Compound Words

We know, that lexical morphemes carry the main meaning (or significance) of the word it
belongs to. The morpheme „ready‟ in „readiness‟ carries the meaning of the word, as does
„bound‟ in „unbound‟, or „cran‟ in „cranberry‟. These morphemes, because they carry the
lexical meaning, are lexical morphemes.

Grammatical morphemes can become attached to lexical morphemes. The „ing‟ in „singing‟
carries no lexical meaning, but it does provide a grammatical context for the lexical
morpheme. It tells us that the „sing‟ is „ing‟ (as in „on-going‟). In the same way, the
morpheme „ely‟ in „timely‟ carries no meaning, but it does turn the noun „time‟ into a word
more frequently used as an adverb. Time the thing becomes the description of an action – as
in „his intervention was timely‟.

Of course, as with so many things in life, these definitions are by no means uncomplicated.
For example, if we were to consider the lexical meaning of the words „stand‟ and „under‟,
then they would be distinctive and straightforward. „Stand‟, means to be upright, and „under‟
means to be beneath something. However, when we put these two lexical morphemes
together (although technically „under‟ is actually a preposition), we get the word „understand‟
which has an entirely different lexical meaning.

The combining of morphemes in order to create a new lexis is known as compounding, and
words which are formed by the combination of such morphemes are known as compound
words. Compound words do not necessarily have to be the consequence of combining lexical
morphemes alone. Certainly, the lexical morphemes „earth‟ and „quake‟ combined create
„earthquake‟, but the combination of grammatical morpheme „to‟ and the lexical morpheme
„day‟ creates „today‟.

Here is a list of compound words. See if you can identify the lexical and grammatical
morphemes:

lifetime elsewhere upside grandmother

 cannot backbone fireworks passport

together become became sunflower

crosswalk basketball scapegoat superstructure

moonlight football railroad rattlesnake

anybody weatherman throwback skateboard

meantime earthquake everything peppermint

sometimes also backward schoolhouse

butterflies upstream nowhere bypass

fireflies because somewhere spearmint

something another somewhat airport

anyone today himself grasshopper

inside themselves playthings footprints

therefore uplift without homemade

Whether these compound words are composed of grammatical or lexical morphemes, the
compound itself is almost always lexical. „Therefore‟ is composed of two morphemes which
in some ways can both be considered grammatical, but the compound carries a lexical
meaning of „as a consequence of‟.

Word Classes

It is useful to be able to distinguish between lexical and grammatical morphemes, because by

doing so we are able to understand that words are constructed using specific mechanisms.
Understanding those mechanisms means that we understand more clearly not only how we
use words today, but how new words are formed.

If this is true of the morphemes in relation to the construction of words, then is is true also of
words in relation to the construction of sentences. This is our next topic: the categorisations
of words.
Words are divided into various classes (or 'parts of speech'), each of which has a specific
function in relation to creating meaning within sentences. The first and easiest distinction is
that between open-class words (or lexical words) and closed-class words (or grammatical
words).

Open-class words, or Lexical words

Open-class words, as Leslie Jeffries writes, are “those which contain the main semantic
information in a text, and they fall into the four main lexical word classes: noun, verb,
adjective and adverb” (Jeffries, 2006, p. 83). Stott and Chapman, in their book Grammar and
Writing (2001) define these classes as:

Verb: A word or phrase which expresses the action, process or state in the clause (e.g. I‟m
eating my favourite meal right now; I will go to that football match; I went quietly)

Adverb: Single words that modify verbs by adding to their meaning (e.g. The choir sang
sweetly). Words or phrases that modify or give extra definition to the verb in terms of place,
manner and time (e.g. I‟m eating my favourite meal right now; I‟m eating my favourite meal
in my favourite restaurant), are often referred to as adverbial.

Noun: Words that names persons / places / things or abstractions (e.g. Edward, Tanzania,
guitar, happiness). In earlier centuries all nouns in the English language were given a capital
letter. In German, they still do the same. In English now, only proper nouns are given capital
letters.

Adjective: Words that modify nouns by adding to their meanings (e.g. That was a long film).
Most adjectives have comparative (I‟m glad it wasn‟t any longer) and Superlative forms (It
was the longest film I‟ve ever seen).

They classes are referred to as open-class because “they are open-ended and can be added to
readily” (Jeffries, 2006, p. 83), but they are also often referred to as lexical words because
they carry a lexicial meaning (sometimes they are even referred to as semantic words, for the
same reason).

Closed-class words, or Grammatical words

If open-class words tend to change frequently, then closed-class words tend not to change
very often. Closed-class or grammatical words (sometimes referred to as function words)
have less meaning than open-class or lexical words, but do useful jobs in language. They are
the „little words‟ that act as the glue, or connectors, inside a sentence. Without them, lexical
words might still carry meaning but they do not make as much sense.

Grammatical words include articles, prepositions, conjunctions and pronouns.

Articles: There are only two articles in English: the definite article, the, and the indefinite
article a(n) (Jeffries, 2006. p. 96).

Prepositions: Define the relationships that exist between elements. This includes relationships
of place (at, on, by, opposite), of direction (towards, past, out, of, to, through), of time (at,
before, in, on), of comparison (as, like), of source (from, out of), and of purpose (for)
(Thorne, 2008. p. 20). Prepositions are by no means uncomplicated – you will have noticed
from this list that the word 'at' can function as both a preposition of place and of time,
depending on its contexts.

