Branches of linguistics. Synchronic vs diachronic approaches to the language study. Lexicology – ‘the science of the word’

According to the type of relationship between the components, subordinative compounds are classified into:
-syntactic compounds if their components are placed in the order that resembles the order of words in free phrases made up according to the rules of Modern English syntax, e.g. a know-nothing - to know nothing, a blackbird – a black bird;
-asyntactic compounds if they do not conform to the grammatical patterns current in present-day English, e.g. baby-sitting – to sit with a baby, oil-rich – to be rich in oil.
According to the way of composition:
-compound proper is a compound formed after a composition pattern, i.e. by joining together the stems of words already available in the language, with or without the help of special linking elements, e.g. seasick, looking-glass, helicopter-rescued, handicraft;
-derivational compound is a compound which is formed by two simultaneous processes of composition and derivation; in a derivational compound the structural integrity of two free stems is ensured by a suffix referring to the combination as a whole, e.g. long-legged, many-sided, old-timer, left-hander.
According to the semantic relations between the constituents:
non-idiomatic compounds, whose meanings can be described as the sum of their constituent meanings, e.g. a sleeping-car, an evening-gown, a snowfall;
compounds one of the components of which has undergone semantic derivation, i.e. changed its meaning, e.g. a blackboard, a bluebell;
idiomatic compounds, the meaning of which cannot be deduced from the meanings of the constituents, e.g. a ladybird, a tallboy, horse-marine. The bahuvrihi compounds (Sanskrit ‘much riced’) are idomatic formations in which a person, animal or thing is metonymically named after some striking feature (mainly in their appearance) they possess; their word-building pattern is an adjectival stem + a noun stem, e.g. bigwig, fathead, highbrow, lowbrow, lazy-bones.
17. Shortening. Types of shortening.
Shortening is the process of substracting phonemes and / or morhemes from words and word-groups without changing their lexico-grammatical meaning.
Abbreviation is a process of shortening the result of which is a word made up of the initial letters or syllables of the components of a word-group or a compound word.