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A certain type of compound (''endocentric'') consists of a '' Head '', 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. Obviously, an endocentric compound tends to be of the same Part Of Speech (word class) as its head. In other cases, the compound does not have a head, and its meaning 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 the Sanskrit tradition, this is called a '' Bahuvrihi '' compound; another (modern) term is ''exocentric'' compound, meaning that the concept represented by the compound lies outside its parts. 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. Composition should not be confused with Derivation , where bound morphemes are added to free ones. A special kind of composition is Incorporation , of which noun incorporation into a verbal root (as in English ''backstabbing'', ''breastfeed'', etc.) is most prevalent (see below). FORMATION OF COMPOUNDS Compound formation rules vary widely across language types. In a perfectly language", which also consists of two nouns and no markers. In a more Synthetic Language , the relationship between the elements of a compound may be marked. In German, for example, the compound ''Kapitänspatent'' consists of the lexemes ''Kapitän'' (''sea captain'') and ''Patent'' (''license'') joined by the Genitive Case marker ''-s''. In the Latin Language , the lexeme ''paterfamilias'' contains the (archaic) genitive form ''familias'' of the lexeme ''pater'' (''father''). Agglutinative Language s tend to create very long words with derivational morphemes. Compounds may or may not require the use of derivational morphemes also. The well-known Japanese compound 神風 '' Kamikaze '' consists only of the nouns ''kami'' ("god, spirit") and ''kaze'' ("wind"). The longest compounds in the world may be found in Finnish and Germanic Languages , such as Swedish . German examples include ''Kontaktlinsenverträglichkeitstest'' ("contact-lens compatibility test") and the jocular ''Rheindampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsstellvertreter'' ("Rhine steamship-company vice-captain"). In theory, even longer compounds are possible, but they are usually not found in actual discourse. Compounds can be rather long when translating technical document from English to, for example, Swedish. "Motion estimation search range settings" can be directly translated to "rörelseuppskattningssökningsrymdsinställning"; the length of the word is theoretically unlimited. COMPOUND TYPES IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES Compound nouns Most natural languages have compound nouns and sometimes compound adjectives. The position of the head within a compound often depends on the Branching tendency of the language, i. e. the most common order of constituents in phrases where nouns are modified by adjectives, by possessors, by other nouns, etc. 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. 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"). Verb-noun compounds In Spanish there is a very common type of compound noun consisting of a verb (conjugated for third person singular, present tense, indicative mood) followed by a noun (usually plural), such as ''rascacielos'' (modelled on "skyscraper", lit. "scratches skies") and ''sacacorchos'' ("corkscrew", lit. "removes corks"). 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. "toasts bread"). English prefers another type of verb-noun compounds, in which an argument of the verb is Incorporated into the verb, which is then usually turned into a Gerund , such as ''breastfeeding'', ''finger-pointing'', etc. The noun is usually an instrumental complement. Compound adpositions Compound Preposition s formed by prepositions and nouns are common in English and the Romance languages (consider English ''on top of'', Spanish ''encima de'', etc.). Japanese shows the same pattern, except the word order is the opposite (with Postposition s): ''no naka '' (lit. "of inside on", i.e. "on the inside of"). Other examples Spanish:
Italian:
German:
Finnish:
Icelandic:
RECENT TRENDS Although there is no universally agreed-upon guideline regarding the use of compound words in the English Language , in recent decades written English has displayed a noticable trend towards increased use of compounds. SEE ALSO
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