2. Classification of compounds may also be done according to the part of speech they belong to.

 In modern English word composition is mainly characteristic of nouns (sunbeam, Sunday, sunshine). The most common patterns for noun compounds are: n+n—»N (ice-ream) and adj+n—»N (blackboard, software). Noun compounds may also be the result of compounding adverbial and nominal stems adv+n—»N as in after-thought, back-talk. Compound nouns with a verb as the first or the second component (v+n—»N as in searchlight, or n+v—>N as in sunshine) take place in English, too, though it is not quite clear whether it is really a verb or a converted noun.

 Word composition in modern English is widespread among adjectives, too. The most common type of compound adjectives is the combination of two derivational bases: nominal and adjectival (n+adj—>Adj): airtight, life-long, stone-deaf, foolproof, and sugarfree.

There are also many other different patterns according to which compound adjectives may be derived: composition of two adjectival bases (adj+adj—»Adj) as in deaf-mute, bitter­sweet, of nominal and participial bases (n+Ving/ed—>Adj) as in peace-loving, dog-tired, man-made, of adjectival and participial (adj+Ving/ed—>Adj) as in hard-working, double-ended, or even adverbial and participial bases (adv+Ving/ed—»Adj) as in well-read, over-qualified. But verbs do not combine with adjectives in English compounds.

 Composition is not characteristic of modern English pronouns, though historical traces of former word composition processes are still observed there (somebody, anywhere, nothing, oneself).

 In modern English verb composition does not occur nowadays, though it was quite common in the past and was effected by compounding adverbial and verbal stems: outgrow, offset, inlay. Verbs that look like compounds are usually the result of other derivational processes like conversion (ttf honeymoon, to snowball) and back-derivation (to proofread, to baby-sit, to dry-clean). Some verbs such as to apple-polish vi 'to attempt to ingratiate oneself and vt 'to curry favour with (as by flattery) are condensed and lexicalized expressions rather than derived words by composition. As with an idiom, we need to recall the verb's original usage to understand its contemporary meaning. As it is stated in the dictionary of etymology, the verb appeared from the traditional practice of school children bringing a shiny apple as a gift to their teacher. So, in the case of verbs we usually deal with pseudo-compounds, or derivational compounds.

3. Semantically, compounds are divided into:

—endocentric, or subordinate, where the second element is the head and hyperonym for the compound: sunshine, airtight, blackboard (they make up the bulk of modern English compounds);

• exocentric (or bahuvrihi) where neither the first nor the second element is the head or a hyperonym of a compound. This includes derivated compound nouns fiddle sticks, grass-widow, scape-goat with the least degree of semantic motivation;

coordinative, or copulative, (or dvandva), where both the derivational bases are equally important. They are subdivided into: reduplicative: fifty-fifty, hush hush; phonetically varied rhythmic twin forms: chit-chat, zig­zag, a walkie-talkie; additive: girl-friend, sofa-bed, oak-tree, Anglo-American.

4. Compounds may be classified according to the means of composition into:

1) those without linking elements that are formed by merely placing one base after another; they are subdivided into:

a) Syntactic compounds that do not violate syntax laws of word combining in English: house-dog, day-lime, a red-breast, a baby-sitter, and

b) Asyntactic compounds in which the order of constituents violates syntax laws in English: oil-rich, power-driven, early-riser;

2) those with a linking element o (most characteristic of scientific terms), /, or s (not productive in modern English): Anglo-Saxon, sociolinguistics, handicraft, sportsman.

5. Compounds may also be classified according to the part-of-speech meaning of their derivational bases. There are:

— nominal compounds with n+n bases: windmill;

—nominal-verbal compounds built according to the patterns n+(v+-er) bottle-opener, n+(v+-ing) police-making, n+(v+-tion/ment) though the second clement is seldom or never used in modem English as a free form, office-management, n+(v+conversion) dog-bite;

• nominal-adjectival with the pattern n+adj: snow-white;

• adjectival-nominal with the pattern adj+n: blackboard;

• adverbial-verbal bases: outgrow, offset, inlay

• verbal-adverbial (v + adv) + conversion: a break-down; and some others.

6. Compounds may also be classified according to the structure and semantics of free word groups with which they correlate. For example, the structural pattern of a compound noun n+n correlates with various verbal-nominal word groups of the V+N type (subject+verb, or verb+object) (to make image): 'the one who makes image' is an imag- maker or 'the result or process of making image' is image-making.

6. A special type of compounds such as telegram, telephone, astronaut, aerophones is called neoclassical. In these compounds different elements from classical languages Latin or Greek acting as roots and derivational bases combine with each other forming new words (see Classification of morphemes above in this chapter).

Many new words are created when elements that started out as segments in blends become combining forms making the new words look like compounds or at least a suffixal derivative: rice-a-rony, sport-a-rama, plant-o-rama, porn-o-topia, work-o-holic. This is especially common in advertising and commerce.

Compounds should not be mixed up with -word groups of phraseological character like mother-in-law, hrotlier-in-arms, bread-and-butter, milk-and-water, or longer combinations of words in attributive function that for stylistic purposes may be treated like unities and thus hyphenated: the-young-must-be-right attitude, the nothing-huts of his statements. These constructions arc neither compounds nor phraseological units. They are usually treated as a result of lexicalization of syntactic structures.