linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

, a compound is a

lexeme A lexeme () is a unit of lexical meaning that underlies a set of words that are related through inflection. It is a basic abstract unit of meaning, a unit of morphological analysis in linguistics that roughly corresponds to a set of forms ta ...

(less precisely, a

word A word is a basic element of language that carries semantics, 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 consensus among linguist ...

or sign) that consists of more than one stem. Compounding, composition or nominal composition is the process of

word formation In linguistics, word formation is an ambiguous term that can refer to either: * the processes through which words can change (i.e. morphology), or * the creation of new lexemes in a particular language Morphological A common method of word form ...

that creates compound lexemes. Compounding occurs when two or more words or signs are joined to make a longer word or sign. Consequently, a compound is a unit composed of more than one stem, forming words or signs. If the joining of the words or signs is orthographically represented with a hyphen, the result is a hyphenated compound (e.g., ''must-have'', ''hunter-gatherer)''. If they are joined without an intervening space, it is a closed compound (e.g., ''footpath'', ''blackbird''). If they are joined with a space (e.g. ''school bus, high school, lowest common denominator''), then the result – at least in English – may be an open 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—as in the case of the English word ''footpath'', composed of the two

noun In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an Object (grammar), object or Subject (grammar), subject within a p ...

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 An adjective (abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main part of speech, parts of ...

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

noun phrase A noun phrase – or NP or nominal (phrase) – is a phrase that usually has a noun or pronoun as its head, and has the same grammatical functions as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently ...

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 would be written in English as "Danube steamship transport company captain" and not as "Danubesteamshiptransportcompanycaptain". The meaning of compounds may not always be transparent from their components, necessitating familiarity with usage and context. The addition of affix morphemes to words (such as

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

es or prefixes, as in ''employ'' → ''employment'') should not be confused with nominal composition, as this is actually

morphological derivation Morphological derivation, in linguistics, is the process of forming a new word from an existing word, often by adding a prefix or suffix, such as For example, ''unhappy'' and ''happiness'' derive from the root word ''happy.'' It is differentia ...

. 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 ("tapeworm words"). Compounding extends beyond spoken languages to include

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 elements, no ...

s as well, where compounds are also created by combining two or more sign stems. So-called "

classical compounds Neoclassical compounds are compound words composed from combining forms (which act as affixes or stems) derived from classical languages (classical Latin or ancient Greek) roots. Neo-Latin comprises many such words and is a substantial componen ...

" are compounds derived from

classical Latin Classical Latin is the form of Literary Latin recognized as a Literary language, literary standard language, standard by writers of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. It formed parallel to Vulgar Latin around 75 BC out of Old Latin ...

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

roots A root is the part of a plant, generally underground, that anchors the plant body, and absorbs and stores water and nutrients. Root or roots may also refer to: Art, entertainment, and media * ''The Root'' (magazine), an online magazine focusin ...

Formation of compounds

Compound formation rules vary widely across language types. In a

synthetic language A synthetic language is a language that is characterized by denoting syntactic relationships between words via inflection or agglutination. Synthetic languages are statistically characterized by a higher morpheme-to-word ratio relative to an ...

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

morpheme A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...

. 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 ca ...

suffix); and similarly, the

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

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

Hebrew language Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and remained in regular use as a first language unti ...

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

Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya language, Tigrinya, Aramaic, Hebrew language, Hebrew, Maltese language, Maltese, Modern South Arabian language ...

, though in some it is combined with an explicit genitive case, so that both parts of the compound are marked, e.g. 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 adjunct In grammar, a noun adjunct, attributive noun, qualifying noun, noun (pre)modifier, or apposite noun is an optional noun that grammatical modifier, modifies another noun; functioning similarly to an adjective, it is, more specifically, a noun funct ...

s 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. Internet folklore sometimes suggests that (airplane jet turbine engine auxiliary mechanic non-commissioned officer student) is the longest word in Finnish, but evidence of its actual use 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'' in the

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

tradition) consists of a ''

head A head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, and mouth, each of which aid in various sensory functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Some very simple ani ...

'', 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 part of speech (word class) as their head, as in the case of ''doghouse''. An exocentric compound ('' bahuvrihi'' in the Sanskrit tradition) is a

hyponym Hypernymy and hyponymy are the wikt:Wiktionary:Semantic relations, semantic relations between a generic term (''hypernym'') and a more specific term (''hyponym''). The hypernym is also called a ''supertype'', ''umbrella term'', or ''blanket term ...

