И. В. Арнольд лексикология современного английского языка Издание

§ 6.2.1 THE CRITERIA OF COMPOUNDS

As English compounds consist of free forms, it is difficult to distinguish them from phrases. The combination top dog ‘a person occupying foremost place’, for instance, though formally broken up, is neither more nor less analysable semantically than the combination underdog ‘a person who has the worst of an encounter’, and yet we count the first (top dog) as a phrase and the second (underdog) as a word. How far is this justified? In reality the problem is even more complex than this isolated example suggests. Separating compounds from phrases and also from derivatives is no easy task, and scholars are not agreed upon the question of relevant criteria. The following is a brief review of various solutions and various combinations of criteria that have been offered.

The problem is naturally reducible to the problem of defining word boundaries in the language. It seems appropriate to quote E. Nida who writes that “the criteria for determining the word-units in a language are of three types: (1) phonological, (2) morphological, (3) syntactic. No one type of criteria is normally sufficient for establishing the word-unit. Rather the combination of two or three types is essential."¹

E. Nida does not mention the graphic criterion of solid or hyphenated spelling. This underestimation of written language seems to be a mistake. For the present-day literary language, the written form is as important as the oral. If we accept the definition of a written word as the part of the text from blank to blank, we shall have to accept the graphic criterion as a logical consequence. It may be argued, however, that there is no consistency in English spelling in this respect. With different dictionaries and different authors and sometimes even with the same author the spelling varies, so that the same unit may exist in a solid spelling: headmaster, loudspeaker, with a hyphen: head-master, loud-speaker and with a break between the components: head master, loud speaker. Compare also: airline, air-line, air line’, matchbox, matchbox, match box’, break-up, breakup. Moreover, compounds that appear to be constructed on the same pattern and have similar semantic relations between the constituents may be spelt differently: textbook, phrase-book and reference book. Yet if we take into consideration the comparative frequency of solid or hyphenated spelling of the combinations in question, the criterion is fairly reliable. These three types of spelling need not indicate different degrees of semantic fusion. Sometimes hyphenation may serve aesthetic purposes, helping to avoid words that will look too long, or purposes of convenience, making syntactic components clearer to the eye: peace-loving nations, old-fashioned ideas.

¹ Nida E. Morphology. P. 147; Quirk R. et al. A Grammar of Contemporary English. P. 1019.

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This lack of uniformity in spelling is the chief reason why many authors consider this criterion insufficient. Some combine it with the phonic criterion of stress. There is a marked tendency in English to give compounds a heavy stress on the first element. Many scholars consider this unity of stress to be of primary importance. Thus L. Bloomfield writes: “Wherever we hear lesser or least stress upon a word which would always show a high stress in a phrase, we describe it as a compound member: ice-cream ['ajs-krijm] is a compound but ice cream ['ajs'krijm] is a phrase, although there is no denotative difference in meaning."¹

It is true that all compound nouns, with very few exceptions, are stressed on this pattern. Cf. ‘blackboard : : ‘blackboard’, ‘blackbird : : ‘black'bird; ‘bluebottle : : ‘blue'bottle. In all these cases the determinant has a heavy stress, the determinatum has the middle stress. The only exception as far as compound nouns are concerned is found in nouns whose first elements are all- and self-, e. g. ‘All-'Fools-Day, ‘self-con'trol. These show double even stress.

The rule does not hold with adjectives. Compound adjectives are double stressed like ‘gray-'green, ‘easy-'going, ‘new-'born. Only compound adjectives expressing emphatic comparison are heavily stressed on the first element: ‘snow-white, ‘dog-cheap.

Moreover, stress can be of no help in solving this problem because word-stress may depend upon phrasal stress or upon the syntactic function of the compound. Thus, light-headed and similar adjectives have a single stress when used attributively, in other cases the stress is even. Very often the stress is structurally determined by opposition to other combinations with an identical second element, e. g. ‘dining table : : ‘writing table. The forestress here is due to an implicit contrast that aims at distinguishing the given combination from all the other similar cases in the same series, as in ‘passenger train, ‘ freight train, ex'press train. Notwithstanding the unity stress, these are not words but phrases.

Besides, the stress may be phonological and help to differentiate the meaning of compounds: