Languages & Linguistics
Compound Adjectives
Compound adjectives are formed by combining two or more words to modify a noun. They are often hyphenated and can be used to convey specific meanings or qualities. In linguistics, compound adjectives play a crucial role in describing language features and structures, and they contribute to the richness and precision of language expression.
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5 Key excerpts on "Compound Adjectives"
eBook - PDF- Niladri Sekhar Dash(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
The differences are great enough to prevent our setting up any scheme of classification that would fit all languages. Till date it has been observed that there are, at least, three different approaches, which are employed to analyse compound words used in a language. These are (a) syntactic approach, (b) semantic approach, and (c) generative (syntactic-semantic) approach, which are summarized below: The syntactic approach Within the sphere of the syntactic approach it is observed that the part of speech of the lexical items are crucial factors without which it is not possible to put any two words arbitrarily to produce a compound. Only the words of certain grammatical categories or parts of speech are allowed to combine to generate compound words and these parts of speech include noun, adjective, COMPOUND NOUNS AND ADJECTIVES 197 and verb. In most cases, words belonging to these parts of speech are used as second words of the compounds, since the second position enjoys a special status in compounds. In great majority of cases, the compound word belongs to the same grammatical category to which the word in the second position belongs, as the following examples show: Noun + Noun = Noun : girl-friend, summer-tip, seaside, etc. Adjective + Noun = Noun : cold wave, darkroom, blue moon, etc. Verb + Noun = Noun : breakfast, pickpocket, run time, etc. Noun + Adjective = Adjective : waterproof, tax-free, Adjective + Adjective = Adjective : icy-cold, deaf-mute Verb + Adjective = Adjective : freezing cold, falling head Noun + Verb = Verb : brain wash, bottle feed Adjective + Verb = Verb : dry clean, fine-tune Verb + Verb = Verb : sleep walk, write-produce The above examples show that the compounds are identified either as nouns or adjectives or verbs because the second word is either a noun or an adjective or a verb, respectively. For this reason, the second word used at the right hand side of the compound in these cases is called the HEAD of the compound.
eBook - PDF- M. Moortgat, H. v. d. Hulst, T. Hoekstra, M. Moortgat, H. v. d. Hulst, T. Hoekstra(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
A similar demonstration of the autonomy of word syntax can be made on the basis of affixation. The reader is referred to Selkirk (forthcoming), where English affixation is examined, and it is shown that the general theoretical framework proposed here permits an illuminating characteri-zation of the significant properties of affixes and the structures containing them. Section 2: Compounding 2.1. Compounds in English are constituents of morphological structure which are made up of two elements belonging to the categories noun, adjective, verb, or preposition; the compound itself may belong to the category noun, adjective, or verb. (See Marchand (1969), Adams (1973), and Jespersen (MEG) for excellent de-scriptions of compounding in English.) The vast majority of compound types in English contain as the righthand member a constituent which is of the same cate-gory as the compound itself. For the moment we will limit our attention to these. ENGLISH COMPOUNDING 239 As the examples in (10) - (12) show, a compound noun may be constituted of a noun, adjective, preposition, or verb on the left and a noun on the right, a compound adjective may consist of first a noun, adjective, or preposition and then an adjective, and a compound verb may consist of a preposition and then a verb: (10) Houns a. N N apron string sun shine mill wheel hub cap living room fighter bomber tongue lashing teacher training school teacher bull's eye b. A N high school small pox sharp shooter well wisher c. p N overdose underdog out building up rising on looker after thought up town in land d. V N swear word whet stone scrub woman rattle snake (11) Adjectives a. N A head strong honey sweet skin deep nation wide sea faring mind boggling earth bound heart broken b. A A icy cold white hot worldly wise easy going hard working high born wide spread far fetched c. P A overwide overabundant underripe ingrown underprivileged abovementioned d.
