COMPOUND ADJECTIVES IN ENGLISH

Abstract

 Compounds, defined as words formed by combining two or more words, are ubiquitous in English. Among various word-formation processes in morphology, compounding stands out as highly productive. This paper explores key concepts related to noun and adjective compounds. After a brief theoretical introduction on the structure and types of compounds, the study presents a corpus-based classification of 32 noun and adjective compounds. Examples were collected from women's magazines (Cosmopolitan) and analyzed to illustrate the structure and stress patterns of compounds. While compounds often have transparent compositional meanings, some may exhibit metaphorical or figurative meanings, potentially leading to confusion among speakers. Compounding remains a highly productive aspect of language, enabling the creation of numerous new words with both literal and non-literal meanings. Their translations might prove to be problematic for various reasons such as lack of translation equivalents, culture-specific lexemes, or differences in structural characteristics of the two languages. The paper thus provides the morphological and semantic analyses of the source vocabulary, lists the offered translations, and categorizes the adequacy of translation in the target language. Some pedagogical implications are offered in the conclusion.