Conjuntions: The function of conjunctions is to link together elements of sentences and

phrases. They come in two forms. Co-ordinating conjunctions are words that join two clauses
in a sentence, where each clause is of equal importance (i.e., 'and', 'but', 'either', 'or', 'neither',
'nor'). Subordinating conjunctions are words that link sentences where one half is a
consequence of the other ('although', 'as', 'because', 'if', 'since', 'that', 'though', 'until', 'where',
'when', 'while', etc.).

Pronouns: Pronouns come in two forms. Firstly, the pronoun itself, where words are “used
instead of a noun or noun phrase (e.g. it, he, who, theirs)”. Secondly, there is the personal
pronoun, in which “[w]ords identify speakers, addressees and others (I, you, she, it, we,
they)” (Stott and Shapman, 2001).

What is the significance of word classes?

Word classes are important in the acquisition of language because they enable us to construct
sentences with a maximum of economy. Knowing that only a verb can complete the
following sentence:

loved

The boy

…..........

the dog
hit

or an adverb the one below

badly

The boy wrote the essay very

…........

easily

means that we don‟t have to try out every word in our mental lexicon to see whether it will fit
or not.

So classifications of words and grammar enable us to communicate much more efficiently.

Not only this, such systems enable us to communicate with much more variety. Humans
simply could not memorise a lexicon which contained a different word for every thing they
wanted to express. This means that there are only two options – either make do with a limited
range of expression, or develop a system which allows for individual words to mean more
than one thing. Word classes are part of that very system – as we shall discover more of in a
moment.

Problems with classifications

The criteria by which linguists assign words to particular classes, however, are less certain.
Most people if asked to say what a verb or a noun are rely on what is called „notional‟
criteria. These are broadly semantic in origin. They include referring to a verb as a „doing
word‟, i.e. a word that denotes an action of some sort (go, destroy, eat), and a noun as a
'naming word', i.e. one that denotes an entity or thing (car, cat, hill). Similarly, adjectives are
said to denote states or qualities (ill, happy, rich), and adverbs, the manner in which
something is done (badly, slowly, well).

As a rule of thumb this works reasonably well, but it‟s not subtle enough to capture the way
in which word classification essentially works. Not all verbs are „doing‟ words. The verbs „to
be‟, and „to have‟ clearly aren‟t. And neither are all nouns necessarily „things‟. Nouns such as
„advice‟, and „consequence‟ are difficult to conceive as entities. We‟re forced to call them
„abstract‟ nouns, a recognition that in some way they are not typical. Indeed, notional criteria
only work for prototypical class members, but there are many others for which such criteria
are not adequate. The word „assassination‟, for example, seems like a verb since it describes a
process or action, but it is in fact a noun.

The Lawlessness of English

The English language is flexible. It has, over the centuries developed from a corruption of
Latin - the twisting and changing of „proper‟ Latin with local jargon and slang. “From at least
the time of Shakespeare”, Measham says, “the English language has not been overly
hampered by rules” (Measham, 1965. P. 83).

To use an example from Measham - look at these three sentences:

Gardening is a good way of getting blisters.

I was gardening at the time the wall fell down.

I had on my gardening boots.

The word „gardening‟ appears three times. But does it serve the same function each time?

Gardening is a good way of getting blisters

here „gardening‟ functions as a noun.

I was gardening at the time the wall fell down

here „gardening‟ functions as a verb: it describes an action.

I had on my gardening boots

here „gardening‟ functions as an adjective.

Of course, for native English speakers the meaning of these sentences might appear plain,
despite the fact that the same word operates in very different functions.

So how can we classify words at all?

The only secure way to assign words into word classes is on the basis of how they behave in
the language. If a word behaves in a way characteristic of a noun, or a verb, then it‟s safe to
call it one. This, of course, means recognising that words can belong to more than one class.
It also means recognising that words may be more or less noun-like or verb-like in behaviour.

Word classes are similar to family groupings in that some members are more recognisably
part of their class than others. Basic to word behaviour are two sets of criteria, namely, the
morphological, and the syntactic. Morphological criteria, as we have seen, are concerned with
the structure of words. Important here are such processes as inflection. Most verbs will inflect
to show tense (show + ed), most nouns to indicate plurality (bat + s), and many adjectives to
show the comparative and superlative (fat > fatter > fattest). But there is no one criterion
which all words in a particular class will obey. As a consequence, linguists also use syntactic
criteria, in particular, the distribution of a word in an individual string. This is the topic we
will be considering in my next post: Whereabouts a word can occur in a phrase or sentence is
an important indication of its class.

Using the behaviour of individual words as an indication of word class means that our
approach is descriptive rather than prescriptive. And we shall also find that, because of the
variable character of words, each class will contain within it several sub-classes. So there are
sub-classes of nouns, verbs, and so on. And because the different classes have features in
common it is possible to cross-classify them into larger groups. Linguists, therefore,
differentiate between lexical and grammatical classes. The former contain words which have
a meaning outside the context in which they are used, and include nouns, lexical verbs,
adjectives and adverbs, whilst the latter consist of words which are only meaningful as part of
the syntactic frame for example, prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns and auxiliary verbs.