PATRICIA FUENTE GARCÍA
ENGLISH IV: MORPHOLOGY
INTRODUCTION
SYNTAX:
a: the way in which linguistic elements (as words) are put together to form
constituents (as phrases or clauses)
b: the part of grammar dealing with this
MORPHOLOGY:
a study and description of word formation (as inflection, derivation, and
compounding) in language.
WORDS:
A single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others (or
sometimes alone) to form a sentence and typically shown with a space on either
side when written or printed
WORD FORMATION:
Words:
units of meaning vs. units of sentence structure, pronounceable vs. abstract entities
Word classes:
lexical vs. functional categories, verbal morphology, inflectional classes
Building words:
morphemes, morphological processes, compounds, allomorphy
1. MORPHEMES & ALLOMORPHY
MORPHEME VS MORPH
Morpheme – Minimal unit of grammatical analysis, and also the smallest linguistic
element capable of having a meaning. They have no internal structure other than
phonological.
Strictly speaking, however, morphemes are abstract elements of analysis (like
lexemes and phonemes) and do not occur. What occurs is a phonetic (or orthographic)
form which realizes the morpheme. When the phonetic (or orthographic) strings
which realize morphemes are segmentable, these are termed ‘morphs’. A morph,
therefore, can be defined as a segment of a word-form which represents a particular
morpheme.
ALLOMORPHY
Besides morpheme and morph, a third term, ‘allomorph’ is required for
morphological analysis. An allomorph is one of the variant pronunciations of a
morpheme, among which the choice is determined by context (phonological,
grammatical or lexical). For example, [z], [iz] and [s] are phonologically determined
allomorphs of -s. The plural suffix, occurring respectively in cats, dogs and horses. A
morpheme with only one pronunciation is sometimes said to have only one allomorph.
The three different realizations of the plural morpheme -s are called allomorphs. In
cases allomorphs are predicted by the phonological environment (this is relevant for
the relation between morphology and phonology). Something very similar can be said
for the past tense morpheme -ed: [id], [d], [t]. But not only phonology determines
allomorphy: lexicon and grammar do as well.
a. laugh, cliff —
laughs, cliffs [s]
b. wife, loaf — *wifes, *loafs
—
c.
* [s]
wives, loaves [z]
Lastly, it must be pointed out that correlating morphemes with meaning is not always
accurate.
OTHER ALLOMORPHS:
 The shape of articles in English
a. the indefinite article a
b. the definite article the
[ə] question [ən] answer
[ðə] question [ði] answer
[ə] book [ən] author
[ðə] book [ði] author
[ə] fence [ən] idea
[ðə] fence [ði] idea
in isolation: [ei]
in isolation: [ði:]
 Roots:
explain
[ɪksˈpleɪn],
explanation
[ˌekspləˈneɪʃən],
explanatory
[ɪkˈsplænəˌtərɪ].
BOUND VS FREE
A morph which can occur in isolation, i.e. can occur as an independent word, is called
free morpheme. On the contrary, a morph which can only occur in a word-form in
conjunction with at least one other morph is called a bound morpheme. While all
affixes are bound morphemes, not all roots are free morphemes; some must be bound
as well. There are a group of bound morphemes that cannot be assigned an
independent meaning or a grammatical function, but nonetheless serve to distinguish
one word from another. These are the so called cranberry morphemes and they
occur in only one word. For example, in the word cranberry, ‘cran’ doesn’t have a
meaning by itself but serves to distinguish that word from strawberry. More examples
of cranberry morphemes: huckle-, gorm-, -mit (in remit, commit, transmit), -efer
(refer, prefer, confer…), -duce (reduce, conduce, deduce), -voke (revoke, convoke,
invoke), -serve (reserve, preserve, conserve, deserve).
Bound morphemes which do not realize unanalyzable lexemes are affixes. Affixes
can be divided intro prefixes, suffixes and infixes. In English prefixation is always
derivational while suffixation may be either derivational of inflectional. For example,
in the form ‘un-touch-able-s’, -able is a derivational suffix, un- is a derivational prefix,
and -s is an inflectional suffix.
