English Compound Word
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An English Compound Word is a compound word that is an English Word.
- Context:
- It can range from being an English Compound Noun, English Compound Verb, ...
- Example(s):
- an Spaced English Compound Nounce, such as: answering machine.
- an Dashed English Compound Nounce, such as: bumble-bee.
- an Unspaced English Compound Nounce, such as: housewife, lawsuit, wallpaper, basketball.
- …
- Counter-Example(s):
- See: Bound (Grammar), Analytic Language, Case Marker, Syllable, Hyphen, Affix, Article (Grammar).
References
2015
- (Wikipedia, 2015) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_compound#Types_of_compound_nouns Retrieved:2015-5-29.
- Since English is a mostly analytic language, unlike most other Germanic languages, it creates compounds by concatenating words without case markers. As in other Germanic languages, the compounds may be arbitrarily long. [1] 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 ways, which do not correspond to different pronunciations, however:
- The "solid" or "closed" forms in which two usually moderately short words appear together as one. Solid compounds most likely consist of short (monosyllabic) units that often have been established in the language for a long time. Examples are housewife, lawsuit, wallpaper, basketball, etc.
- The hyphenated form in which two or more words are connected by a hyphen. Compounds that contain affixes, such as house-build(er) and single-mind(ed)(ness), as well as adjective-adjective compounds and verb-verb compounds, such as blue-green and freeze-dried, are often hyphenated. Compounds that contain articles, prepositions or conjunctions, such as rent-a-cop, mother-of-pearl and salt-and-pepper, are also often hyphenated.
- The open or spaced form consisting of newer combinations of usually longer words, such as distance learning, player piano, lawn tennis, etc.
- 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, open, hyphenated, and closed forms may be encountered for the same compound noun, such as the triplets container ship/container-ship/containership and particle board/particle-board/particleboard.
In addition to this native English compounding, there is the classical type, which consists of words derived from Latin, as horticulture, and those of Greek origin, such as photography, the components of which are in bound form (connected by connecting vowels, which are most often -i- and -o- in Latin and Greek respectively) and cannot stand alone.
- Since English is a mostly analytic language, unlike most other Germanic languages, it creates compounds by concatenating words without case markers. As in other Germanic languages, the compounds may be arbitrarily long. [1] 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 ways, which do not correspond to different pronunciations, however:
- ↑ Plag, Ingo. ""Word-formation in English"". Cambridge University Press, 2003, p.172. "There is no structural limitation on the recursivity of compounding, but the longer a compound becomes the more difficult it is for the speakers/listeners to process, i.e. produce and understand correctly. Extremely long compounds are therefore disfavored not for structural but for processing reasons."