linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingu ...

, a compound is a lexeme (less precisely, a

word A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consen ...

or sign) that consists of more than one stem. Compounding, composition or nominal composition is the process of word formation that creates compound lexemes. Compounding occurs when two or more words or signs are joined to make a longer word or sign. A compound that uses a space rather than a

hyphen The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. ''Son-in-law'' is an example of a hyphenated word. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes ( figur ...

concatenation In formal language theory and computer programming, string concatenation is the operation of joining character strings end-to-end. For example, the concatenation of "snow" and "ball" is "snowball". In certain formalisations of concatenat ...

is called an open compound or a spaced compound; the alternative is a closed compound. The meaning of the compound may be similar to or different from the meaning of its components in isolation. The component stems of a compound may be of the same

part of speech In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech ( abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are as ...

—as in the case of the English word ''footpath'', composed of the two

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Organism, Living creatures (including people ...

s ''foot'' and ''path''—or they may belong to different parts of speech, as in the case of the English word ''blackbird'', composed of the

adjective In linguistics, an adjective ( abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ...

''black'' and the noun ''bird''. With very few exceptions, English compound words are stressed on their first component stem. As a member of the Germanic family of languages, English is unusual in that even simple compounds made since the 18th century tend to be written in separate parts. This would be an error in other Germanic languages such as Norwegian,

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

, Danish, German, and Dutch. However, this is merely an orthographic convention: As in other Germanic languages, arbitrary

noun phrase In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently o ...

s, for example "girl scout troop", "city council member", and "cellar door", can be made up on the spot and used as compound nouns in English too. For example, German "Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän" would be written in English as "Danube steamship company captain" and not as "Danubesteamshipcompanycaptain". The process occurs readily in all Germanic languages for different reasons. Words can be concatenated both to mean the same as the sum of two words (e.g. german: Pressekonferenz, lit=press conference, link=no) or where an adjective and noun are compounded (e.g. da, hvidvinsglas, lit=white wine glass, link=no). This can create a plethora of large, but valid words in these languages, by compounding compound words with several more. The addition of affix morphemes to words (such as suffixes or prefixes, as in ''employ'' → ''employment'') should not be confused with nominal composition, as this is actually morphological derivation. Some languages easily form compounds from what in other languages would be a multi-word expression. This can result in unusually long words, a phenomenon known in German (which is one such language) as or ''tapeworm words''.

Sign language Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with non-manual markers. Sign l ...

s also have compounds. They are created by combining two or more sign stems. So-called " classical compounds" are compounds derived from

classical Latin Classical Latin is the form of Literary Latin recognized as a literary standard by writers of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. It was used from 75 BC to the 3rd century AD, when it developed into Late Latin. In some later pe ...

ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

roots.

Formation of compounds

Compound formation rules vary widely across language types. In a

synthetic language A synthetic language uses inflection or agglutination to express syntactic relationships within a sentence. Inflection is the addition of morphemes to a root word that assigns grammatical property to that word, while agglutination is the combi ...

, the relationship between the elements of a compound may be marked with a case or other

morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone ar ...

. For example, the German compound consists of the lexemes (sea captain) and (license) joined by an ''-s-'' (originally a

genitive case In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can ...

suffix); and similarly, the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...

lexeme contains the

archaic Archaic is a period of time preceding a designated classical period, or something from an older period of time that is also not found or used currently: *List of archaeological periods **Archaic Sumerian language, spoken between 31st - 26th cent ...

genitive form of the lexeme (family). Conversely, in the

Hebrew language Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

compound, the word בֵּית סֵפֶר (school), it is the head that is modified: the compound literally means "house-of book", with בַּיִת (house) having entered the

construct state In Afro-Asiatic languages, the first noun in a genitive phrase of a possessed noun followed by a possessor noun often takes on a special morphological form, which is termed the construct state (Latin ''status constructus''). For example, in Arab ...

to become בֵּית (house-of). This latter pattern is common throughout the

Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant a ...

, though in some it is combined with an explicit genitive case, so that both parts of the compound are marked, e.g. Arabic عبد الله ''ʕabd-u l-lāh-i'' (servant-NOM DEF-god-GEN) "servant of-the-god: the servant of God". Agglutinative languages tend to create very long words with derivational morphemes. Compounds may or may not require the use of derivational morphemes also. In German, extremely extendable compound words can be found in the language of chemical compounds, where, in the cases of biochemistry and polymers, they can be practically unlimited in length, mostly because the German rule suggests combining all noun adjuncts with the noun as the last stem. German examples include (color television set), (radio remote control), and the often quoted jocular word (originally only two Fs, Danube-Steamboat-Shipping Company captain shat), which can of course be made even longer and even more absurd, e.g. ''Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmützenreinigungsausschreibungsverordnungsdiskussionsanfang'' ("beginning of the discussion of a regulation on tendering of Danube steamboat shipping company captain hats") etc. According to several editions of the Guinness Book of World Records, the longest published German word has 79 letters and is '' Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft ''("Association for Subordinate Officials of the Main Electric tyMaintenance Building of the Danube Steam Shipping"), but there is no evidence that this association ever actually existed. In Finnish, although there is theoretically no limit to the length of compound words, words consisting of more than three components are rare. Even those with fewer than three components can look mysterious to non-Finnish speakers, such as (emergency exit). Internet folklore sometimes suggests that (Airplane jet turbine engine auxiliary mechanic non-commissioned officer student) is the longest word in Finnish, but evidence of it actually being used is scant and anecdotal at best. Compounds can be rather long when translating technical documents from English to some other language, since the lengths of the words are theoretically unlimited, especially in chemical terminology. For example, when translating an English technical document to Swedish, the term "Motion estimation search range settings" can be directly translated to , though in reality, the word would most likely be divided in two: – "search range settings for motion estimation".

Subclasses

Semantic classification

A common semantic classification of compounds yields four types: *endocentric *exocentric *copulative *appositional An endocentric compound (''

tatpuruṣa Sanskrit inherits from its parent, the Proto-Indo-European language, the capability of forming compound nouns, also widely seen in kindred languages, especially German, Greek, and also English. However, Sanskrit, especially in the later stages ...

'' in the

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominalization, nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cul ...

tradition) consists of a '' head'', i.e. the categorical part that contains the basic meaning of the whole compound, and modifiers, which restrict this meaning. For example, the English compound ''doghouse'', where ''house'' is the head and ''dog'' is the modifier, is understood as a house intended for a dog. Endocentric compounds tend to be of the same

(word class) as their head, as in the case of ''doghouse''. An exocentric compound ('' bahuvrihi'' in the Sanskrit tradition) is a hyponym of some unexpressed semantic category (such as a person, plant, or animal): none (neither) of its components can be perceived as a formal head, and its meaning often cannot be transparently guessed from its constituent parts. For example, the English compound ''white-collar'' is neither a kind of collar nor a white thing. In an exocentric compound, the word class is determined lexically, disregarding the class of the constituents. For example, a ''must-have'' is not a verb but a noun. The meaning of this type of compound can be glossed as "(one) whose B is A", where B is the second element of the compound and A the first. A bahuvrihi compound is one whose nature is expressed by neither of the words: thus a ''white-collar'' person is neither white nor a collar (the collar's colour is a

metonym Metonymy () is a figure of speech in which a concept is referred to by the name of something closely associated with that thing or concept. Etymology The words ''metonymy'' and ''metonym'' come from grc, μετωνυμία, 'a change of name' ...

for socioeconomic status). Other English examples include ''barefoot''. Copulative compounds ( dvandva in the

tradition) are compounds with two semantic heads, for example in a gradual scale (such a mix of colours). Appositional compounds are lexemes that have two (contrary or simultaneous) attributes that classify the compound.

Syntactic classification

Noun–noun compounds

All natural languages have compound nouns. The positioning of the words (i.e. the most common order of constituents in phrases where nouns are modified by adjectives, by possessors, by other nouns, etc.) varies according to the language. While Germanic languages, for example, are left-branching when it comes to noun phrases (the modifiers come before the head), the Romance languages are usually right-branching. In English, compound nouns can be open, hyphenated, or solid, and they sometimes change orthographically in that direction over time, reflecting a semantic identity that evolves from a mere

collocation In corpus linguistics, a collocation is a series of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance. In phraseology, a collocation is a type of compositional phraseme, meaning that it can be understood from the words ...

to something stronger in its unification. This theme has been summarized in usage guides under the aphorism that "compound nouns tend to solidify as they age"; thus, ''child bearing'' becomes '' childbearing'', or a noun such as ''street car'' begins as open in most attestations and then becomes ''street-car'' and eventually ''

streetcar A tram (called a streetcar or trolley in North America) is a rail vehicle that travels on tramway tracks on public urban streets; some include segments on segregated right-of-way. The tramlines or networks operated as public transport ...

''; see '' English compound § Compound nouns'' for more information. German, a fellow West Germanic language, has a somewhat different orthography, whereby compound nouns are virtually always required to be solid or at least hyphenated; even the hyphenated styling is used less now than it was in centuries past. In

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

, compound nouns are often formed by left-hand heads with prepositional components inserted before the modifier, as in ''chemin-de-fer'' 'railway', lit. 'road of iron', and ''moulin à vent'' 'windmill', lit. 'mill (that works)-by-means-of wind'. In

Turkish Turkish may refer to: *a Turkic language spoken by the Turks * of or about Turkey ** Turkish language *** Turkish alphabet ** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation *** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey *** Turkish communities and mi ...

, one way of forming compound nouns is as follows: ''yeldeğirmeni'' 'windmill' (''yel'': wind, ''değirmen-i'': mill-possessive); ''demiryolu'' 'railway' (''demir'': iron, ''yol-u'': road-possessive). Occasionally, two synonymous nouns can form a compound noun, resulting in a tautology. One example is the English word ''

pathway Pathway or pathways may refer to: Entertainment * ''The Pathway'' (novel), a 1914 work by Gertrude Page *''The Pathway'', a 2001 album by Officium Triste * ''Pathway'' (album), by the Flaming Stars * ''Pathways'' (album) (2010), by the Dave Hol ...

''.

Verb–noun compounds

A type of compound that is fairly common in the

Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, ...

is formed of a verb and its object, and in effect transforms a simple verbal clause into a noun. In Spanish, for example, such compounds consist of a verb conjugated for the second person singular imperative followed by a noun (singular or plural): e.g., ''rascacielos'' (modelled on "skyscraper", lit. 'scratch skies'), ''sacacorchos'' 'corkscrew' (lit. 'pull corks'), ''guardarropa'' 'wardrobe' (lit. 'store clothes'). These compounds are formally invariable in the plural (but in many cases they have been reanalyzed as plural forms, and a singular form has appeared). French and Italian have these same compounds with the noun in the singular form: Italian ''grattacielo'' 'skyscraper', French ''grille-pain'' 'toaster' (lit. 'toast bread'). This construction exists in English, generally with the verb and noun both in uninflected form: examples are ''spoilsport'', ''killjoy'', ''breakfast'', ''cutthroat'', ''pickpocket'', ''dreadnought'', and ''know-nothing''. Also common in English is another type of verb–noun (or noun–verb) compound, in which an argument of the verb is incorporated into the verb, which is then usually turned into a

gerund In linguistics, a gerund ( abbreviated ) is any of various nonfinite verb forms in various languages; most often, but not exclusively, one that functions as a noun. In English, it has the properties of both verb and noun, such as being modifi ...

, such as ''breastfeeding'', ''finger-pointing'', etc. The noun is often an instrumental complement. From these gerunds new verbs can be made: ''(a mother) breastfeeds (a child)'' and from them new compounds ''mother-child breastfeeding'', etc. Verb-noun compounds derived from classical languages tend to be nouns; rarely, a verb-noun classical compound can be a verb. One example is ''

miscegenate Miscegenation ( ) is the interbreeding of people who are considered to be members of different races. The word, now usually considered pejorative, is derived from a combination of the Latin terms ''miscere'' ("to mix") and ''genus'' ("race") ...

'', a word that literally falls into disuse nowadays, which is derived from a Latin verb and a Latin noun. In the Australian Aboriginal language Jingulu, a Pama–Nyungan language, it is claimed that all verbs are V+N compounds, such as "do a sleep", or "run a dive", and the language has only three basic verbs: ''do'', ''make'', and ''run''. A special kind of compounding is

incorporation Incorporation may refer to: * Incorporation (business), the creation of a corporation * Incorporation of a place, creation of municipal corporation such as a city or county * Incorporation (academic), awarding a degree based on the student having ...

, of which noun incorporation into a verbal root (as in English ''backstabbing'', ''breastfeed'', etc.) is most prevalent (see below).

Verb–verb compounds

Verb–verb compounds are sequences of more than one verb acting together to determine clause structure. They have two types: *In a serial verb, two actions, often sequential, are expressed in a single clause. For example, Ewe ''trɔ dzo'', lit. "turn leave", means "turn and leave", and

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of North India, northern, Central India, centr ...

''jā-kar dekh-o'', lit. "go-CONJUNCTIVE PARTICIPLE see-IMPERATIVE", means "go and see". In Tamil, a Dravidian language, van̪t̪u paːr, lit. "come see". In each case, the two verbs together determine the semantics and argument structure. Serial verb expressions in English may include ''What did you go and do that for?'', or ''He just upped and left''; this is however not quite a true compound since they are connected by a conjunction and the second missing arguments may be taken as a case of ellipsis. *In a compound verb (or ''complex predicate''), one of the verbs is the primary, and determines the primary semantics and also the argument structure. The secondary verb, often called a vector verb or explicator, provides fine distinctions, usually in temporality or aspect, and also carries the

inflection In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and ...

(tense and/or agreement markers). The main verb usually appears in conjunctive participial (sometimes ''zero'') form. For examples,

''nikal gayā'', lit. "exit went", means 'went out', while निकल पड़ा ''nikal paRā'', lit. "exit fell", means 'departed' or 'was blurted out'. In these examples निकल ''nikal'' is the primary verb, and गया ''gayā'' and पड़ा ''paRā'' are the vector verbs. Similarly, in both English ''start reading'' and Japanese 読み始める ''yomihajimeru'' "read-CONJUNCTIVE-start" "start reading", the vector verbs ''start'' and 始める ''hajimeru'' "start" change according to tense, negation, and the like, while the main verbs ''reading'' and 読み ''yomi'' "reading" usually remain the same. An exception to this is the passive voice, in which both English and Japanese modify the main verb, i.e. ''start to be read'' and 読まれ始める ''yomarehajimeru'' lit. "read-PASSIVE-(CONJUNCTIVE)-start" ''start to be read''. With a few exceptions, all compound verbs alternate with their simple counterparts. That is, removing the vector does not affect grammaticality at all nor the meaning very much: निकला ''nikalā'' '(He) went out.' In a few languages both components of the compound verb can be finite forms: Kurukh ''kecc-ar ker-ar'' lit. "died-3pl went-3pl" '(They) died.' *Compound verbs are very common in some languages, such as the northern

Indo-Aryan languages The Indo-Aryan languages (or sometimes Indic languages) are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family. As of the early 21st century, they have more than 800 million speakers, primarily concentrated in India, Pa ...