2. STEMS, ROOTS AND AFFIX FREEDOM
‘Root’ and ‘stem’ are terms used in literature to designate that part of the word that
remains when al affixes have been removed. The root word is the primary lexical
unit of a word, and of a word family (root is then called base word), which carries the
most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller
constituents.
3) untouchables’
a. un-touch-able-s
4) a. ‘disagreement’: dis+agree+ment
b. dis- agree dis-agree-ment
c. agree -ment dis-agree-ment
(5) a. leg -ible, audi-ence, magn -ify
(associated with Romance roots )
b. cran -berry, huckle -berry, gorm -less (cranberry morphemes )
AFFIXATION
 Prefixes precede a base, suffixes follow it. We may also talk about infixes,
which break up a base (possibly English intensifiers like –friggin’– as in
unbefrigginlievable), and circumfixes, which surround it (en–BASE–en for
enlighten?).
These kids are frigging awesome
 Inflectional affixes don’t change a base’s category but simply specify it
for the inflectional property (person, number, gender, or case as well as
tense, for example).
 Derivational affixes may (but need not) change the category and create a
new word.
a. de+, re+, sub+, in+, con+, pre+, en+, be+… prefixes
b. +ion, +ity, +y, +al, +ic, +ate, +ous, +ive… suffixes
3. MONOMORPHEMIC, COMPLEX AND POLYMORPHEMIC WORDS
So far, we have only encountered complex words that are created by concatenation,
i.e. by linking together bases and affixes as in a chain. There are, however, also other,
i.e. non-concatenative, ways to form morphologically complex words.
CONVERSION
Conversion is a kind of word transformation in which a new word is created
(belonging to a new word class) from an existing word (belonging to a different
word class) without any change in form:
To walk – a walk; to throw- a throw; to book- a book; to father- father
The verb water is derived from the noun water by adding to the base noun water
a zero-morph with the meaning ‘apply X.’.
The exact status of conversion within word formation is unclear. That is why it
is frequently called zero-derivation.
TRUNCATION OR CLIPPING (derivation process)
It is a word formation process which consists in the reduction of a word to one of
its parts but retaining both its original meaning and its word class. It is different
from back-formation; back formation may change the part of speech or the word’s
meaning, whereas clipping creates shortened words from longer words, but does
not change the part of speech of the meaning of the word. Examples: Ronald >
Ron; laboratory > lab; mathematics > math; examination > exam. There are 3
types of clipping:
1. BACK
CLIPPING:
ad
(advertisement),
doc
(doctor),
exam
(examination), gym (gymnasium)
2. FORE CLIPPING: chute (parachute), phone (telephone), varsity
(university)
3. MIDDLE CLIPPING: flu (influenza), fridge (refrigerator)
BLENDS (derivation process)
We also find so-called blends, which are amalgamations of parts of different
words, such as smog (← smoke/fog) or modem (← modulator/demodulator). In
other words, blends are new lexemes formed from parts of two other words in
such a way that there is no transparent analysis into morphs.
Blends based on orthography are called acronyms, which are coined by
combining the initial letters of compounds or phrases into a pronounceable new
word (NATO, UNESCO, RAM, ANZAC, AIDS etc.). The use of capital letters
in the spelling of some of these words reflects the fact that speakers are aware of
some of their acronyms status. If the conventional way of reading the string is by
pronouncing the name of each letter in turn, as with USA, UK or RP, then it is not
an acronym but an abbreviation.
ANALOGY
Sometimes new complex words are derived without an existing word-formation
rule but formed on the basis of a single (or very few) model words.
For example, earwitness ‘someone who has heard a crime being commited’ was
coined on the basis of eyewitness, cheeseburger on the basis of hamburger, and
air-sick on the basis of sea-sick. The process by which these words came into
being is called analogy.
BACK FORMATION
Back formation is the process of creating a new lexeme, usually by removing
actual or supposed affixes.
