4) Composition

This is a type of word-building in which new words are produced by combining 2 or more stems. Compounds function in a sentence as a separate lexical unit/ For example, armchair (consists of 2 stems – arm and chair), bed room (consists of 2 stems - bed and room). Structurally, compounds are divided into neutral, morphological and syntactic.

1) The neutral compounds have no linking elements between the stems. For example - handbag, doorbell, postman. These words consist of simple affexeless stems, they are called simple, neutral compounds.

2) Neutral derivational compounds have affixes in their structure. For example – the words “teenager and cinemalover” are neutral derivational compounds, because they have suffix “er”.

3) Neutral contracted compounds have a shortened stem in their structure. For example – the words “T-shirt” and “TV-viewer” are neutral because they have no linking element between 2 stems, they are contracted because they have a shortened element (“T” and “TV”)

4) Morphological compounds are few in number and this type is non-productive. These are words in which 2 or more stems are combined by a linking vowel or consonant. For example – Anglo-American(“o” is a linking element), speedometer(“o” is a linking element), tradesman(“e” is a linking element).

5) syntactic compounds are formed from segments of speech preserving in their structure articles, prepositions or adverbs. For example, - father-in-law(“in” is a preposition), Jack-of-all-trades (“of” is a preposition, “all” is a pronoun).

6) There are also compounds developed from word combinations. For example – Leg-pulling (from “to pull one’s leg’), what-iffing (from “what if”), break-in-the-bedder (from “a person who prefers to have his breakfast in bed”)

From the semantic aspect compound words can be classified into non-idiomatic and idiomatic. a)To non-idiomatic compound words we refer such compounds, whose meaning can be derived from the meanings of their constituent parts. For example – a dinning-room, writing paper, a wedding gown. b) Idiomatic compounds consists of 2 groups: 1. To the first group we refer such words in which one of the components or both have changed their meaning. In this case the meaning of the whole word can’t be defined as the sum of the constituent meanings. For example – ‘a lady-killer’ – is a man who fascinates women; ‘a chatter box – this is not a box, but a person who likes to talk. Yet, knowing the meanings of the constituents, it’s possible sometimes to understand what the whole word means. For example – “a blackbird” is some kind of bird; “good for nothing” isn’t a complement, but the word with the negative meaning. 2. To the second group of idiomatic compounds we refer such words whose general meaning is impossible to deduce from the meanings of their constituents. For example – “a ladybird” is not a bird, this is not a lady, but an insect(божья коровка); “a bluebottle” – a flower(василек) and also an insect(мясная муха), a tallboy means комод. In this group the constituent meaning bland to produce an entirely new meaning. There are many compound adjectives in Modern English, their meaning in most cases is based on comparison: the second is the name of a colour used in its actual sense and the first is the name of an object, animal, flower, bird with which the comparison is made. For example – dovewhite(голубинно белый) and navyblue(голубой как военно морские войска ), forget-me-not-blue (голубой как незабудка). But there are compound adjectives which are not built on comparison. For example – “dark electric blue ”(темно голубой электрик)