Contents

Aim.............................................................................................................................................1

1. Introduction............................................................................................................................1

2. Compounds............................................................................................................................2

2.1. Types of compounds.......................................................................................................3

3. Development..........................................................................................................................4

4. Formation...............................................................................................................................5

5. Types of compound...............................................................................................................6

4.1. Closed compounds..........................................................................................................7

4.2. Open compounds.............................................................................................................7

4.3. Hyphenated Compounds.................................................................................................8

6. The traditional vs. Cognitive approach..................................................................................8

Conclusion................................................................................................................................13

Sources and literature...............................................................................................................13

Aim

Through time compounds have become an essential part of the English language. A large
number of compounds has been so well fused and adapted into the language that we do not
even notice them or recognize them as ‘compounds’ anymore, i.e. words with two or more
roots. This seminar paper deals with compounds through history of the English language,
their development, different ways of their formation, various types of compounds etc.
Furthermore, one of the main subjects of the paper are also the two different views of
compounds: the traditional and the cognitive view. Throughout the work examples will be
provided for an easier and better understanding of the theory. This theoretical analysis will be
achieved with miscellaneous literature on compounds written by different authors, in order to
collect all the available data possible and to see if some viewpoints differ from each other. At
the end, we will see how compounds behave in English and we will be able to determine their
frequency, enlisting the reasons that lie behind the answer.
1. Introduction

Phrasal verbs, such as make up, take after, do away with – often called multi-word verbs or
verb + particle constructions are a common feature of the English language.
Nevertheless, the perception commonly held by learners and often fostered by teachers is that
phrasal verbs are one of the major sources of bewilderment and frustration in the process of
learning English.
As pointed out by Marks (Schmid, 2016, 125), there are some misunderstandings that make
phrasal verbs daunting for learners. These are as follows:
– Phrasal verbs are unique to English
– Phrasal verbs necessarily have 'proper', non-phrasal equivalents
– Phrasal verbs are illogical, or random, or unpredictable
– Phrasal verbs are a ramified area of English lexis, separate from the rest
– Phrasal verbs are necessarily informal or colloquial
These misunderstandings are partly due to the fact that it is hard to see any system in
them. Phrasal verbs consist of a ‘base verb’ such as go, put or set and a particle, such as
down, back or off. When a learner encounters an unfamiliar phrasal verb, he/she will often
know what the base word means and what the particle means – but put the two together
and you get something completely different. Even beginners know what put means and
what off means, but that won’t help them much to guess the various meanings of put off.
(Spencer, 2003, 334)
2. Compounds

In English grammar, compounding is the process of combining two words (free morphemes)

to create a new word (commonly a noun, verb, or adjective). Also called composition.
Two independent lexemes have come together to form a new lexeme with a specialised
meaning, to denote some entity that is considered worth having its own ‘name’. We call such
lexemes compounds. Sometimes compounds are written, as in the examples with war, with a
space between the two elements. Other compounds are written as a single orthographic word
(e.g. warhead, warlord, warpath, warship), while others have a hyphen joining the two
elements (e.g.war-torn, window-shop, world-class). The current tendency is away from
‘hyphenatedcompounds’ towards either ‘solid compounds’ (one orthographic word) or
‘opencompounds’ (two or more orthographic words). The other multi-word lexeme in the list
is ward of court, which is a phrase rather than a compound. (Selkirk, 1982, 101)

A compound word is two or more words linked together to produce a word with a new
meaning:
tooth + brush = toothbrush eco + friendly = eco-friendly animal + lover = animal lover
We make compounds in all word classes (Spencer, 2003: 335):

nouns: car park, soap opera pronouns: anyone, everything, nobody

adjectives: environmentally-friendly, fat- numerals: twenty-seven, three-
free quarters

verbs: daydream, dry-clean prepositions: into, onto

adverbs: nevertheless, nowadays conjunctions: although, however

We usually make compound nouns with a noun + noun, with a verb (or a word made from a
verb) + noun, or with an adjective + noun:
 noun + noun: earphones verb -ing form + noun: parking ticket

verb base form + noun: rescue team adjective + noun: blackboard

2.1. Types of compounds

In a compound noun, we can combine different elements. These include:

subject + verb: earache (an ear that aches), rainfall (rain that falls)
verb + subject: cleaning products (products that clean)
verb + object: know-all (person who thinks they know everything)
object + verb: shoe-polish  (polishes shoes), dishwasher (washes dishes)
Sometimes compound words are written separately (nail polish), sometimes with a hyphen
(short-sighted) and sometimes as one word (eyelashes). Often new compounds are written as
two separate words and, as they become more familiar, they are either connected with a
hyphen (-) or made into one word. (Williams, 1981, 249)