- Verb “edit” from “editor”
- Verb “donate” from “donation”
Derivation: affixation, non-affixation, prefixation, suffixation, infixation, conversion, truncation,
blending.
4. INFLECTION
Inflection morphology deals with the inflected forms of words, that is the kind of
variation that words exhibit on the basis of their grammatical context.
Lexeme – word seen as an abstract grammatical entity, represented concretely
by one or more different inflected word forms according to the grammatical context.
Where the distinction is important, lexemes are conventionally represented in small
capitals while word forms are in italics. For example, the verb lexeme PERFORM has
four inflected word forms: perform, performs, performing and performed.
Word form- word viewed as a pronounceable entity, representing concretely a
lexeme in some grammatical context. One-word form may be shared by more than
one lexeme; for example, [rouz] is shared by the noun  ‘line of objects’ (as its
plural form), the noun  (as its basic, or singular, form), the verb  ‘propel
with oars’ (as its third person singular present tense form), and the verb  (as
its past tense form).
One lexeme may be represented by two (or more) quite distinct root morphemes (not
allomorphs). The term given to this phenomenon is suppletion; go and went are said
to be distinct roots (and hence distinct morphemes), standing in a suppletive
relationship as representatives, in different grammatical contexts, of one lexeme.
INFLECTION OF VERBS
In English, a verb lexeme has at most five distinct forms:
1. Third person singular present tense: gives
e.g. Mary gives a lecture every year.
2. Past tense: gave
e.g. Mary gave a lecture last week.
3. Progressive participle: giving
e.g. Mary is giving a lecture today.
4. Perfect or passive participle: given
e.g. Mary has given a lecture today.
The lecture is always given by Mary.
5. basic form (used everywhere else): give
e.g. Mary may give a lecture.
The contrast between present at (1) and past at (2) is a contrast of tense. The other
dimensions of contrast manifested in (1) are person (third person versus the rest)
and number (singular versus plural, just as for nouns and pronouns).
However, because only one-word form (gives) exhibits these contrasts, they play
a much smaller inflectional role in modern English verbs than in Old English
verbs.
Other verbs or verb-like words whose behaviour belongs to grammar rather than
word-formation are the auxiliaries, such as BE and HAVE, and modals, such as
CAN, MUST, MAY. Their various forms distinguish an unusually small or large
range of grammatical words. Instead of the usual verbal maximum of five forms,
modals distinguish only two (e.g. can, could) or even just one (e.g. Must), while
BE distinguishes eight (am, is, are, was, were, being, been, be).
INFLECTION OF NOUNS
Most countable nouns in English have two-word forms: a singular and a plural.
Inflectionally, for any noun lexeme X, there are just two grammatical words,
‘singular of X’ and ‘plural of X’, contrasting in number.
-s is the regular suffix for forming plurals. Irregular suffixes expressing plurality
include -i, -ae and -a (as in cacti, formulae, phenomena) found with some
relatively learned words borrowed from Latin or Greek; the suffix -(r)en that
shows up only in oxen, children and brethren; and a very few others such as the
Hebrew -im in cherubim and kibbutzim.
There are also some countable nouns that express their plural with no suffix at all
(teeth, men) where there is a change in the vowel of the root – or, more precisely,
an allomorph of the root with a different vowel from the singular.
There are also some whose plurals display not even a vowel change: for example,
sheep, Fish (sometimes called ‘zero-plural’ nouns, if they are analysed as
carrying a ‘zero suffix’). they all denote animals, birds or fish that are either
domesticated (SHEEP) or hunted (DEER), usually for food (TROUT, COD).
There are a few nouns such as SCISSORS and PANTS which exist only in an -splural form, and which appear only in plural syntactic contexts, even though they
denote single countable Entities:
a. Those scissors belong in the top drawer.
b. Your pants have a hole in the seat.
For the singular form, there is a conventional circumlocution or periphrastic
form: pair of pants and pair of scissors (as in That pair of scissors belongs in the
top drawer).
