R. S. Ginzburg, S. S. Khidekel, G. Y. Knyazeva, A. A. Sankin a course in modern english

§ 35. Correlation Types of Compounds.


The description of compound words through the correlation with variable word-groups makes it possible to classify them into four major classes: adjectival-nominal, verbal-nominal, nominal and verb-adverb compounds.

I. Adjectival-nominal comprise four subgroups of compound adjectives, three of them are proper compounds and one derivational. All four subgroups are productive and semantically as a rule motivated. The main constraint on the productivity in all the four subgroups is the lexical-semantic types of the head-members and the lexical valency of the head of the correlated word-groups.

Adjectival-nominal compound adjectives have the following patterns:

1) the polysemantic n+a pattern that gives rise to two types:

1. 
   compound adjectives based on semantic relations of resemblance with adjectival bases denoting most frequently colours, size, shape, etc. for the second IC. The type is correlative with phrases of comparative type as A +as + N, e.g. snow-white, skin-deep, age-long, etc.
   
2. 
   compound adjectives based on a variety of adverbial relations. The type is correlative with one of the most productive adjectival phrases of the A + prp + N type and consequently semantically varied, cf. colour-blind, road-weary, care-free, etc.
   

2) the monosemantic pattern n+v_en based mainly on the

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