Productive Types of Compound Adjectives

Table 2

 

 

Free Phrases	Compound Adjectives
Compounds Proper	Derivational Compounds	Pattern	Semantic Relations
1) (a). as white as snow	snow-white	—	n + a	relations of resemblance
(b). free from care; rich in oil; greedy for power; tired of pleasure	care-free, oil-rich, power-greedy, pleasure-tired	—	n + a	various adverbial relations
2) covered with snow; bound by duty	snow-covered duty-bound	—	n + ven	instrumental (or agentive relations)
3) two days	(a) two-day (beard) (a) seven-year (plan)	— ‘	num + n	quantitative relations
4) with (having) long legs	—	long-legged	[(a + n) + -ed]	possessive relations

instrumental, locative and temporal relations between the ICs which are conditioned by the lexical meaning and valency of the verb, e.g. state-owned, home-made. The type is highly productive. Correlative relations are established with word-groups of the V_en+ with/by + N type.

3)the monosemantic пит + п pattern which gives rise to a small and peculiar group of adjectives, which are used only attributively, e.g. (a) two-day (beard), (a) seven-day (week), etc. The type correlates with attributive phrases with a numeral for their first member.

4)a highly productive monosemantic pattern of derivational compound adjectives based on semantic relations of possession conveyed by the suffix -ed. The basic variant is [(a+n)+ -ed], e.g. low-ceilinged, long- legged. The pattern has two more variants: [(пит + n) + -ed), l(n+n)+ -ed], e.g. one-sided, bell-shaped, doll-faced. The type correlates accordingly with phrases with (having) + A+N, with (having) + Num + N, with + N + N or with + N + of + N.

The system of productive types of compound adjectives is summarised in Table 2.

The three other types are classed as compound nouns. Verbal-nominal and nominal represent compound nouns proper and verb-adverb derivational compound nouns. All the three types are productive.

II. Verbal-nominal compounds may be described through one derivational structure n+n_v, i.e. a combination of a noun-base (in most cases simple) with a deverbal, suffixal noun-base. The structure includes four patterns differing in the character of the deverbal noun- stem and accordingly in the semantic subgroups of compound nouns. All the patterns correlate in the final analysis with V+N and V+ prp +N type which depends on the lexical nature of the verb:

1) [ n+(v+-er) ], e.g. bottle-opener, stage-manager, peace-fighter. The pattern is monosemantic and is based on agentive relations that can be interpreted ‘one/that/who does smth’.

2) [ n +(v + -ing)], e.g. stage-managing, rocket-flying. The pattern is monosemantic and may be interpreted as ‘the act of doing smth’. The pattern has some constraints on its productivity which largely depends on the lexical and etymological character of the verb.

3) [n+(v+ -tion/ment)], e.g. office-management, price-reduction. The pattern is a variant of the above-mentioned pattern (No 2). It has a heavy constraint which is embedded in the lexical and etymological character of the verb that does not permit collocability with the suffix -ing or deverbal nouns.

4) [n+(v + conversion)], e.g. wage-cut, dog-bite, hand-shake,the pattern is based on semantic relations of result, instance, agent, etc.

III. Nominal compounds are all nouns with the most polysemantic and highly-productive derivational pattern n+n; both bases re generally simple stems, e.g. windmill, horse-race, pencil-case. The pattern conveys a variety of semantic relations, the most frequent are the relations of purpose, partitive, local and temporal relations. The pattern correlates with nominal word-groups of the N+ prp +N type.

IV. Verb-adverb compounds are all derivational nouns, highly productive and built with the help of conversion according to the