Compounding

Atkins and Levin discuss the difficulties that lexicographers face when authoring dictionary entries, taking a detailed focus on groups of verbs in which all words contained within are near-synonyms of one another. In their paper, they analyse the group semantically based upon the word ‘shake’, comparing the similarities and differences in contextual word placement. They then proceed to discuss the compilation methodology and the differing priorities and visual layouts that various dictionaries have.

What intrigued me was their discussion of how authors of fiction have been more frequently exploiting a mismatch of subject-type and verb-type as a literary device. They cite ‘cell lights [that] shudder’ and ship sails that ‘trembled, and drooped, and slipped down’ as examples thereof. This trend has introduced confounder variables into the equation for lexicographers as words have been more liberally used in a semantic sense toward artistic ends. Every moment, the corpus of language grows as new words are invented and old ones are used in novel ways.

This issue could be extrapolated to apply to compound words as well. Haspelmath explains these in his work after a discussion of morphemes and allomorphs and how these are the building blocks of compounds. He demonstrates that different languages function in vastly different manners in terms of syntax, morphology, and phonology. For example, the existence of six cases in Russian necessitates regular suffix addition along with instances of stem allomorphy, while Slobin likewise mentions in his paper that Russian verbs frequently take on direction-indicating prefixes, as in the literal translation into English of ‘там выскочила сова’ as ‘there out-jumped owl’.

Taking a closer look at compound words, I believe that German would be an excellent language to examine as a case-in-point. Haspelmath devotes a few lines to a discussion of how German compounds often take on interfixes as in Liebesbrief or Volkswagen. Additionally, German words have the ability to be notoriously long. It is quite possible to go on placing words together to create a much longer compound which actually makes semantic sense. For example, one could translate the phrase ‘house cleaning’ into Wohnungsreinigung – a concatenation of Wohnung (dwelling) and Reinigung (cleaning). This is a fairly common word. However, one could continue doing this to create even more elaborate constructions that capture a great deal of meaning in just one word. A case in point would include the word Schmutzfangmattenservice – a compound made up of four base lexemes which come together to mean ‘doormat service’.

However, many of these compounds would not be found in a German dictionary. It is very possible to quickly create meaningful and grammatically-sound German compounds with the necessary interfixes when speaking. This, however, was one of the greatest challenges I faced when I first learnt the language. It seems that whether or not a given compound exists in a German dictionary is almost a matter of randomness. If subject-type verb-type mismatches are posing problems for lexicographers, I would also like to further examine the challenges that newly-coined compounds present.