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 associated with that thing or concept. For example, the word "wikt:suit, suit" may refer to a person from groups commonly wearing business attire, such ...

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 as 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. English compound nouns can be spaced, hyphenated, or solid, and they sometimes change orthographically in that direction over time, reflecting a

semantic Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...

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 t ...

to something stronger in its solidification. This theme has been summarized in usage guides under the aphorism that "compound nouns tend to solidify as they age"; thus a compound noun such as '' place name'' begins as spaced in most attestations and then becomes hyphenated as '' place-name'' and eventually solid as '' placename'', or the spaced compound noun '' file name'' directly becomes solid as ''

filename A filename or file name is a name used to uniquely identify a computer file in a file system. Different file systems impose different restrictions on filename lengths. A filename may (depending on the file system) include: * name – base ...

'' without being hyphenated. German, a fellow

West Germanic language The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three branches of the Germanic family of languages (the others being the North Germanic and the extinct East Germanic languages). The West Germanic branch is classically subdivided ...

, 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, 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, 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 pleonasm. One example is the English word '' pathway''. In

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

, there are two distinct criteria unique to Arabic, or potentially

in general. The initial criterion involves whether the

possessive A possessive or ktetic form (Glossing abbreviation, abbreviated or ; from ; ) is a word or grammatical construction indicating a relationship of possession (linguistics), possession in a broad sense. This can include strict ownership, or a numbe ...

marker li-/la ‘for/of’ appears or is absent when the first element is definite. The second criterion deals with the appearance/absence of the possessive marker li-/la ‘for/of’ when the first element is preceded by a

cardinal number In mathematics, a cardinal number, or cardinal for short, is what is commonly called the number of elements of a set. In the case of a finite set, its cardinal number, or cardinality is therefore a natural number. For dealing with the cas ...

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 northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...

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 ger) is any of various nonfinite verb forms in various languages; most often, but not exclusively, it is one that functions as a noun. The name is derived from Late Latin ''gerundium,'' meaning "which is ...

, 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. 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, 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: 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 The ellipsis (, plural ellipses; from , , ), rendered , alternatively described as suspension points/dots, points/periods of ellipsis, or ellipsis points, or colloquially, dot-dot-dot,. According to Toner it is difficult to establish when t ...

. *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 (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...

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

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

''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 Hindustani and Punjabi, and

Dravidian languages The Dravidian languages are a language family, family of languages spoken by 250 million people, primarily in South India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan, with pockets elsewhere in South Asia. The most commonly spoken Dravidian l ...

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 The Indo-Aryan languages, or sometimes Indic languages, are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. As of 2024, there are more than 1.5 billion speakers, primarily concentrated east ...

like Marathi and Nepali, 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 spe ...

like Limbu and Newari, in

Turkic languages The Turkic languages are a language family of more than 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 West Asia. The Turkic langua ...

like Turkish 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 have innovated compound verbs in Spanish: :'' Botaremos matándote'' 'We will kill you.' (Cf. Quichua :Likewise in Hindi: *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, also called the 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 langu ...

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

preposition Adpositions are a part of speech, class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in, under, towards, behind, ago'', etc.) or mark various thematic relations, semantic roles (''of, for''). The most common adpositions are prepositi ...

s 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

Arabic: * ''muʕallim-uu l-fiizyaaʔ'' 'the physics teachers': ''muʕallim-uu'' 'teachers' + ''fiizyaaʔ'' 'physics' * ''ʔibrat l-muxaddir'' 'the anaesthesia needle': ''ʔibrat'' 'needle' + ''muxaddir'' 'anaesthesia' Bengali: * ''rajputro'' 'prince': ''raja'' 'king' + ''putro'' 'son' * ''grihokοrta'' 'householder': ''griho'' 'house' + ''korta'' 'master' * ''bidyaloy'' 'school': ''bidya'' 'knowledge' + ''aloy'' 'abode' Chinese (traditional/simplified Chinese; Standard Chinese

Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means 'Han Chinese, Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin' ...

/Cantonese

Jyutping The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanization Scheme, also known as Jyutping, is a romanisation system for Cantonese developed in 1993 by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK). The name ''Jyutping'' (itself the Jyutping ro ...

