Ing for growing delicate plants’, the latter is given a

different stress pattern — a unity stress on the first

component in our case. Compound words have

three stress patterns:

b) a double stress, with a primary stress on the

first component and a weaker, secondary stress on

the second component, e.g. ´blood-`vessel,

´mad-`doctor — ‘a psychiatrist’, ´washing-

ma`chine, etc. These two stress patterns are the

commonest among compound words and in many

cases they acquire a contrasting force distinguishing

compound words from word-groups, especially

when the arrangement and order of ICs parallel the

word-order and the distributional pattern of a

phrase, thus a ‘greenhouse — ‘a glass house for

cultivating delicate plants’ is contrasted to a ‘green

‘house — ‘a house that is painted green’; ‘danc-

ing-girl — ‘a dancer’ to a ‘dancing ‘girl — ‘a girl

who is dancing’; a ´mad-`doctor — ‘a psychiatrist’

to ‘mad ‘doctor — ‘a doctor who is mad’. The signifi-

cance of these stress patterns is nowhere so evident

as in nominal compounds built on the n+n deriva-

tional pattern in which the arrangement and order

of the stems fail to distinguish a compound word

from a phrase.

c) It is not infrequent, however, for both ICs to

have level stress as in, e.g., ‘arm-'chair, ‘icy-

'cold, ‘grass-'green, etc.

Meaning

Semantically compound words are generally mo-

tivated units. The meaning of the compound is first

of all derived from the’ combined lexical meanings

of its components.

The stem of the

word board is polysemantic and its multiple mean-

ings serve as different derivational bases, each with

its own selective range for the semantic features of

the other component, each forming a separate set

of compound words, based on ’specific derivative

relations. Thus the base board meaning ‘a flat

piece of wood square or oblong’ makes a set of

compounds chess-board, notice-board, key-

board, diving-board, foot-board, sign-board;

compounds paste-board, carboard are built on

the base meaning ‘thick, stiff paper’;

bases and the structural meaning of the pattern.

The semantic centre of the compound is the lexical

meaning of the second component modified and re-

stricted by the meaning of the first.

compounds like in all derivatives varies in degree.

There are compounds that are completely motivated

like sky-blue, foot-pump, tea-taster. Motivation

In compound words may be partial, but again the

degree will vary. Compound words a hand-bag, a

flower-bed, handcuffs, a castle-builder are all

only partially motivated, but still the degree of

transparency of their meanings is different: in a

hand-bag it is the highest as it is essentially ‘a bag’,

whereas handcuffs retain only a resemblance to

cuffs and in fact are ‘metal rings placed round the

wrists of a prisoner’; a flower-bed is neither ‘a

piece of furniture’ nor ‘a base on which smth rests’

but a ‘garden plot where flowers grow’; a castle-

builder is not a ‘builder’ as the second component

suggests but ‘a day-dreamer, one who builds cas-

tles in the air’.

There are compounds that lack motivation alto-

gether, i.e. the native speaker doesn't see any ob-