Composition. It is a highly productive way of forming new words by joining not less than two stems together.

 

It is a highly productive way of forming new words by joining not less than two stems together.

Compound words occur in language as free forms. In a compound word the immediate constituents obtain integrity and structural cohesion that make them function in a sentence as a separate lexical unit.

The structural cohesion may depend upon unity of stress, solid or hyphenated spelling, semantic unity, unity of morphological and syntactic functioning or on the combination of several of these factors.

The integrity of a compound is manifested in its indivisibility, i.e. the impossibility of inserting another word or word-group between its elements.

Let’s take the word a sunbeam. If we can't insert any words between the article and the word (a bright sunbeam - we can't insert any without distorting its meaning) for they are not words but morphemes of the same word.

In describing the structure of a compound we should examine three types of relations, namely 1) the relations of the members to each other, 2) the relations of the whole to its members and 3) correlation with equivalent free phrases.

Some compounds are made up of determining and determined part, which can be called the determinant and the determinatum. The determinatum is grammatically the most important part which undergoes inflections.

In our example sunbeam the second part is determinatum. The determinant “sun” serves to differentiate it from other beams.

The semantic integrity of a compound is very often idiomatic in the character, so that the meaning of the whole is not a mere sum of its elements. A compound is very often different in meaning from a corresponding syntactic group. Thus a "blackboard"; is very different from a black board. Its essential feature is being a teaching aid: not every board of black colour is a blackboard. A blackboard may not be a board at all, but a piece of linoleum or some other suitable material. Its colour is not necessarily black, it may be brown оr something else.

A "chatterbox"; is not a box, it is a person who talks a lot without saying anything important.

The "slowcoutch"; is also idiomatic and is not a vehicle but a person who moves slowly.

a fuss-pot - суетливый человек

a blackleg (strice-breaker)

blackmail (to get money by threats)

bluestoking - синий чулок

“Sunday” is the day named in honour of God of the sun and literally sun day, but for M.E. combination "a rainy Sunday"; will not seem contradictory.

man-of-war - военный корабль (not a military man)

merchantman - торговое судно

There are on the other hand non-idiomatic compounds with a perfectly clear motivation.

Thus: seaman, aircraft, airship, spaceman, spaceship - are readily understood even when heard for the first time. Here the meaning of the constituents are added up in creating the meaning of the whole and name the referent (то, к чему относится) either directly or figuratively.