'Apostrophe-s' form: pianist’s, man’s, child’s, children’s etc. – do not count as
further inflected forms of the lexemes PIANIST, MAN, CHILD as ‘possessive’
forms. What -’s attaches itself to is not a morphological unit such as noun root
(e.g. man) but a syntactic unit, namely a noun phrase. So -’s belongs in the study
of syntax, not morphology.
PRONOUNS AND DETERMINERS
There is a distinction between this and these, as in this pianist and these pianists.
These are the singular and plural forms of the determiner lexeme THIS. Other
determiners include THE but only one other determiner exhibits a singular–plural
contrast: THAT, with singular and plural forms that and those.
The relationship between nominative and accusative forms in pronouns is
consistently suppletive, as in I/me, she/her, we/us, and they/them, except that for
YOU the two forms are identical (you). This is consistent with the fact that
pronouns are very common, and suppletion affects only very common words such
as GO.
FORMS OF ADJECTIVES
Many English adjectives exhibit three forms, for example GREEN here:
- Grass is green.
- The grass is greener now than in winter.
- The grass is greenest in early summer.
The grammatical words that green, greener and greenest express are the positive,
comparative and superlative of GREEN, contrasting on the dimension of
comparison. Better and best are suppletive of GOOD.
Broadly speaking, the suffixes -er and -est appear on adjectives whose basic form
has one syllable, or two provided that the second syllable ends in a vowel (e.g.
tidy, yellow), while longer adjectives usually require a periphrasis (more, the
most).
CONCLUSION
Some words (lexemes) have more than one-word form, depending on the
grammatical context or on choices that grammar forces us to make (for example,
in nouns, between singular and plural). This kind of word formation is called
‘inflectional’.
Inflection affects nouns, verbs, adjectives and a few adverbs, as well as the closed
classes of pronouns, determiners, auxiliaries and modals. However, the maximum
number of distinct inflected forms for any open-class lexeme is small:
Nouns: 2 e.g. cat, cats
Verbs: 5 e.g. gives, gave, giving, given, give
Adjectives: 3 e.g. green, greener, greenest
Adverbs: 3 e.g. soon, sooner, soonest
5. DERIVATION
In the previous section we discussed the words perform, performs, performed and
performance. I argued that perform, performs and performed were grammatically
conditioned variants of one lexemePERFORM, but performance was not one of these
variants. The reason was that, whereas there are grammatical factors that determine
the choice between perform, performs and performed (in appropriate contexts), there
is no grammatical factor that requires specifically the presence of -ance on
performance. To put it another way: there are contexts where, if any verb appears, it
must carry the third person singular suffix -s, but there are no contexts where, if a
noun appears, it must carry the suffix -ance. The suffix -ance is not one of the small
class of suffixes (so-called ‘inflectional’ suffixes) whose use is tightly determined by
grammar. What sort of suffix is it, then? A short answer is that, not being inflectional,
it must be derivational, since the term ‘derivation’ is used for all aspects of wordstructure involving affixation that is not inflectional.
Since performance is not a variant of the lexeme PERFORM, it must belong to some
other lexeme, which may itself have more than one form. What lexeme could this be?
This question is easy to answer when we notice that, alongside performance, there is
a plural form performances. Just as cat and cats are the two forms (singular and plural)
of the lexeme CAT, it makes sense to regard performance and performances as the
two forms of a lexeme PERFORMANCE. This tells us something about the relationship
between perform and performance: it is a relationship not between word forms but
rather between lexemes. Thus, derivational morphology is concerned with one kind
of relationship between lexemes.