There are some general rules and guidelines for when to use hyphens (Plag, 2003, 99):

 when there is a prefix (e.g. post-war, pre-lunch, self-interest, semi-skilled)

 when a compound adjective comes before a head noun (e.g. a well-knownsinger,
an angry-sounding email)
 when the pre-head item in a compound is a single capital letter (e.g. U-turn, X-ray, D-
day)
 when words are difficult to recognise as compounds and could be confused

3. Development

In the past few decades, numerous experiments were conducted to investigate the way lexical
information is stored and its retrieving process. Various models, such as the search model, the
Dual Route model, the triangle model, the Interactive Constituency model, the Interactive
Activation model and the CDP+ model have been proposed to explain the experimental
findings regarding the processing of word. ( O'Grady, 2001, 278)
Some of the models endeavor themselves to explain the processing of simple mono-
morphemic words, such as “apple” and “class”, leaving the nature of storage and processing
of multi-morphemic words, especially compound words, such as “spiderman” and “seaweed”
unexplained. Given the fact that we encountered not only simple mono-morphemic words but
also multi-morphemic words during our daily reading, a model that simply accounts for the
processing of simple mono-morphemic words only is insufficient. Therefore, models of
compound word processing are the main foci of the current study.There are three major
approaches to explain the storage and retrieval of compound words. (Schmid, 2016, 128)
The first approach suggests that all compound words are stored as individual items in the
lexicon and they are retrieved as a whole without any relations to their stem words, i.e. the
storage of the word “spiderman” has nothing to do with the stem words “spider” and “man”.
The second approach suggests that there are no individual entries of compound words in the
lexicon, instead, all compound words are retrieval via their stem words, i.e. there isn’t any
item as “spiderman” in one’s lexicon and the retrieval of the word is achieved via the
activation of the stem words “spider” and “man”. The third approach stands somewhere
between the first and the second approaches, suggests that compound words are represented
in the lexicon and their retrieval are achieved through the activation of lexical entries of the
whole word in the lexicon and also the activations of their stem words. (Spencer, 2003, 338)
Thus far, models of lexical storage and retrieval of compound words were proposed based on
the observations of adults’ performances. The “power” of the models has usually been
measured by their ability to explain the performances of both normal adults and impaired
ones, mostly resulted from brain damage, in various tasks.

4. Formation

"Compounds are not limited to two words, as shown by examples such as bathroom towel-
rack and community center finance committee. Indeed, the process of compounding seems
unlimited in English: starting with a word like sailboat, we can easily construct the
compound sailboat rigging, from which we can in turn create sailboat rigging design, sailboat
rigging design training, sailboat rigging design training institute, and so on."
(Akmajian, 2001, 92)

"[In most compounds] the rightmost morpheme determines the category of the entire word.
Thus, greenhouse is a noun because its rightmost component is a noun, spoonfeed is a verb
because feed also belongs to this category, and nationwide is an adjective just as wide is.
"English orthography is not consistent in representing compounds, which are sometimes
written as single words, sometimes with an intervening hyphen, and sometimes as separate
words. In terms of pronunciation, however, there is an important generalization to be made.
In particular, adjective-noun compounds are characterized by a more prominent stress on
their first component.“ (Bauer, 2003, 139)
In order to establish how a given complex lexeme is produced by a particular word-
formation process we describe the structure of the syntagma in question. As shown in
the figure above, there are several possibilities.
Firstly, a syntagma can be a combination of two „free morphemes‟,i.e. two independent
lexemes, as in tea pot (tea+pot), baby carriage (baby+carriage), And tennis player (tennis+
player). (Plag, 2003, 67)
The latter differs from the former two because its second lexeme, viz. the word player, is
itself a complex item. It consists of the verb play and the „bound morpheme‟ –er.
Although in tea pot and baby carriage two morphemes are joined together, and tennis
players made up of three morphemes, they all are examples of syntagmas consisting
of two lexemes. In this case, the three complex lexemes are referred to as compounds
because they are built by the process of compounding. (Bauer, 2003, 139)
And secondly, there are syntagmas which combine a „base‟ with a bound morpheme as in
ex-husband (ex+husband), co-producer (co+producer), attachment (attach+ment), and spy
(spy+ Ø). According to the position of this bound morpheme, i.e. the affix, it is usually
distinguished between prefixed syntagmas, e.g. ex/husband and co/producer, in which the
affixes are before the base, and suffixed formations, e.g.attach/ment, and spy/Ø, where
the suffix is put after the base. (Minkova, 2006, 19)
The respective word-formation processes are prefixation and suffixation.
What is important to note for the latter is the fact that in suffixation a suffix needs not to be
always overtly expressed, i.e. it may be zero, as in the case of spy. Nevertheless, it has
a grammatical function and a particular meaning. It converts the verb spy into a noun
with the meaning „someone who spies‟ without formal changes. Therefore, this
process is sometimes called „derivation by a zero morpheme‟ or „conversion‟. Thus, it may
be seen as a subcategory of suffixation.

