One very productive way that new words are derived in English is by compounding, that is, combining two free morphemes to create a new word. Endocentric compounds have a head that determines the meaning and the category of the compound, and in English, the head is the second part of the compound.
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Check Yourself
1. In the sentence, “The room contained a bearskin rug,” what kind of compound is
bearskin
?
2. In the sentence, “Randy worked as a cowhand on the ranch,” what kind of compound is
cowhand
?
3. In the sentence, “Hyunji manages a bookshop,”, what kind of compound is
bookshop
?
Answers
Video Script
We’ve seen that English frequently uses affixation to derive new words. Affixation is quite
productive
, meaning that our mental grammar uses the process for many different words, even for new words that come into the language. You’ve probably generated new words yourself sometimes by adding affixes to existing words.
Another extremely productive derivational process in English is
compounding
. Compounding is different from affixation. In affixation, a bound morpheme is affixed to a base. Compounding derives a new word by joining two morphemes that would each usually be free morphemes.
For example, if I take the free morpheme
green
, an adjective, and combine it with the free morpheme
house
, a noun, I get the new word
greenhouse
. We can tell that this is a new word because its meaning is different from what we would get if we just combined the two words to make a phrase. We could walk down the street describing houses: This is a brown house and this one here is a tall house and here is a red house and here is a greenhouse. But a greenhouse is something different from a house that’s green! It’s a new word, derived by compounding.
Credit: Joe Shlabotnik on Flickr; Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
Image “Greenhouse at Wilson Farm, East Lexington MA“ by John Phelan is licensed under CC BY 3.0.
Another way that words derived by compounding differ from words derived by affixation is that a compound word doesn’t really have a base or root that determines the meaning of the word. Instead, both pieces of a compound make a sizeable contribution to the meaning. For example,
yoga pants
are pants that you wear to do yoga, and
emerald green
is the particular colour of green that emeralds are. So it doesn’t make sense to say that compounds have a root.
On the other hand, there is one part of a compound that has a special role, which we can see if we think about the categories of the words that make up a compound. If you look at these examples,
dry clean
stir fry
outrun
power wash
Each compound is made up of a different category of the word on the left plus a verb on the right. But in each case, the compound word is a verb. Even if both parts of a compound contribute to the meaning of the compound, it’s the
head
of a compound that determines its category. We say that English is a
head-final
language because in English the second part of the compound determines the category of the compound. Some languages are
head-initial
, with the head as the first element in a compound.
In many compounds, the head determines the category and also constrains the meaning of the compound. So
dog food
is a kind of food, not a kind of dog, and
yoga pants
are a kind of pants, not a variety of yoga. Compounds like this, where the meaning relationship between the head and the whole compound is obvious, are called
endocentric
. But in some compounds, the meaning relationship is not so transparent. For example, a
redhead
is a person, not a kind of head; a
nest egg
is money that you’ve saved, not a kind of egg; a
workout
is not a particular kind of out, and
facebook
is not a book at all! Compounds where the meaning of the head does not predict the meaning of the compound are said to be
exocentric
.