A. Derivation
B. Inflection
worker
(she) works
useless
(the) workers
untruthfulness
(is) colonializing
interview
(we) picked
curiosity
(the) children
passivize
terrorism
Derivation versus Inflection
– is not restricted
– suffixational (English)
to suffixation
– can occur inside derivation
– occurs outside all derivation
– encodes lexical meaning
– encodes grammatical categories
– often changes the part
– does not change it
of speech
– is often restricted
– highly / fully productive
in its productivity
– often semantically opaque
a. ∗walk-ive
– is rarely semantically opaque
exhaust→exhaustive
∗read-ive
operate→operative
∗surprise-ive
assault→assaultive
b. ∗computer-al
colony→colonial
∗desk-al
phrase→phrasal
∗child-al
ADVERBS DERIVED FROM ADJECTIVES
 Most of the adverbs are created by the addition of suffix -ly: careful->
carefully
 Some others are created by conversion: FAST (as in The car was driven fast)
and HARD (as in They worked hard), derived from the adjective FAST (as in
a fast car) and HARD (as in hard work)
 There are simple of monomorphemic adverbs, though few in number, that
include some very common words (OFTER, SELDOM, NEVER, SOON).
Other adverbs are morphologically complex without containing -ly
(NOWHERE, EVERYWHERE, TODAY, YESTERDAY)
NOUNS DERIVED FROM MEMBERS OF OTHER WORD CLASSES
 NOUNS FROM ADJECTIVES (‘property of being X’):
(A) -ness, e.g. goodness, tallness, fierceness, sensitiveness
(B) -ity, e.g. purity, equality, ferocity, sensitivity
(C) -ism, e.g. radicalism, conservatism
 NOUNS FROM VERBS (“activity or result of Xing”)
(A) -ance, -ence, e.g. performance, ignorance, reference, convergence
(B) -ment, e.g. announcement, commitment, development, engagement
(C) -ing, e.g. painting, singing, building, ignoring
(D) -((a)t)ion, e.g. denunciation, commission, organisation, confusion
(E) -al, e.g. refusal, arrival, referral, committal
(F) -er, e.g. painter, singer, organiser, grinder
(1) Change in the position of the stress, e.g. nouns PÉRMIT, TRÁNSFER
alongside verbs PERMÍT, TRANSFÉR
(2) Change in the final consonant, e.g. nouns BELIEF, PROOF, DEFENCE
alongside verbs BELIEVE, PROVE, DEFEND
(3) Change in a vowel, e.g. nouns SONG, SEAT alongside verbs SING, SIT.
 NOUNS DERIVED FROM NOUNS
(A) ‘inhabitant of X’: -er, -(i)an
e.g. Londoner, New Yorker, Texan, Glaswegian
(B) ‘devotee of or expert on X’: -ist, -ian
e.g. contortionist, Marxist, logician, historian
(C) ‘state of being an X’: -ship, -hood
e.g. ladyship, motherhood, priesthood
(D) ‘female X’: -ess, -ine
e.g. waitress, princess, heroine
(E) ‘small X’: -let, -ette, -ie
e.g. droplet, booklet, cigarette, doggie
 ADJECTIVES DERIVED FROM ADJECTIVES
In this category, prefixes predominate. The prefix un- meaning ‘not’ is
extremely widespread: for example, UNHAPPY, UNSURE, UNRELIABLE,
UNDISCOVERED. This does not mean, however, that un- can be prefixed to
all adjectives quite freely; we do not find, for example, UNGOOD with the
meaning ‘bad’.
Another negative prefix is in-, with allomorphs indicated by the variant
spellings il-, ir- and im-, as in INTANGIBLE, ILLEGAL, IRRESPONSIBLE
and IMPOSSIBLE. It is more restricted than un-.
eatable/uneatable
edible/inedible
readable/unreadable
legible/illegible
lawful/unlawful
legal/illegal
touchable/untouchable
tangible/intangible
The only suffix of note is -ish, meaning ‘somewhat X’, as in GREENISH,
SMALLISH, REMOTISH ‘rather remote’.
 ADJECTIVES DERIVED FROM MEMBERS OF OTHER WORD
CLASSES
a. a not very interesting book
b. The party-goers sounded very drunk.
c. The car seemed more damaged than the lamp-post.