5. Types of compound

There are several types of compounds in english language (Scalise, 2010, 52):

Closed compounds – flowerpot, keyboard, notebook, bookstore – mesh two words together.
Hyphenated compounds – mother-in-law, merry-go-round – not surprisingly use a hyphen
between two or more words, often to prevent ambiguity.
Open compounds – school bus, living room – are commonly used together but are written
with a space in between.

4.1. Closed compounds

Closed compound words look like one word. At one point, these words weren’t used
together, but they’re now accepted as a “real word” in the English language. Closed
compound words are usually made up of only two words. Here are some closed compound
examples.

notebook
Superman
waistcoat
bookstore
fireman

The English language is always evolving, and when words become used more frequently,
they are often eventually written as one word. When the Internet first began, for example,
we talked about going on-line. Now that this is a daily experience for most of us, the
spelling online has become commonly accepted.
4.2. Open compounds

An open compound word is created in cases when the modifying adjective is used with its
noun to create a new noun. This isn’t quite the same as a noun with a modifying adjective.
We just use a space between the adjective and the noun, so sometimes it can be hard to
identify as a compound; however, if the two words are commonly used together, it’s
considered to be a compound word.

living room
full moon
real estate
dinner table
coffee mug

When adverbs ending in -ly combine with another word, the resulting compound is always
spelled as two separate words.

largely irrelevant
newly formed

4.3. Hyphenated Compounds

There are a great many grammar rules regarding hyphens in compound words. One
important rule of thumb to remember is that in most cases, a compound adjective is
hyphenated if placed before the noun it modifies, but not if placed after the noun.

a long-term solution
an up-to-date user guide

But…

This is not a good solution for the long term.

This user guide is not up to date.

This is just one of many rules concerning hyphens in compound words and it is often
necessary to consult the dictionary to determine whether these terms should be hyphenated
or not.
6. The traditional vs. Cognitive approach

As far as the semantics of phrasal verbs is concerned, traditional grammarians, such as

Bolinger (1971), Lipka (1972), Sroka (1972) and Fraser (1976) etc. generally assume that
phrasal verbs are an arbitrary combination of a verb and one or more particles. They regard
them simply as a matter of language, and mainly characterise their syntactic properties.
Whenever they characterise their meanings, they usually point out the spatial and
aspectual meanings of the particles. In this view, linguistic meaning is divorced from the
human conceptual system.
To illustrate this, let us just mention Lipka who observes that in a small group of verb-
particle constructions (VPC) without, the particle has the meaning ‘into society’, or ‘into
public knowledge’, e.g. ask out (sb) and invite out(sb). In another group, out has the meaning
‘aloud’, as in cry out, read out (a letter) and speak out (words). In other functions, the
particle is apparently isolated, as in help out (sb) ‘temporarily’, ride out (a racehorse) ‘to
the limit’ and strike out ‘vigorously’. Sometimes, out gives a completive sense to the
verb, such as, in fade out and die out. (Spencer, 2003, 339)
Similarly to Lipka, Bolinger also points out that phrasal verbs may – to a limited
extent – be placed in a number of sets, each with a common meaning element.
Bolinger gives the following meanings of out:

(1) literal “centrifugal” meaning

(2) literal resultant condition meaning showing a gradient

I reached out for it. My shoes wore out. The mine gave out. They lost out. With
that machine it’s easy to
dig out a big hole. They burned out the village. He carved out a statue. I figured out
the answer. They found out the truth

(3) exhaustion
We talked ourselves out. We’re all talked out. My energy played out. My energy is all
played out.
 (4)metaphorical meaning drop
out (of school), fall out (with a friend), hold out (hope of sth, the possibility of
sth), break out (with measles), bring out (a play) and knock out (a fighter), etc.

Nevertheless, these traditional semantic analyses seem to be rather unsystematic, and

do not reveal much about the complex nature of verb + particle constructions. It was
cognitive grammarians, such as Lindner (1981), Lakoff (1987), Rudzka-Ostyn (2003) and
Tyler and Evans (2003), who showed that the meanings of particles in phrasal verbs
form a network of related senses, and thus they are systematic and are analysable at
least to some degree. Before looking at the cognitive semantic analysis of particles in
phrasal verbs, let us outline what the major principles and categories cognitive linguistics are.

