Compound Words’ Classification - A Cognitive Linguistic Based Study

Abstract

This study attempts to classify compound words on the basis of Cognitive Linguistics and compares their usage trends using Computational Linguistics. In order to study compound words, it is very important to study the structure of a sentence because compound word in essence, is a condensed form of a sentence. After the Chomskyan Revolution, the concept of Cognitive linguistics in the structure of a sentence came into limelight. He explains about d-structure (deep structure), which determines the logic or meaning and s-structure (surface structure) that is the phonetic part. Lees, working with Transformational Generative Grammar (TGG), treated compound words, not as separate units but as a kind of embedded sentences and hinted for possible presence of d-structure and s-structure in compound words, which this study tries to investigate. Then on the basis of the Idealized Cognitive Model proposed by Lakoff and Fauconnier, compound words have been classified into transparent, opaque and counterintuitive compound words. Using Google Books Corpus, this study also compares their usage trends. This is done using usage frequency, defined in this work, which is analogous to productivity for affixed words calculated by G. E. Booij. Each class of compound word formed on the basis of ICM is found to have different usage frequency and the possible reasons for this are discussed.