Hindustani Hindustani may refer to: * something of, from, or related to Hindustan (another name of India) * Hindustani language, an Indo-Aryan language, whose two official norms are Hindi and Urdu * Fiji Hindi, a variety of Eastern Hindi spoken in Fiji, and ...

and

Punjabi Punjabi, or Panjabi, most often refers to: * Something of, from, or related to Punjab, a region in India and Pakistan * Punjabi language * Punjabi people * Punjabi dialects and languages Punjabi may also refer to: * Punjabi (horse), a British Th ...

, and Dravidian languages like Tamil, where as many as 20% of verb forms in running text are compound. They exist but are less common in other Indo-Aryan languages like

Marathi Marathi may refer to: *Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India *Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people *Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece See also * * ...

and

Nepali Nepali or Nepalese may refer to : Concerning Nepal * Anything of, from, or related to Nepal * Nepali people, citizens of Nepal * Nepali language, an Indo-Aryan language found in Nepal, the current official national language and a language spoken ...

, in

Tibeto-Burman languages The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non- Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people sp ...

Limbu Limbu may refer to: * Limbu people, an indigenous tribe living in Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan ** Rambahadur Limbu (born 1939), Nepalese Gurkha recipient of the Victoria Cross * Limbu language * Limbu script ** Limbu (Unicode block) Limbu is a Unicod ...

and Newari, in

Turkic languages The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turkic l ...

and Kyrgyz, in Korean and Japanese, and in northeast Caucasian languages like Tsez and Avar. *Under the influence of a Quichua substrate speakers living in the Ecuadorian

altiplano The Altiplano (Spanish for "high plain"), Collao ( Quechua and Aymara: Qullaw, meaning "place of the Qulla") or Andean Plateau, in west-central South America, is the most extensive high plateau on Earth outside Tibet. The plateau is located a ...

have innovated compound verbs in Spanish: :''De rabia puso rompiendo la olla'', 'In anger (he/she) smashed the pot.' (Lit. from anger put breaking the pot) :'' Botaremos matándote'' 'We will kill you.' (Cf. Quichua ''huañuchi-shpa shitashun'', lit. kill-CP throw.1plFut. :Likewise in Hindi: तेरे को मार डालेंगे ''tere ko mār DāleNge'', lit. "we will kill-throw you"). *Compound verb equivalents in English (examples from the internet): :''What did you go and do that for?'' :''If you are not giving away free information on your web site then a huge proportion of your business is just upping and leaving.'' :''Big Pig, she took and built herself a house out of brush.'' *Caution: In descriptions of Persian and other

Iranian languages The Iranian languages or Iranic languages are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau. The Iranian languages are grou ...

the term 'compound verb' refers to noun-plus-verb compounds, not to the verb–verb compounds discussed here.

Parasynthetic compounds

Parasynthetic compounds are formed by a combination of compounding and derivation, with multiple lexical stems and a derivational affix. For example, English ''black-eyed'' is composed of ''black'', ''eye'', and ''-ed'' 'having', with the meaning 'having a black eye'; Italian ''imbustare'' is composed of ''in-'' 'in', ''busta'' 'envelope', ''-are'' (verbal suffix), with the meaning 'to put into an envelope'.

Compound adpositions

Compound prepositions formed by prepositions and nouns are common in English and the Romance languages (consider English ''on top of'', Spanish ''encima de'', etc.). Hindi has a small number of simple (i.e., one-word) postpositions and a large number of compound postpositions, mostly consisting of simple postposition ''ke'' followed by a specific postposition (e.g., ''ke pas'', "near"; ''ke nīche'', "underneath").

Examples from different languages

Chinese (traditional/simplified Chinese; Standard Chinese

Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese fo ...