eBook - PDF- Martin J. Endley(Author)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Information Age Publishing(Publisher)
Additionally, I will briefly touch upon two further potential difficulties in relation to ad- jectives, namely participles and compound forms. After this, I will turn to adverbs, limiting my discussion to two main issues: first, the similarities and differences between adjectives and adverbs; and second, the functions per- formed by adverbial expressions. The Adjective Word Class: Morphosyntactic Characteristics In some languages, the adjective class is a small, closed class. And some lan- guages lack such a class entirely, with the meanings expressed by adjectives in English being expressed by other syntactic categories. However, modern Adjectives and Adverbs in Linguistic Perspective 79 English has a rich range of adjectives and they are ubiquitous in the speech and writing of EUEs. Like nouns and verbs, adjectives belong in the open class of words in English and it is not uncommon for new adjectives to be added to the language. What, then, is an adjective? Students are often taught that an adjective is a word that “describes” or modifies a noun. This is a reasonable start- ing point, insofar as many adjectives are found in close association with nouns, but, once again, there is a great deal more that needs to be said. In fact, as we will see shortly, only some adjectives are modifiers. Others are better understood as complements. The use of such labels is not always a straightforward matter. For our purposes, we can say that a modifier is an optional element; on the other hand, a complement is grammatically required. The Position of Adjectives: The Prenominal Position In English, there are two main positions that an adjective may occupy in a construction. One position is within a noun phrase, immediately pre- ceding the noun. I will follow the conventional designations, referring to adjectives in the prenominal position as attributive adjectives, and adjectives in post-verbal position as predicative adjectives.
eBook - PDF- Thomas Herbst, Kerstin Popp, Thomas Herbst, Kerstin Popp(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter(Publisher)
Henri Bejoint Compound nouns in learners' dictionaries 1 Introduction Compounds are not a popular subject for research in lexicography - unlike idioms, or phraseology in general. 1 Yet, they are important, for at least two reasons. The first is that they are in very large numbers in many languages, including English: they make up an important proportion of all lexical creations, as exhibited in English dictionaries of new words (Ayto 1996). The second and main reason is that they are, to some extent, language in the making. They exemplify what is sometimes called onomasiology in the creation of lexis, and as such, they are a special challenge for the lexicographer. The present paper will examine compound nouns - probably the largest category (Bauer 1983: 202) - rather than adjectives or verbs. After a brief look at the definition of compound nouns, I will proceed to discuss the peculiarities of their meaning, and finally examine some aspects of their definitions in the Cambridge International Dictionary of English (1995 - CIDE), the Collins COBUILD English Dictionary, second edition (1995 -COBUILD2), the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, third edition (1995 -LDOCE3), and the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, fifth edition (1995 - OALD5). Most examples will therefore be in English, with some additional illustrations in French. 2 Of compounds in general and compound nouns in particular 2.1 Definitions A compound is a lexical unit composed of at least two autonomous elements (i.e. words). Several criteria for distinguishing compound nouns have been mentioned (see Tournier 1988: 63f.): • graphic cohesion. This is difficult to apply, particularly in English, because of the variations in spelling: an English compound noun like paper clip can have the forms I would like to thank Rosamund Moon for helpful comments on a draft version of this paper (her remarks are noted RM), and Philippe Thoiron for generous discussions on many of the issues.
eBook - PDFRelational Adjectives in Romance and English
Mismatches at Interfaces
- Mihaela Marchis Moreno(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
163 10 Relational Adjectives as Compounding 10.1 Introduction One of the most disputed current theoretical debates is whether morphology is an independent module of grammar or rather its labor is divided among other domains such as semantics, syntax and PF. The opinions are divided: linguists like Aronoff (1976; 1994), Booij (1977), Scalise (1984), Lieber (1983), Selkirk (1982), Anderson (1982; 1992), Bauer (1983) strongly argue that morphology is an independent module from the syn- tactic one while others scholars such as Baker (1988), Halle & Marantz (1993, 1994), Pesetsky (1995), Marantz (2001), Borer (2005), etc. show in their work that the syntactic mechanism is more than sufficient to derive words and even compounds and, hence, the morphological component is no longer justified (for a more detailed view on the two theories see Chapter 2). Interestingly, even lexicalists like Bauer (1998a,b) reckon that there are some fuzzy elements such as N-N phrasals that are difficult to distinguish from com- pounding. Hence, compounding is a key element in drawing the line between what we believe to be a lexicalized constituent derived by morphology and other transparent phrases derived by the rules of syntax. The literature on compound- ing is rich and includes a clearly cut classification of compounds that tries to distinguish them from phrases (Sadock 1998; Bauer 1998a,b). Specifically, compounds are distinguished by their “isolation” with respect to their phrasal counterparts in the seminal work of Chomsky and Halle (1968) and by March- and (1969) in his examination of compounding in English. One of the main characteristics of English compounds, for instance, is stress of the first element (fore-stress), contrasting with the usual end-stress pattern for phrases (Giegerich 2004).
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