): *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: * ''philósophos'' '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) Hindi: * ''raajputra'' 'prince': ''raaja'' 'king' + ''putra'' 'son' * ''vidyaalay'' 'school': ''vidyaa'' 'knowledge' + ''aalay'' 'abode' * ''deshbhakt'' 'patriot': ''desh'' 'country' + ''bhakt'' 'devotee' 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: * 'millipede': '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 (; Ojibwe writing systems#Ojibwe syllabics, syll.: ᐅᒋᐺ; plural: ''Ojibweg'' ᐅᒋᐺᒃ) are an Anishinaabe people whose homeland (''Ojibwewaki'' ᐅᒋᐺᐘᑭ) covers much of the Great Lakes region and the Great Plains, n ...

/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 (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

''. 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, in various forms, under the name ''punarcci''. Examples of compounds include 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 languages, 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 spoke ...

(including English), compounds are formed by prepending what is effectively a

namespace In computing, a namespace is a set of signs (''names'') that are used to identify and refer to objects of various kinds. A namespace ensures that all of a given set of objects have unique names so that they can be easily identified. Namespaces ...

(disambiguation context) to the main word. For example, "

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

" 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 (also known as a lexicon) is a set of words, typically the set in a language or the set known to an individual. The word ''vocabulary'' originated from the Latin , meaning "a word, name". It forms an essential component of languag ...

. 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 Starfish or sea stars are Star polygon, star-shaped echinoderms belonging to the class (biology), class Asteroidea (). Common usage frequently finds these names being also applied to brittle star, ophiuroids, which are correctly referred to ...

is in fact not a

fish A fish (: fish or fishes) is an aquatic animal, aquatic, Anamniotes, anamniotic, gill-bearing vertebrate animal with swimming fish fin, fins and craniate, a hard skull, but lacking limb (anatomy), limbs with digit (anatomy), digits. Fish can ...

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 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, 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 Russian is an East Slavic languages, East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic languages, Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is ...

compounding is a common type of

, 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 type of abbreviation consisting of a phrase whose only pronounced elements are the initial letters or initial sounds of words inside that phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial Letter (alphabet), letter of each wor ...

s: колхоз '

kolkhoz A kolkhoz ( rus, колхо́з, a=ru-kolkhoz.ogg, p=kɐlˈxos) was a form of collective farm in the Soviet Union. Kolkhozes existed along with state farms or sovkhoz. These were the two components of the socialized farm sector that began to eme ...

'). Some compounds look like acronym, while in fact they are an agglutinations of type stem + word: Академгородок ' Akademgorodok' (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 Historically, grammarians have described a verbal noun or gerundial noun as a verb form that functions as a noun. An example of a verbal noun in English is 'sacking' as in the sentence "The ''sacking'' of the city was an epochal event" (wherein ...

). 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 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 The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Brahmic family, Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that ...

Himālaya, decomposed as hima-ālaya): Name of the

Himalaya The Himalayas, or Himalaya ( ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the Earth's highest peaks, including the highest, Mount Everest. More than 100 pea ...

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 The ''Panchatantra'' ( IAST: Pañcatantra, ISO: Pañcatantra, , "Five Treatises") is an ancient Indian collection of interrelated animal fables in Sanskrit verse and prose, arranged within a frame story.

. 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 (; , , ) is a major deity in Hinduism. He is worshipped as the seventh and one of the most popular avatars of Vishnu. In Rama-centric Hindu traditions, he is considered the Supreme Being. Also considered as the ideal man (''maryāda' ...

in the Kakabhushundi Rāmāyaṇa. 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,

Yoga Yoga (UK: , US: ; 'yoga' ; ) is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines that originated with its own philosophy in ancient India, aimed at controlling body and mind to attain various salvation goals, as pra ...

, Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Pūrva Mīmāṃsā, Vedānta, Nārada Bhakti Sūtra, Śāṇḍilya Bhakti Sūtra, Bhagavad Gītā, the Ramayana of Vālmīki, 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. 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, for instance, is a combination of the nouns 'father' and 'mother'. The sign for ''breakfast'' in

American Sign Language American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States and most of Anglophone Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that i ...

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, 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

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 that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

, 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. 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 al ...

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 Dutch language and 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 Norwegian 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 (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

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. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes (en dash , em dash and others), which are wider, or with t ...

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 A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing (linguistics), borrowing. Borrowing ...

or an

Compounding by language

* Classical compounds * English compounds * German compounds * Sanskrit compounds * Arabic compound

Notes

References

Sources

*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