/Cantonese Jyutping): *學生/学生 'student': 學 ''xué''/''hok6'' learn + 生 ''shēng''/''sang1'' living being *太空/太空 'space': 太 ''tài''/''taai3'' great + 空 ''kōng''/''hung1'' emptiness *摩天樓/摩天楼 'skyscraper': 摩 ''mó''/''mo1'' touch + 天 ''tiān''/''tin1'' sky + 樓 ''lóu''/''lau2'' building (with more than 1 storey) *打印機/打印机 'printer': 打 ''dǎ''/''daa2'' strike + 印 ''yìn''/''yan3'' stamp/print + 機 ''jī''/''gei1'' machine *百科全書/百科全书 'encyclopaedia': 百 ''bǎi''/''baak3'' hundred + 科 ''kē''/''fo1'' (branch of) study + 全 ''quán''/''cyun4'' entire/complete + 書 ''shū''/''syu1'' book *謝謝/谢谢 'thanks': Repeating of 謝 ''xiè'' thank Dutch: * 'disability insurance': 'labour' + 'inaptitude' + 'insurance'. * 'sewage treatment plant': 'sewer' + ''water'' 'water' + 'cleaning' + 'installation'. * 'birthday calendar': 'birthday' + 'calendar'. * 'customer service representative': 'customers' + 'service' + 'worker'. * 'university library': 'university' + 'library'. * 'possibilities for advancement': 'through' + 'grow' + 'possibilities'. Finnish: * 'dictionary': 'word' + 'book' * 'computer': 'knowledge data' + 'machine' * 'Wednesday': 'middle' + 'week' * 'world': 'land' + 'air' * 'railway station': 'iron' + 'road' + 'station' * 'electricity meter': 'three-phase kilowatt hour meter' Abwasserbehandlungsanlage

German: * 'skyscraper': 'clouds' + 'scraper' * 'railway': 'iron' + 'track' * 'automobile': 'power' + 'drive' + 'machinery' * 'barbed wire': 'barb/barbed' + 'wire' *: literally cattle-marking- and beef-labeling-supervision-duties-delegation law Ancient Greek: * ''philosopher'': φίλος ''phílos'' 'beloved' + σοφία ''sophíā'' 'wisdom' * ''dēmokratíā'' 'democracy': δῆμος ''dêmos'' 'people' + κράτος 'rule' * ''rhododáktylos'' 'rose-fingered': ῥόδον ''rhódon'' 'rose' + δάκτυλος ''dáktylos'' 'finger' (a Homeric epithet applied to the Dawn) Icelandic: * 'railway': 'iron' + 'path' or 'way' * 'vehicle': ''farar'' 'journey' + ''tæki'' 'apparatus' * 'encyclopedia': 'everything' + 'study' or 'knowledge' + 'dictionary' ( 'words' + 'book') * 'telephone conversation': ''sím'' 'telephone' + ''tal'' 'dialogue' Italian: * 'centipede': 'thousand' + 'feet' * 'railway': 'iron' + 'way' * 'windscreen wiper': 'to wash' + 'crystal (pane of) glass' *pomodoro: pomo d'oro = apple of Gold = tomatoes *portacenere = porta cenere = ashtray Japanese: *目覚まし（時計） 'alarm clock': 目 ''me'' 'eye' + 覚まし ''samashi (-zamashi)'' 'awakening (someone)' (+ 時計 ''tokei (-dokei)'' clock) *お好み焼き '' okonomiyaki'': お好み ''okonomi'' 'preference' + 焼き ''yaki'' 'cooking' *日帰り ''higaeri'' 'day trip': 日 ''hi'' 'day' + 帰り ''kaeri (-gaeri)'' 'returning (home)' *国会議事堂 'national diet building': 国会 ''kokkai'' 'national diet' + 議事 'proceedings' + 堂 ''dō'' 'hall' Korean: *안팎 ''anpak'' 'inside and outside': 안 ''an'' 'inside' + 밖 ''bak'' 'outside' (As two nouns compound the consonant sound 'b' fortifies into 'p' becoming 안팎 ''anpak'' rather than 안밖 )

Ojibwe The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains. According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...

/Anishinaabemowin: *''mashkikiwaaboo'' 'tonic': ''mashkiki'' 'medicine' + ''waaboo'' 'liquid' *''miskomin'' 'raspberry': ''misko'' 'red' + ''miin'' 'berry' *''dibik-giizis'' 'moon': ''dibik'' 'night' + ''giizis'' 'sun' *''gichi-mookomaan'' 'white person/American': ''gichi'' 'big' + ''mookomaan'' 'knife' Spanish: * 'science fiction': , 'science', + , 'fiction' (This word is a

calque In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language ...

from the English expression ''

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imagination, imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, Paral ...

''. In English, the head of a compound word is the last morpheme: science ''fiction''. Conversely, the Spanish head is located at the front, so ''ciencia ficción'' sounds like a kind of fictional science rather than scientific fiction.) * 'centipede': 'hundred' + 'feet' * 'railway': 'iron' + 'lane' * 'umbrella': 'stops' + '(the) water' * 'keeping the head low in a bad mood': ''cabeza'' 'head' + ''bajo'' 'down' * 'seesaw' (contraction of 'goes up and down') * 'windshield wiper' is a nested compound: 'clean' + ''windshield'', which is itself a compound of 'stop' + 'breezes'. Tamil: * In ''Cemmozhi'' (Classical Tamil), rules for compounding are laid down in grammars such as Tolkappiyam and

Nannūl Nannūl ( ta, நன்னூல்) is a work on Tamil grammar written by a Jain ascetic Pavananthi Munivar around 13th century CE. It is the most significant work on Tamil grammar after Tolkāppiyam. The work credits Western Ganga vassal king ...

