The Mechanisms of Proversion and Reversion in Producing the Compounds of the English Language

In: Vestnik Volgogradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Serija 2, Jazykoznanie = Lingustics, Heft 1, S. 170-179

Abstract

The subject-matter of this paper is the structural mechanism of the proverse and reverse word-compounding as a word-building process in modern English while having the model of word-combination as a starting basis for such transformations. The mechanism of proversion represents the process transforming a word-combination into a compound word while preserving the initial order of components coinciding with that of a word-combination (A + B → AB). When the reverse process of compounding takes place, the components of a resulting compound word change their places as to each other in comparison with a component-order in an initial word-combination (A + B → BA). The hypothesis of the investigation is that the compounding by proversion occurs if words of an initial word-combination are tied with the syntactic relation of agreement, while the reverse compounding usually tends to provide compounding on the basis of the syntactic relation of control. The proversive model is mostly the basis for creating nominative parts of speech, and the result of the reverse intergration of a word-combination into a compound word is manifested mainly by a verb or a verbal. The article describes the general and certain specific models of proverse and reverse compounding with the indication of their functional and stylistic peculiar features. The conclusion indicates the perspectives of working out the problem on the basis of other languages and on the comparative ground.