In
linguistics, a
compound is a
lexeme (less precisely, a
word) that consists of more than one
stem.
Compounding or
composition is the
word-formation that creates compound lexemes (the other word-formation process being
derivation).
Compounding or
Word-compounding refers to the faculty and device of language to form new words by combining or putting together old words. In other words,
compound,
compounding or
word-compounding occurs when a person attaches two or more words together to make them work as one word. The meanings of the words interrelate in such a way that a new meaning comes out which is very different from the meanings of the words in isolation. For example, to refer to a person that frequently expresses or believes that nothing s/he does has a good result or will have a successful outcome we may call him/her a
never-go-well person. We combine the words never, go and well to form and adjectival compound. It is important to bear in mind that, even though most neologism resulting from word-compounding become part of the language, it is often the case that many more neologisms disappear leaving no trace behind. As in life birth and death of words in language is a natural phenomenon.
We have examples of this process of death and birth of words in the following words fireman, hardware and the adjectival compound “never-go-well” in the phrase “Bertha, I’d like to know you’re so fond of the never-go-well way”. The first word fireman has become part of the colloquial or everyday language, and now because of the natural process of change all language go through, is going out of use, and is being replaced by the more politically correct and sexless firefighter. The second one, hardware, is a term of the computer science that has become part of public domain. The third one, the word-compounding expression never-go-well, might or might not become part of everyday language. Its acceptance and permanence will depend on how much and how long people use it to make it worth of appearing in dictionaries.
Compound formation rules vary widely across language types.
In a more synthetic language, the relationship between the elements of a compound may be marked. For example, the German compound Kapitänspatent consists of the lexemes Kapitän 'sea captain' and Patent 'license' joined by an -s- (originally a genitive case marker); and similarly, the Latin lexeme paterfamilias contains the (archaic) genitive form familias of the lexeme familia 'family'. Conversely, in the Hebrew compound ????? ????? bet sefer "school", it is the head that is marked the compound literally means "house-of book", with ?????? bayit "house" having entered the construct state to become ????? bet "house-of". (This latter pattern is common throughout the Semitic languages, though in some it is combined with an explicit genitive case, such that both parts of the compound are marked.)