, in various forms, under the name ''punarcci''. Examples of compounds include kopuram from 'kō' (king) + ' puram' (exterior). Sometimes phonemes may be inserted during the blending process such as in kovil from 'kō' (king) + 'il' (home). Other types are like ''vennai'' (butter) from 'veḷḷai' (white) + 'nei' ( ghee); note how 'veḷḷai' becomes 'ven'. * In ''koṭuntamizh'' (Non-standard Tamil), parts of words from other languages may be morphed into Tamil. Common examples include 'ratta-azhuttam' (blood pressure) from the Sanskrit ''rakta'' (blood) and ''Cemmozhi'' 'azhuttam' (pressure); note how ''rakta'' becomes ''ratta'' in Tamil order to remove the consonant-cluster. This also happens with English, for examples ''kāpi-kaṭai'' (coffee shop) is from English ''coffee'', which becomes ''kāpi'' in Tamil, and the Tamil ''kaṭai'' meaning shop. Tłįchǫ Yatiì/Dogrib: *''dlòotsǫ̀ǫ̀'' 'peanut butter': ''dlòo'' 'squirrel' + ''tsǫ̀ǫ̀'' 'dung' *''eyakǫ̀'' 'hospital'': ''eya'' 'sick' + ''kǫ̀'' 'house' *''dè gotłeè'' 'kerosene': ''dè'' 'land' + ''gotłeè'' 'its fat' *''dǫ łèt'è'' 'bannock': ''dǫ'' ' boriginalpeople' + ''łèt'è'' 'bread'

Germanic languages

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, ...

(including English), compounds are formed by prepending what is effectively a namespace (disambiguation context) to the main word. For example, " football" would be a "ball" in the "foot" context. In itself, this does not alter the meaning of the main word. The added context only makes it more precise. As such, a "football" must be understood as a "ball". However, as is the case with "football", a well established compound word may have gained a special meaning in the language's

vocabulary A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the la ...

. Only this defines "football" as a particular type of ball (unambiguously the round object, not the dance party, at that), and also the game involving such a ball. Another example of special and altered meaning is "starfish" – a starfish is in fact not a

fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% ...

in modern biology. Also syntactically, the compound word behaves like the main word – the whole compound word (or phrase) inherits the word class and inflection rules of the main word. That is to say, since "fish" and "shape" are nouns, "starfish" and "star shape" must also be nouns, and they must take plural forms as "starfish" and "star shapes", definite singular forms as "the starfish" and "the star shape", and so on. This principle also holds for languages that express

definiteness In linguistics, definiteness is a semantic feature of noun phrases, distinguishing between referents or senses that are identifiable in a given context (definite noun phrases) and those which are not (indefinite noun phrases). The prototypical ...

by inflection (as in North Germanic). Because a compound is understood as a word in its own right, it may in turn be used in new compounds, so forming an arbitrarily long word is trivial. This contrasts to Romance languages, where prepositions are more used to specify word relationships instead of concatenating the words. As a member of the Germanic family of languages, English is unusual in that compounds are normally written in separate parts. This would be an error in other Germanic languages such as Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, German and Dutch. However, this is merely an orthographic convention: As in other Germanic languages, arbitrary

noun phrases In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently o ...

, for example "girl scout troop", "city council member", and "cellar door", can be made up on the spot and used as compound nouns in English too.

Russian language

In the Russian language compounding is a common type of word formation, and several types of compounds exist, both in terms of compounded parts of speech and of the way of the formation of a compound. Compound nouns may be agglutinative compounds, hyphenated compounds (стол-книга 'folding table', lit. 'table-book', "book-like table"), or abbreviated compounds (

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in '' NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, a ...

s: колхоз ' kolkhoz'). Some compounds look like acronym, while in fact they are an agglutinations of type stem + word: Академгородок '

Akademgorodok Akademgorodok ( rus, Академгородок, p=ɐkəˌdʲemɡərɐˈdok, "Academic Town") is a part of the Sovetsky District of the city of Novosibirsk, Russia, located south of the city center and about west of Koltsovo. It is the educ ...

' (from ''akademichesky gorodok'' 'academic village'). In agglutinative compound nouns, an agglutinating infix is typically used: пароход 'steamship': пар + о + ход. Compound nouns may be created as noun+noun, adjective + noun, noun + adjective (rare), noun + verb (or, rather, noun + verbal noun). Compound adjectives may be formed either per se (бело-розовый 'white-pink') or as a result of compounding during the derivation of an adjective from a multi-word term: Каменноостровский проспект () 'Stone Island Avenue', a street in St.Petersburg.

