0.Introduction
0.1 Arbitrariness of the linguistic sign is one of the fundamental principles of modern linguistics. "The conventionality of the semantic relationship is reflected synchronistically in the possibility of multiple meaning (synonymy, polysemy, honomymy); diachronically, in the possibility of linguistic change, phonetic as well as semantic; panchronistically, in various languages having different names for the same, or nearly the same, sense ( 'tree', 'arbre','Baum' ), and the same, or nearly the same, name for different senses ('tear', 'lacrima'; French 'tir', 'shot'; German 'Tier', 'animal')." (Stephen Ullmann, 1957)
However, the non-motivation of the sign does not prevent us from finding out in each language some signs that are motivated, thus revealing another important principle of linguistics, that is unarbitrariness.
The concept of absolute and relative arbitrariness is clearly stated by Saussure in his remarkable Course of General Linguistics. "...both 'vingt' and 'dix-neuf' are unmotivated in French, but not in the same degree, for 'dix-neuf' suggests its own terms and other terms associated with it (e.g. dix 'ten', neuf 'nine', vingt-neuf 'twenty-nine', dix-huit 'eighteen',etc.) Taken separately, 'dix' and 'neuf' are in the same class as 'vingt', but 'dix-neuf' is an example of relative motivation.
As is suggested by Stephen Ullmann, there are three principal types of motivation: phonetically motivated, syntactically motivated, and semantically motivated. While onomatopoetic words are apparent cases for the first one, most compounds account for the rest two.
0.2. A compound is a unit consisting of two or more bases.( Quirk,1973) "Semantically compounds can be seen to be isolated from ordinary syntactic constructions by having a meaning which may be related to but can not simply be inferred from the meaning of its parts." nouns.
A normal way of classifying compounds is by the function they play in the sentence as nouns, verbs, adjectives,etc. nouns. For the sake of brevity, here we constrain ourselves within a discussion of compound nouns.
1.Syntactic motivation in compounds
1.0 Syntactic motivation, namely, the syntactic relations between the two bases of compounds, account for a large part of self-explaining compounds. A possible subclassification of compound nouns could be made by the part of speech of each bases. However, problem rises. For instance, while both 'daydreaming' and 'sightseeing' are compound nouns from 'N+V-ing', the former derives from "X dreams during the day", the latter, "X sees sights."
A careful insight into compounding structures reveals that some compounds contain a verb as the head while others do not. A subclassification is adapted here according to the significant role the verb plays as Predicate in realizing a certain syntactic relation. Therefore, we have two major groups: " V + X " (X can be any sentence elements like subject, object, and adverbial.) and Verbless ones.
1.1 "V + X" compound nouns
1.1.1 Subject plus Verb
While SV is one of the basic sentence types in English, a subject-and-verb relation bears high productivity to derive compounds. Forms based on this can be "S + V" as in 'sunrise' (the sun rises), 'headache' (the head aches), "V + S" as in 'crybaby' (the baby cries), 'flashlight' (the light flashes), and "V-ing + S" as in 'floating bridge' (the bridge floats), 'dancing girl' (the girl dances).
1.1.2 Verb plus Object
Compounds
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