Cognitive grammar grew out of the work of a number of researchers active in the late
1970s who were interested in the relation of language and mind. Its central ideas
were developed by Ronald Langacker in his two-volume Foundations of Cognitive
Grammar (1987 and 1991), which became a major departure point for the emerging field of
cognitive linguistics.
In general, cognitive linguists assume that linguistic structures are motivated by cognitive
processes, for example by metaphorisation. One of the most important assumptions
shared by all cognitive scholars is that meaning is so central to language that it must
be a primary focus of study. A primary tenet of this theory is that our ordinary conceptual
system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. (
In the cognitive view, metaphors are not just superfluous, though pleasant rhetorical devices,
but an indispensable property of our thinking and conceptualisation (Kövecs 2005: 14).
Thus our language is highly metaphorical, which uses thousands of expressions based on
concrete, physical entities in order to express high-level abstractions.
As claimed by Lakoff (1987), Lakoff-Johnson (1980) and Kövecses (2005), our conceptual
system is metaphorically structured and defined. Thus the way we think, what we
experience, and what we do every day is often a matter of metaphor. The essence of
metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another (cf. Lakoff
& Johnson 1980: 5).
Cognitive linguists assume that we structure concepts (e.g. emotions, ideas, society, politics,
economy, human relations, communication, time and events, etc.) is understood in terms
of the source domain (e.g. the human body, health, illnesses, buildings, machines,
animals, plants, sport, games and forces, etc.) (Kövecses 2005, 32-45).
In cognitive terms, conceptual metaphors always combine two domains: a con-crete, well
bounded ‘source domain’ and an abstract, ’target domain’. The mechanism through which
this happens is mapping, i.e. the source domain is mapped onto the target domain. To
illustrate what kind of correspondences or mappings there are between a source domain
and a target domain, let us have a closer look at one of our basic feelings, ‘anger’ again.
In the expression spit fire, the domain of fire is used to understand the domain of
anger. Thus we conceptualise ‘anger’ via the metaphor, such as ANGER IS FIRE.
Following the conventions of cognitive semantics, we call this the ANGER IS FIRE a
conceptual metaphor (Kövecses 2005).

In the sentence ‘The fire between them finally went out’ the conventional metaphor
underlying the idiom is LOVE IS FIRE. ‘The painting set fire to the composer’s
imagination, it is IMAGINATION IS FIRE; in ‘The killing sparked off riots’, it is
CONFLICT IS FIRE; in the case of burning the candle at both ends, it is ENERGY IS
FUEL FOR THE FIRE; in the case of fan the flames of, it is ENTHUSIASM IS
FIRE.
As pointed out by Kövecses and Szabó (1996: 334), these conceptual metaphors are,
however, not limited to a single linguistic expression but make themselves manifest in a
large numbers of expressions.
ANGER IS FIRE
After the row she was fuming. He is smouldering with anger.
LOVE IS FIRE
I am burning with love. She carries a torch for him.
IMAGINATION IS FIRE
His imagination caught fire. The story kindled the boy’s imagination.
CONFLICT IS FIRE
The flames of war spread quickly. They extinguished the last spark of the revolution.
ENERGY IS FUEL FOR THE FIRE
I am burned out. I need someone to stoke my fire.
ENTHUSIASM IS FIRE
Her enthusiasm was ignited by the new teacher.
He was burning with excitement.
The above discussion suggests that the meanings of idiomatic expressions are not
arbitrary but can be seen as motivated by metaphors that link domains of knowledge to
idiomatic meanings. In other words they are not simply a matter of language but
products of our conceptual system.
Now let us see how the cognitive approach can be applied to the analysis of the meanings of
English phrasal verbs.

A cognitive approach to phrasal verbs

One of the most important assumptions shared by all these cognitive scholars, such as by
Lindner (1981), Lakoff (1987), Rudzka-Ostyn (2003) and Tyler and Evans (2003) is
that the meanings of phrasal verbs also go easily from the concrete to the abstract, and
metaphors serve as a link between them. Since foreign learners often do not see this path
and do not recognise the metaphor underlying the abstract meanings, they find many
phrasal verbs difficult to understand. Consequently, they either use them improperly or they
use them rarely.
In fact the meanings of many phrasal verbs are metaphorical, and if you understand the
metaphors they use, it will be easier to understand and remember their meanings.