 FROM VERBS
-able ‘able to be Xed’: breakable, readable, reliable, watchable
-ent, -ant ‘tending to X’: repellent, expectant, conversant
-ive ‘tending to X’: repulsive, explosive, speculative
 FROM NOUNS
-al, e.g. original, normal, personal, national
-ful, e.g. joyful, hopeful, helpful, meaningful
-less, e.g. joyless, hopeless, helpless, meaningless
-ish, e.g. boyish, loutish, waspish, selfish
 VERBS DERIVED FROM VERBS
Most prominent are re- and the negative or ‘reversive’ prefixes un-, de- and
dis-, as in the following examples:
(A) paint, enter
repaint, re-enter
(B) tie, tangle
untie, untangle
(C) compose
decompose
sensitise
desensitise
(D) entangle
disentangle
believe
disbelieve
Also, worth mentioning here is the relationship between the verbs in the left
and right columns in:
Intransitive
Transitive
LIE (past lay)
LAY (past laid)
RISE (past rose)
RAISE (past raised)
FALL (past fell)
FELL (past felled)
 VERBS DERIVED FROM MEMBERS OF OTHER WORD CLASSES
 FROM NOUNS
NOUNS
BATH
VERBS
BATHE
BREATH
BREATHE
HOUSE […s]
HOUSE […z]
 FROM NOUNS AND ADJECTIVES
de-, e.g. debug, deforest, delouse
-ise, e.g. organise, patronise, terrorise
-(i)fy, e.g. beautify, petrify
en- (with its allomorph em-) forms verbs meaning ‘cause to become X’ or ‘cause
to possess or enter X’ from a few adjectives and nouns: ENFEEBLE, ENSLAVE,
EMPOWER, ENRAGE, ENTHRONE, ENTOMB.
With the adjectives BOLD and LIVE as bases, the prefix en- is combined with a
suffix -en: EMBOLDEN, ENLIVEN.
This suffix usually occurs without the prefix, however, and does so quite widely
(e.g. TIGHTEN, LOOSEN, STIFFEN, WEAKEN, WIDEN, REDDEN,
DEEPEN, TOUGHEN). These verbs have either an intransitive meaning, ‘become
X’, or a transitive one, ‘cause to become X’.
6. COMPOUNDING
A compound is a word that consists of two elements (binary structure), the first of
which is either a root, a word or a phrase, the second of which is a root or a word.
We can say that compounds usually exhibit what is called a modifier–head
structure. Their head usually occurs on the right-hand side.
Examples: Film society, Parks commissioner, Deep-fry, Knee-deep
The compound as a whole inherits most of its semantic and syntactic information
from its head.
Thus, if the head is a verb, the compound will be a verb (e.g. deep-fry), if the head is
a count noun, the compound will be a count noun (e.g. beer bottle), if the head has
feminine gender, the compound will have feminine gender (e.g. head waitress).
Another property of the compound head is that if the compound is pluralized the plural
marking occurs on the head, not on the non-head: park commissioner – park
commissioners.
COMPOUND VERBS
Verbs formed by compounding are much less usual than verbs derived by
affixation. Nevertheless, a variety of types exist which may be distinguished
according to their structure:
(6) verb–verb (VV): stir-fry, freeze-dry
(7) noun–verb (NV): hand-wash, air-condition, steam-clean
(8) adjective–verb (AV): dry-clean, whitewash
(9) preposition–verb (PV): underestimate, outrun, overcook
Only the PV type is really common, however, and some compounds with under-,
over- and out- do not need to be classed as lexical items. For example, out- can
create a transitive verb meaning ‘outdo in Xing’ from any verb denoting a
competitive or potentially competitive activity (e.g. outsail, outsing, outswim),
while new words with over- can also be created freely (e.g. overpolish,
overcriticise, overbleach).
COMPOUND ADJECTIVES
(10) noun–adjective (NA): sky-high, coal-black, oil-rich
(11) adjective–adjective (AA): grey-green, squeaky-clean, red-hot
(12) preposition–adjective (PA): underfull, overactive
As with verbs, it is the type with the preposition over as its first element that seems
most productive, in that new adjectives of this type, with the meaning ‘too X’, are
readily acceptable: for example, overindignant, oversmooth.
