5.3. Specific features of the English compounds

1) Both ICs of an English CW are free forms. The conditions of distribution are different but the sound pattern the same, except for the stress: afternoon, anyway, anybody, anything, birthday, day-off, downstairs, everybody, fountain-pen.

The combining elements in Russian are as a rule bound forms (руководство); in English combinations like Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Soviet, Indo-European / politico-economical occur very rarely.

2) The regular pattern for English is a 2-stem CW. An exception – the combining element is a form-word stem: mother-in-law, bread-&-butter, whisky-&-soda, deaf-&-dumb, good-for-nothing, man-of-war, mother-of-pearl.

3) The important role the attributive syntactic function can play in providing a phrase with structural cohesion & turning it into a CW: “... we’ve done last-minute changes before ...” (Priestley); the same combination as a free phrase in the function of an adverbial: we changed it at the last minute more than once. Elements of a phrase united by their attributive function become further united phonemically by stress & graphically by a hyphen, / even solid spelling: common sense – common-sense advice; old age – old-age pensioner; the records are out of date – out-of-date records; the let-sleeping-dogs-lie approach (Priestley). Cf.: Let sleeping dogs lie (a proverb). This last type is also called quotation compound / holophrasis. The speaker / writer creates those combinations freely as the need for them arises: they are originally nonce-CWs. They may become firmly established in the language: the ban-the-bomb voice, round-the-clock duty. Other syntactical functions unusual for the combination can also provide structural cohesion: working class is a N phrase, when used predicatively it is turned into a CW: He wasn’t working-class enough.

5.4. Classification of compounds

5.4.1. Classification criteria

Semantically, CWs → motivated & idiomatic (in the motivated ones the meaning of the constituents – direct / figurative). Structurally, CWs → endocentric & exocentric, with the subgroup of bahuvrihi, syntactic / asyntactic combinations.

According to the type of composition:

1. juxtaposition without connecting elements: heartache n, heart-break n, heart-breaking a, heart-broken a;

2. composition with a vowel / consonant as a linking element: speedometer n, handicraft n, statesman n.

3. CWs with linking elements represented by preposition / conjunction stems: down-&-out n, matter-of-fact a, son-in-law n, pepper-&-salt a, wall-to-wall a, up-to-date a, on the up-&-up adv (continually improving), up-&-coming. There are also a few other lexicalised phrases like devil-may-care a, forget-me-not n, pick-me-up n, stick-in-the-mud n, what’s-her name n.

According to the structure of ICs:

1) consisting of simple stems: film-star;

2. where at least 1 of the constituents is a derived stem: chain-smoker;

3. where at least 1 of the constituents is a clipped stem: maths-mistress (BrE), math-mistress (AmE). The subgroup contains abbreviations: H-bag (handbag) / Xmas (Christmas), whodunit n (for mystery novels);

4. where at least 1 of the constituents is a compound stem: wastepaper-basket.