Consider the following pairs of examples (cf. Rundell, 2005: LS 5):

The dog dug up an old bone.
We dug up some interesting facts.

Two planes were shot down.

Each proposal was shot down.

In each pair, the first phrasal verb has a literal meaning and refers to a physical action, while
the second is metaphorical and describes an action that is similar in some way to the
first. For example, when someone digs up information, they discover it, and the process
seems similar to the way in which dogs find bones that have been buried in the ground.
Some phrasal verbs have only metaphorical meanings. For example, to breeze in means
to enter a place confidently, without seeming to care what other people think: perhaps
the attitude and action reminds us of the movement of a breeze. Similarly, to rope someone in
means to persuade someone to do something that they do not really want to do: perhaps it
reminds us of the way in which people use ropes to catch animals or to collect them
together.
As pointed out by Rudzka-Ostyn (2003: 2), understanding the meaning of the verb is
important but not always sufficient. In many cases, the major problem with phrasal verbs is
gaining insight into the meaning(s) of their particles and understanding why one particle
is used and another is not.
Moon in the Language Study of Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus (2005: LS 5) notes that
when the verb part of a phrasal verb is used in a metaphorical way, this is usually obvious.
But the particles may also be used metaphorically. This is less easy to recognise, but
in fact there is often a clear connection between the literal meanings of the particle
and its metaphorical extension. For example, up literally describes movement towards a
higher position, metaphorically it has got to do with increases in size, number or strength
(e.g. Prices went up), or down literally describes movement towards a lower position,
its metaphorical meanings have to do with decreases in size, number or strength
(e.g.The children quietened down).
The recognition of the link between the literal and idiomatic of particles via metaphors has
been a major contribution of cognitive linguistics to a better understanding of the
meanings of phrasal verbs.
Amongst the outstanding contributions to the cognitive semantic analysis of English
phrasal verbs is the dissertation by Susan Lindner (1981), who gives a detailed lexico-
semantic analysis of English verb-particle constructions with up and out.
Lakoff (1987) and Tyler and Evans (2003) examine the case of over, while Rudzka-Ostyn
(2003) presents a cognitive analysis of out, in, into, up, down, off, way, on, over, back,
about, around, across, through, by and along.
Besides referring to such cognitive mechanisms in the analysis of the meanings of particles
as metaphors, some cognitive linguists (cf. Lindner 1981, Lakoff 1987and Rudzka-
Ostyn 2003) argue that prepositions/particles in their spatial sense serve to locate one entity
with reference to another and therefore they also use the relation of trajector and landmark in
their discussions. Following the terminology introduced by Langacker (1987: 231), the
moving entity is referred to as the trajector or TR, while the entity which serves as a
reference point will be referred to as the landmark or LM.
To highlight what are the central cognitive principles involved in the analysis of the meanings
of phrasal verbs, let us examine Lakoff’s analysis of over.
Conclusion

For conclusion, we can say that we cannot make a clean distinction between compounds and
phrases. The element that make up compounds are not words but stems or roote in some
languages. English compounds seem to be made up of words because
English has too little inflection. Also, in the paper it can be seen that trere are several
different types of compounds. Whether a compound word is properly open, closed or
hyphenated may depend on whether it’s used as a noun, adjective or verb.
Studying compound words offers a great opportunity to engage students in understanding the
English language. It builds an interest in words and will help prepare students to learn
prefixes, suffixes, and word roots.

Sources and literature

(1) Schmid, Hans-Jörg (2016). English morphology and word-formation. Erich Schmidt

Verlag. pp. p. 125.
(2) Plag, Ingo: Word-formation in English, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
2003.
(3) Scalise Sergio & Irene Vogel (eds.) (2010), Cross-Disciplinary Issues in
Compounding, Amsterdam, Benjamins.
(4) William O'Grady, J. Archibald, M. Aronoff, and J. Rees-Miller, Contemporary
Linguistics: An Introduction. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001
(5) Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell, "English Words." The Handbook of English
Linguistics, ed. by Bas Aarts and April McMahon. Blackwell, 2006
(6) Bauer, L. 2003. Introducing Linguistic Morphology, 2 edn., Washington, DC:
Georgetown University Press.

(7) Selkirk, E. O. 1982. The Syntax of Words. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

(8) Spencer, A. 2003. Does English have productive compounding?, in G. Booij, J.

DeCesaris, A. Ralli & S. Scalise (eds.), Topics in Morphology: Selected Papers from
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Fabra, 329-341.

(9) Williams, 1981. On the notions of Lexically related and Head of a Word. Linguistic
Inquiry 12: 245-274.