board-meaning ‘an authorised 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.2
1 See ‘Word-Composition’, § 34, p. 151,
2 See ‘Semasiology’, § 15, p. 24.
143
The lexical meanings of the bases alone, im-
§ 27. Structural Meaning portant as they are, do not make the meaning of the Pattern of the compound word. T h e m e a n -
i n g of t h e c o m p o u n d is derived not only from the combined lexical meanings of its components, but also from the meaning signalled by the patterns of the order and arrangement of i t s ICs.
A mere change in the order of bases with the same lexical meanings brings about a drastic change in the lexical meaning of the compound or destroys it altogether. As an illustration let us compare life-boat — ‘a boat of special construction for saving lives from wrecks or along the coast’
with boat-life — ‘life on board the ship’; a fruit-market — ‘market where fruit is sold’ with market-fruit — ‘fruit designed for selling’; board-school with school-board, etc. Thus the structural or distributional pattern in compound words carries a certain meaning of its own which is largely independent of the actual lexical meaning of their ICs. It follows that t h e l e x i c a l m e a n i n g of a c o m p o u n d is d e r i v e d f r o m t h e c o m b i n e d l e x i c a l m e a n i n g s of i t s compon e n t s a n d t h e s t r u c t u r a l m e a n i n g of i t s d i s t r i b u t i o n a l p a t t e r n . 1
The structural meaning of the derivational pattern of compounds may be abstracted and described through the interrelation of its ICs. In analysing compound adjectives, e.g. duty-bound, wind-driven, mud-stained, we observe that their underlying pattern n+Ven conveys the generalised meaning of instrumental or agentive relations which can be interpreted as
‘done by’ or ‘with the help of something’; the lexical meanings of the bases supply the individual action performed and the actual doer of the action or objects with the help of which the action is done — duty-bound may be interpreted as 'bound by duty’, wind-driven as ‘driven by wind’, mud-stained as ’stained with mud’.
T h e d e r i v a t i o n a l p a t t e r n s in compounds m a y be m o n o s e m a n t i c as in the above-given examples, a n d p o l y s e m a n t i c . 2 If we take the pattern п+а -> A which underlies such compound adjectives as snow-white, world-wide, air-sick, we shall see that the pattern has two different meanings which may be interpreted: a) through semantic relations of comparison between the components as in world-wide — ‘wide as the world’, snow-white — ‘as white as snow’, etc. and b) through various relations of adverbial type (circumstantial) as in road-weary — ‘weary of the road’, colour-blind — ‘blind to colours’, etc. The structural pattern n+n -> N that underlies compound nouns is also polysemantic and conveys different semantic relations such as relations of purpose, e.g. bookshelf, bed-room, relations of resemblance, e.g. needle-fish, bowler-hat, instrumental or agentive relations, e.g. steamboat, windmill, sunrise, dogbite.
The polysemy of the structure often leads to a certain freedom of interpretation of the semantic relations between the components and consequently to the polysemy of the compound. For example, it is equally 1 See also ‘Word-Groups’, § 5, p. 69.
2 See also ‘Word-Groups’, § 8, p. 71.
144
correct to interpret the compound noun toy-man as ‘a toy having the shape of a man’ or ‘a man who makes toys, a toy-maker’, the compound clock-tower may likewise be understood as a ‘tower with a clock fitted in’ or ‘a tower that serves as or is at the same time a clock’.
It follows that the meaning of a compound is