PIE Word Formation (6)

COMPOUNDS (Part 2)

***EXOCENTRIC COMPOUNDS***

EXOCENTRIC compounds are not headed: neither of the constituents
expresses the basic meaning of the whole or determines its
part-of-speech assignment. The semantic head is elliptic, i.e. not
explicitly expressed ("external" to the compound). The Sanskrit name of
the type, <bahuvri:hi->, is itself an example of exocentricity. It
consists of <bahu-> 'much' and <vri:hi-> 'rice'. If the compound were
endocentric, it would refer to a kind of rice. However, its actual
meaning is 'possessing much rice'; it's formally an adjective (which
means that it doesn't inherit the part of speech of its M2), and if
substantivised, it denotes a person. Typical English bahuvrihis include
<humpback>, <nitwit>, <sabretooth>, <lowlife>, <flatfoot>, <highbrow>,
<loudmouth>, etc.; most of them can be described as POSSESSIVE
compounds, which means that they refer to an entity _having_ the
property expressed by the members of the compound (often, however,
figuratively rather than literally). In English, most substantivised
exocentric compounds denote humans or animals, and the same is probably
true of other Indo-European languages and of PIE itself. The
characteristic dithematic type of personal name, known from many
branches of IE has its origin in bahuvrihi-type epithets.

In the simplest case an exocentric compound is a simple concatenation of
two stems, as in *trí-pod- 'having three feet' (Gk. trípous, Ved.
tripád-), *n.'-p&2tor- 'having no father' (Gk. apáto:r), *pl.h1ú-pk^u-
'rich in livestock' (RV puruks.ú-). The general tendency is to place the
main accent on M1, though this may be overridden by the principle of
contrastive accent (bahuvrihis are essentially adjectives, so they may
receive final accent by contrast to substantival compounds). In many
cases, however, an entire compound can be used as a base for further
derivation, usually by means of adjectivising *-ó-; then, typically,
both members of the compound get phonetically reduced -- often with some
extra compression of the segmental material beyond the normal reduction
of ablauting morphemes -- and the accent usually remains on the final
vowel of the compound stem:

*dwó: 'two' + *h2áp- 'water' --> *[dwi- + h2p-]-ó- --> *dwih2pó-
'island, sandbank' (RV dvi:pá-)

*néwo- 'new' + *d(H)ég^Hom- 'earth, ground' --> *[newo- + dg^Hm-]-ó- -->
*newog^Hmó- 'groundbreaking' (Gk. neokHmós 'novel')

***COPULATIVE COMPOUNDS***

In COPULATIVE compounds (Skt. dvandva-), neither member is semantically
dominant; the compound refers either to an entity that is equally
characterised by both constituents, such as Eng. hunter-gatherer
'someone who is both a hunter and a gatherer', OE werewulf (Gk.
lukantHro:pos), or to a complex of separate but conceptually coordinated
entities, such as Eng. master-slave (relation) 'involving a master and a
slave', Skt. mata:-pitarau (du.) 'mother and father' (= 'the parents'),
dHarma-artHau (du.) 'religious merit and wealth'. As in the case of
bahuvrihis, further derivation may take a dvandva compound as its input,
with the same characteristic reduction of the constituents:

*wih1ró- 'man' + *pék^u- 'cattle' --> *[wih1ro- + pk^u-]-ó- -->
*wiropk^ó- 'abounding in men and cattle' (RV viraps'á- 'copious')

Copulative structures can involve more than two members, cf. La.
suovetauri:lia 'a sacrifice of a pig, a sheep and a bull' ([su:- + ovi-
+ tauro-]).

***UNIVERBATIONS***

A fixed syntactic construction, with both elements normally inflected,
may become lexically "fossilised" into a compound, as in Lat. Iuppiter ~
Iu:piter < *djeu p&2ter 'Father Sky' (both elements in the vocative
case) or Gk. despote:s < PIE *dems potis 'master of the house' (with the
genitive ending of the first element preserved). In the early history of
the individual branches, and in all likelihood in PIE itself, adverbial
particles tended to be fused with verb stems, evolving into verbal prefixes.

Piotr