Reduplication in Russian Reduplication in Russian is used to intensify meaning in different ways. Reduplication is also observable in borrowed words, such as "" (; ping-pong) and "" (; zig-zag), but since the words were borrowed as is from other languages, they are no ...

is also a source of compounds. Quite a few Russian words are borrowed from other languages in an already-compounded form, including numerous " classical compounds" or internationalisms: автомобиль 'automobile'.

Sanskrit language

Sanskrit is very rich in compound formation with seven major compound types and as many as 55 sub-types. The compound formation process is productive, so it is not possible to list all Sanskrit compounds in a dictionary. Compounds of two or three words are more frequent, but longer compounds with some ''running through pages'' are not rare in Sanskrit literature. Some examples are below (hyphens below show individual word boundaries for ease of reading but are not required in original Sanskrit). *हिमालय ( IAST Himālaya, decomposed as hima-ālaya): Name of the Himalaya mountain range. Literally ''the abode of snow''. A compound of two words and four syllables. *प्रवर-मुकुट-मणि-मरीचि-मञ्जरी-चय-चर्चित-चरण-युगल (IAST pravara-mukuṭa-maṇi-marīci-mañjarī-caya-carcita-caraṇa-yugala): Literally, ''O the one whose dual feet are covered by the cluster of brilliant rays from the gems of the best crowns'', from the Sanskrit work Panchatantra. A compound of nine words and 25 syllables. *कमला-कुच-कुङ्कुम-पिञ्जरीकृत-वक्षः-स्थल-विराजित-महा-कौस्तुभ-मणि-मरीचि-माला-निराकृत-त्रि-भुवन-तिमिर (IAST kamalā-kuca-kuṅkuma-piñjarīkṛta-vakṣaḥ-sthala-virājita-mahā-kaustubha-maṇi-marīci-mālā-nirākṛta-tri-bhuvana-timira): Literally ''O the one who dispels the darkness of three worlds by the shine of Kaustubha jewel hanging on the chest, which has been made reddish-yellow by the saffron from the bosom of Kamalā ( Lakshmi)'', an adjective of

Rama Rama (; ), Ram, Raman or Ramar, also known as Ramachandra (; , ), is a major deity in Hinduism. He is the seventh and one of the most popular ''avatars'' of Vishnu. In Rama-centric traditions of Hinduism, he is considered the Supreme Being ...

in the Kakabhushundi

Rāmāyaṇa The ''Rāmāyana'' (; sa, रामायणम्, ) is a Sanskrit epic composed over a period of nearly a millennium, with scholars' estimates for the earliest stage of the text ranging from the 8th to 4th centuries BCE, and later stages e ...

. A compound of 16 words and 44 syllables. *साङ्ख्य-योग-न्याय-वैशेषिक-पूर्व-मीमांसा-वेदान्त-नारद-शाण्डिल्य-भक्ति-सूत्र-गीता-वाल्मीकीय-रामायण-भागवतादि-सिद्धान्त-बोध-पुरः-सर-समधिकृताशेष-तुलसी-दास-साहित्य-सौहित्य-स्वाध्याय-प्रवचन-व्याख्यान-परम-प्रवीणाः (IAST sāṅkhya-yoga-nyāya-vaiśeṣika-pūrva-mīmāṃsā-vedānta-nārada-śāṇḍilya-bhakti-sūtra-gītā-vālmīkīya-rāmāyaṇa-bhāgavatādi-siddhānta-bodha-puraḥ-sara-samadhikṛtāśeṣa-tulasī-dāsa-sāhitya-sauhitya-svādhyāya-pravacana-vyākhyāna-parama-pravīṇāḥ): Literally ''the acclaimed forerunner in understanding of the canons of

Sāṅkhya ''Samkhya'' or ''Sankya'' (; Sanskrit सांख्य), IAST: ') is a dualistic school of Indian philosophy. It views reality as composed of two independent principles, ''puruṣa'' ('consciousness' or spirit); and ''prakṛti'', (nature ...

, Yoga, Nyāya,

Vaiśeṣika Vaisheshika or Vaiśeṣika ( sa, वैशेषिक) is one of the six schools of Indian philosophy (Vedic systems) from ancient India. In its early stages, the Vaiśeṣika was an independent philosophy with its own metaphysics, epistemolog ...

, Pūrva Mīmāṃsā, Vedānta, Nārada Bhakti Sūtra, Śāṇḍilya Bhakti Sūtra,

Bhagavad Gītā The Bhagavad Gita (; sa, श्रीमद्भगवद्गीता, lit=The Song by God, translit=śrīmadbhagavadgītā;), often referred to as the Gita (), is a 700-verse Hindu scripture that is part of the epic ''Mahabharata'' (cha ...

, the Ramayana of

Vālmīki Valmiki (; Sanskrit: वाल्मीकि, ) is celebrated as the harbinger-poet in Sanskrit literature. The epic ''Ramayana'', dated variously from the 5th century BCE to first century BCE, is attributed to him, based on the attributio ...

