Compound words, Blends and

Phrasal words
Ahmad Fatih Alifudin
Muhamad Farhan
Muhammad Rizqon Vidiansyah
 Compound word vs Phrase
 Compound word is a word that is composed of two or more
separate elements; a mixture. While, phrase is a small group
of words standing together as a conceptual unit, typically
forming a component of a clause. For example :
- Black board (‘board that is black’) *phrase
Blackboard (‘board for writing on’) *compound
- Silk worm (‘worm made of silk (e.g. a soft toy)
Silkworm (‘caterpillar that spins silk’)
- Hair net (net made of hair) *phrase
Hairnet (‘net for covering hair’ ) *compound
Compound word divided into 3 parts :
Compound verb
Compound adjective
Compound noun
 Compound verb

 A compound verb is a verb that consists of more than one

word. There are several types of compound verbs including:
- Verb-verb (VV): stir-fry
- Noun-verb (NV): air-condition
- Adjective-verb (AV):dry-clean
- Preposition-verb (PV): underestimate, outrun, overcook.
 Compound Adjective
 A compound adjective is an adjective that comprises more
than one word. For example :
- noun–adjective (NA): sky-high, coal-black, oil-rich
- adjective–adjective (AA): grey-green, squeaky-clean, red-hot
- preposition–adjective (PA): underfull, overactive
 Compound nouns
 A compound noun is a noun that is made with two or
more words. For example :
- verb–noun (VN): swearword, drophammer, playtime
- noun–noun (NN): hairnet, mosquito net, butterfly net, hair
restorer
- adjective–noun (AN): blackboard, greenstone, faintheart
- preposition–noun (PN): in-group, outpost, overcoat
 Headed and headless compound
 Headed compounds are compounds which have an internal
centre (it is called endocentric), for examples like blackboard,
greenstone, etc. But headless compounds are compounds which do
not have an internal centre (it is called exocentric), for
examples:
- adjective–noun (AN): loudmouth and redshank (a kind of bird that has
red legs).
- noun–noun (NN): stickleback(a kind of fish with spines on its back) and
sabretooth.
- Verb-noun (VN): pickpocket ( is not a kind of pocket) and
faintheart (is not a kind of heart but a kind of person who has a
faint heart)
 Blends and acronyms
 In all the examples that we have examined so far, the whole of
each component root (or base) is reproduced in the compound.
Sporadically, however, we encounter a kind of compound where at
least one component is reproduced only partially. These are known
as blends. Example:
- Partial blends, where only one component is truncated, are
talkathon (from talk plus marathon) and cheeseburger (from
cheese plus hamburger). The ready acceptance of cheeseburger
and similar blends such as beefburger and vegeburger may have
been encouraged by a feeling that hamburger is a compound
whose first element is ham – scarcely appropriate semantically,
since the meat in a hamburger (originally a kind of meat pattie
from Hamburg) is beef.
 Acronyms is a word that is formed by combining some parts
(usually the first letters) of some other terms. examples are
NATO (for North Atlantic Treaty Organisation), ANZAC (for
Australian and New Zealand Army Corps), RAM (for
random access memory), SCSI (pronounced scuzzy, from
small computer systems interface), and AIDS (from acquired
immune deficiency syndrome). Intermediate between an
acronym and a blend is sonar (from sound navigation and
ranging).
 Compound containing Bound
Combining Word
 Most of the compounds that we have looked at so far involve
roots that are free forms. But the vocabulary of English,
especially in scientific and technical areas, includes a huge
repertoire of compounds that are made up of bound roots,
known as combining forms. For example :
 - anthropology and plantigrade
anthrop(o)-‘human’ plus -(o)logy‘science or study’ yields a word
that means ‘science or study of human beings’, and planti- ‘sole (of
foot)’ and -grade ‘walking’ yields a word meaning ‘walking on the
soles of the feet’.
 Phrasal Words
 Phrasal words are complex items that function as words, yet
whose internal structure is that of a clause or a phrase rather
than of a compound. An example of phrasal word is the noun
jack-in-the-box. Structurally this has the appearance of a noun
phrase in which the head noun , jack, is modified by a
prepositional phrase, in the box, exactly parallel to the phrases
people in the street or book on the self. However, it forms its plural
by suffixing –s not to the head noun( as in books in the self) but to
the whole expression: not jacks-in-the-box but jack-in-the-boxes.
Though structurally a phrase but it behaves as a word.
 Another examples:
- Noun Phrase : should we buy a yellow house?
- Verb Phrase : you can put off your shoes here
- Prepositional Phrase : the cupcake with colorful sprinkles is
yours
- Adjective phrase : the final exams were unbelievably difficult
- Adverbial phrase : they have a house right by the ocean
 Reduplication
 In morphology, reduplication is an operation which copies
some part (or all) of the base and attaches the copied element
(the reduplicant) to the base. Reduplication forms a
predictable grammatical pattern, it is not any kind of
repetition of phonological material. The function can be
semantic (intensity, plurality, etc) or grammatical (agreement
with subject, aspect, etc) Reduplication refers to words
formed through repetition of sounds. Examples include okey-
dokey, film-flam, and pitter-patter.
 Coinage
 Coinage is the word formation process in which a new
word is created either deliberately or accidentally
without using the other word formation processes and
often from seemingly nothing. For example :
 Aqua
 Kodak
 Google