2001 EnglishWords

• (Stockwell & Minkova, 2001) ⇒ Robert P. Stockwell, Donka Minkova. (2001). “English Words, 1st ed.” In: Cambridge University Press

Subject Headings: English Word.

Notes

• It divides Compound Words into Syntactic Compounds and Lexical Compounds.
• It defines a Syntactic Compound as a compound that can be parsed into its constituents. E.g. playgoer (someone who goes to plays regularly)
• It defines a Lexical Compound as a compound whose meaning you'd have to lookup in a dictionary. E.g. ice cream, crybaby, and sweetheart.

Quotes

Book Overview

• This new edition is concerned primarily with the learned vocabulary of English - the words borrowed from the classical languages. It surveys the historical events that define the layers of vocabulary in English, introduces some of the basic principles of linguistic analysis, and is a helpful manual for vocabulary discernment and enrichment. The new edition has been updated with a discussion of the most recent trends of blending and shortening associated with texting and other forms of electronic communication and includes a new classification of the types of allomorphy. It discusses important topics such as segment sonority and the historical shifting of long vowels in English, and includes a new section on Grimm’s law, explaining some of the more obscure links between Germanic and Latinate cognates. Exercises accompany each chapter and an online workbook contains readings and exercises to strengthen knowledge acquired in the classroom.

Compounding

• This is the largest and therefore most important source of words...
• …
• We begin by distinguishing between syntactic compounds and lexical compounds. (Footnote: We have drawn examples freely from a truly great piece of scholarship, The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation, by Hans Marchand, 2nd edn. 1969, C. H. Bech'she: Munich.) One can always figure out what a syntactic compound means. Such compounds are formed by regular rules of grammar, like sentences, and they are not, therefore, listed in a dictionary. So if someone were to say
  • "Playing quartets is fun."
• We know, just from the rules of grammar, that they could say,
  • "Quartet playing is fun."
• Quartet playing is therefore a syntactic compound. Other transparent syntactic compounds are shoemaker (someone who makes shoes). “bookkeeper (someone who keeps the books in order). “washing machine (we wash things with the machine). “candlelight (light provided by candles). “birdcage (a cage for birds). “playgoer (someone who goes to plays regularly). In fact the majority of compounds we use on a daily basis are the transparent syntactic ones.
• On the other hand, we cannot figure out what ice cream or iced cream means just from the rules of grammar. We cannot compute the sense of ice cream from something like,
  • They iced the cream.
• Thefore ice create is a lexical compound which (if we dont' know the meaning already) has to be looked up in the dictionary like a totally novel word. Crybaby must also be treated as a lexical compound, because it refers not to babies that cry but to people who act like babies that cry, i.e., who complain when anything makes them unhappy. Similarly, girlfriend is not just a girl who is afriend, nor is boy friend just a boy who is a friend. Both of these compounds actually mean what they appear to mean of the surface, but usually the mean more than that. Sweetheart is not a "sweet heart," whatever that would be, but it is an opaque compound that has been in the language since the thirteenth century.

References

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	Author	volume	Date Value	title	type	journal	titleUrl	doi	note	year
2001 EnglishWords	Robert P. Stockwell Donka Minkova			English Words, 1st ed			http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521709170