, Śrīmadbhāgavata; and the most skilled in comprehensive self-study, discoursing and expounding of the complete works of Gosvāmī Tulasīdāsa''. An adjective used in a panegyric of

Jagadguru Rambhadracharya Jagadguru Ramanandacharya Swami Rambhadracharya (born Pandit Giridhar on 14 January 1950) is an Indian Hindu spiritual leader, educator, Sanskrit scholar, polyglot, poet, author, textual commentator, philosopher, composer, singer, playwrigh ...

. The hyphens show only those word boundaries where there is no sandhi. On including word boundaries with sandhi (vedānta=veda-anta, rāmāyaṇa=rāma-ayana, bhāgavatādi=bhāgavata-ādi, siddhānta=siddha-anta, samadhikṛtāśeṣa=samadhikṛta-aśeṣa, svādhyāya=sva-adhyāya), this is a compound of 35 words and 86 syllables.

Sign languages

Also in sign languages, compounding is a productive word formation process. Both endocentric and exocentric compounds have been described for a variety of sign languages. Copulative compounds or dvandva, which are composed of two or more nouns from the same semantic category to denote that semantic category, also occur regularly in many sign languages. Th
sign
for ''parents'' in

Italian Sign Language Italian Sign Language or LIS (''Lingua dei Segni Italiana'') is the visual language used by deaf people in Italy. Deep analysis of it began in the 1980s, along the lines of William Stokoe's research on American Sign Language in the 1960s. Unt ...

, for instance, is a combination of the nouns ‘father’ and ‘mother’. The sign for ''breakfast'' in American Sign Language follows the same concept. The words ''eat'' and ''morning'' are signed together to create a new word meaning breakfast. This is an example of a sequential compound; in sign languages, it is also possible to form ''simultaneous'' compounds, where one hand represents one lexeme while the other simultaneously represents another lexeme. An example is the sign for ''weekend'' in

Sign Language of the Netherlands Dutch Sign Language ( nl, Nederlandse Gebarentaal or NGT; Sign Language of the Netherlands or SLN) is the predominant sign language used by deaf people in the Netherlands. Although the same spoken Dutch language is used in the Netherlands and ...

, which is produced by simultaneously signing a one-handed version of the sign for ''Saturday'' and a one-handed version of the sign for ''Sunday.'' In American Sign Language there is another process easily compared to compounding. Blending is the blending of two morphemes to create a new word called a portmanteau. This is different from compounding in that it breaks the strict linear order of compounding.

Recent trends in orthography

Although there is no universally agreed-upon guideline regarding the use of compound words in the

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to t ...

, in recent decades written English has displayed a noticeable trend towards increased use of compounds. Recently, many words have been made by taking syllables of words and compounding them, such as pixel (picture element) and bit (binary digit). This is called a

syllabic abbreviation An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...

. In Dutch and the

Scandinavian languages The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also r ...

there is an unofficial trend toward splitting compound words, known in Norwegian as ''særskriving'', in Swedish as ''särskrivning'' (literally "separate writing"), and in Dutch as ''Engelse ziekte'' (the "English disease"). Because the Scandinavian languages rely heavily on the distinction between the compound word and the sequence of the separate words it consists of, this has serious implications. For example, the adjective ''røykfritt'' (literally "smokefree", meaning no smoking allowed) if separated into its composite parts, would mean ''røyk fritt'' ("smoke freely"). In Dutch, compounds written with spaces may also be confused, but can also be interpreted as a sequence of a noun and a

genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can ...

(which is unmarked in Dutch) in formal abbreviated writing. This may lead to, for example, ''commissie vergadering'' ("commission meeting") being read as "commission of the meeting" rather than "meeting of the commission" (normally spelled ''commissievergadering''). The German spelling reform of 1996 introduced the option of

ating compound nouns when it enhances comprehensibility and readability. This is done mostly with very long compound words by separating them into two or more smaller compounds, like ''Eisenbahn-Unterführung'' (railway underpass) or ''Kraftfahrzeugs-Betriebsanleitung'' (car manual). Such practice is also permitted in other Germanic languages, e.g. Danish and Norwegian (Bokmål and Nynorsk alike), and is even encouraged between parts of the word that have very different pronunciation, such as when one part is a loan word or an

Compounding by language

* Classical compounds *

English compound A compound is a word composed of more than one free morpheme. The English language, like many others, uses compounds frequently. English compounds may be classified in several ways, such as the word classes or the semantic relationship of the ...

s * German compounds * Sanskrit compounds

Notes

References

*Kortmann, Bernd: ''English Linguistics: Essentials'', Cornelsen, Berlin 2005. * ''The Oxford Handbook of Compounding'', eds. Lieber, Rochelle & Pavol Štekauer, 2009. Oxford: Oxford University Press. *Plag, Ingo: ''Word-formation in English'', Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003. *Scalise Sergio & Irene Vogel (eds.) (2010), ''Cross-Disciplinary Issues in Compounding'', Amsterdam, Benjamins.

External links