COMPOUND NOUNS
It is with nouns that compounding really comes into its own as a word forming
process in English.
(13) verb–noun (VN): swearword, drophammer, playtime
(14) noun–noun (NN): hairnet, mosquito net, butterfly net, hair restorer
(15) adjective–noun (AN): blackboard, greenstone, faintheart
(16) preposition–noun (PN): in-group, outpost, overcoat
All of these have the main stress on the left – an important characteristic for
distinguishing compound nouns from noun phrases.
While noun phrases tend to be stressed phrase-finally, i.e. on the last word, noun
compounds tend to be stressed on the first element. This systematic difference is
captured in the so-called nuclear stress rule (‘phrasal stress is on the last word
of the phrase’) and the so-called compound stress rule (‘stress is on the lefthand member of a Compound’).
PRIMARY AND SECONDARY COMPOUNDS
In morphology, a primary compound, or root compound, is a compound
construction in which the head element (the right-hand one) is not derived from a
verb and whose interpretation is therefore not precisely predictable on a purely
linguistic basis. Examples of this kind of compounds are: hairnet, mosquito net,
windmill, blackboard, toy factory.
In morphology, a secondary compound, or a synthetic compound, is a type of
compound in which the first element is interpreted as the object of the verb
contained within the second. Examples of this kind are: hair restorer, slum
clearance, beer drinker, car driver, bookseller, church-goer, pasta-eating, windowcleaning, shop clearance, soccer-playing.
ENDOCENTRIC
(HEADED)
AND
EXOCENTRIC
(HEADLESS)
COMPOUNDS
Endocentric compounds are those regarded as having an internal nucleus inside
the word itself, i.e. that some of the words integrating the compound convey the
meaning of the word. Ex: blackbird, greenhouse, car seller.
Exocentric compounds are those that are not determined by any element inside
them, they do not have an internal nucleus inside but outside the word; i.e. the
meaning does not depend on the words that integrate the compound. Ex: redneck
(pelirrojo), pickpocket. Phrasal verbs are also considered to be exocentric: takeoff, sell-out, wrap-up, sit-in. Some adjectives consisting of a preposition and a
noun are included in this category as well: overland, in-house, with-profits,
offshore, downmarket, upscale, underweight, over-budget.
COPULATIVE COMPOUNDS
Copulative compounds are those in which no member is semantically prominent,
but the two members equally contribute to the meaning of the compound.
a. singer-songwriter
b. the doctor-patient gap
scientist-explorer
a modifier-head structure
poet-translator
the mind-body problem
hero-martyr
Each form in (a) refers to one entity that is characterized by both members of the
compound. A poet-translator, for example, is a person who is both a poet and a
translator. This type of copulative compound is sometimes called an appositional
compound.
By contrast, the copulative compounds in (b) denote two entities that stand in a
particular relationship with regard to the following noun. The particular type of
relationship is determined by the following noun. The doctor-patient gap is thus
a gap between doctor and patient. This second type of copulative compound is
also known as a coordinative compound.
COMBINING FORMS
The vocabulary of English, especially in scientific and technical areas, includes a
huge repertoire of compounds that are made up of bound roots, known as
combining forms. Here are just a few:
anthropology, sociology, plantigrade, retrospect, retrograde, cardiogram,
electrocardiogram
These elements are lexemes that are originally borrowed from Latin or Greek, but
their combinations are of modern origin (hence the term neoclassical elements).
PRHASAL WORDS
There are also complex items that function as words, yet whose internal structure
is that of a clause or phrase rather than of a compound. There is no standard term
for these items; we can use the concept phrasal words.
Jack-in-the-box, couldn’t-care-less (as in a couldn’t-care-less attitude).
We know when we are dealing with phrasal words because they are pluralized by
adding -s at the and and their structure is that of a phrase rather than a word. On
the contrary, noun phrases such as brother-in-law or lady-in-waiting are pluralized
by adding -s to the first word (brothers/ladies).