Is there a class of neoclassical compounds,

and if so is it productive?*

LAURIE BAUER

Abstract

Discussions of English word formation include a category of neoclassical

compounds to deal with formations such as geology and telephone. This
type is claimed to show behavior that makes it clearly distinct from both
affixation and compounding. A close examination of actual words suggests
that this picture is oversimplified. Rather than there being a discrete class
of neoclassical compounds, there is a range of types of lexical enrichment,
and every category has a fuzzy boundary. Accordingly, it is suggested here
that it may be useful to view English words as being formed within a
conceptual space defined by three dimensions: a simplex-compound dimen-
sion, a native-foreign dimension and an abbreviated-nonabbreviated dimen-
sion. Neoclassical compounding is a label given to one small section within
this three-dimensional space, but actual words diverge from the prototype
considerably.

Introduction

This paper has its origins in two points of unease with current linguistic
theory. From the second of these we can derive two further questions.
The first of these is the theoretical point made by many Dutch morphol-
ogists from Schultink onward, and inducting Van Marie (1985), that
productivity deals only with the coinage of new words in a subconscious
fashion. In particular, Van Marie interprets this as meaning that no
words that are coined exclusively on a foreign basis can be coined
productively: "Only those morphological processes may rank as 'pro-
ductive' which (i) can be fully characterized in terms of 'major lexical
categories,' and which (ii) are not restricted to the 'normative' strata of
the lexicon" (Van Marie 1985: 60).

Linguistics 36-3 (1998), 403-422 0024-3949/98/0036-0403

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404 L. Bauer

If nothing else, this raises the question of what we mean by "produc-

tivity," since there are many languages in which the coining of words
with a foreign basis is, in the words of Di Sciullo and Williams (1987:
8) "productive in the most basic sense of the word," namely it permits
lexical innovation.
My second point of unease concerns the analysis of neoclassical com-
pounds. Adams (1973) and Bauer (1983) operate with a category of
neoclassical compounds to explain formations such as mammography and
telephone, which are not classical words, but are formed in English
according to the principles of classical languages. But when you consider
the lists of words found in dictionaries of neologisms, it is frequently the
case that they do not fit the fairly neat picture of neoclassical compounds
that is implied by such handbooks. I shall illustrate the kind of phen-
omena I mean in some detail later. Here, I just wish to draw attention
to two problems that arise from this observation: (i) how good a picture
of word-formation processes does our current taxonomy provide? and
(ii) how should we conceive word-formation rules?
In this paper I shall try to present some data and, deriving from that
data, a description that will go some way to answering these questions
and settling my points of unease. First I shall explore the nature of the
neoclassical compound in some detail, as this is the particular type of
word-formation process that I have chosen to provide a means of access
to the problems raised above. Then I shall go on to illustrate the kinds
of formations that can be found in many English dictionaries that lead
me to believe that neoclassical compounding is not a well-defined cat-
egory. On the basis of such data, I shall elaborate a form of description
that, I believe, goes some way to explaining the kinds of formation we
actually find. And finally I shall consider the implications of the descrip-
tion for nature of word-formation rules and the theory of productivity.

Neoclassical compounds

To begin, then, I want to examine the nature of neoclassical compounds,

restricting my comments to English although I think what I have to say
here has a more general application in European languages. In order to
place this discussion in a wider framework, I should like to start by
drawing attention to some features of native compounds in English.
Compounds may be defined as words (more precisely, lexemes) made
up of two or more stems. We do not need here to look at the details of
the various types of compound, since for purposes of comparison we
may restrict our attention to endocentric noun -f noun compounds of the

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 Neoclassical compounds 405

type called tatpurusa by the Sanskrit grammarians. These are compounds

such as houseboat, office desk, station wagon and so on. Semantically they
are characterized by what Allen (1978) calls the variable R, namely by
the fact that the semantic relationship between the two elements is not
constant, and that the actual meaning of the new compound cannot be
deduced in isolation from its context. The clearest illustration of this is
the compound London bus, which can be a bus going to London, a bus
coming from London, or a bus operating within the London area.
Grammatically and semantically these compounds are also subject to
what Allen (1978) calls the ISA condition, and which we might call a
condition of hyponymy or headedness: compounds in English are hypo-
nyms of their head element, which is the right-hand element in such
compounds. So a houseboat ISA boat, houseboat is a hyponym of boat,
and boat is the head of the construction in several senses, perhaps most
obviously in determining the inflectional marking and agreement for the
compound as a whole.
If we look at compounds in Classical Greek we find a similar range of
facts. Noun -f noun compounding is not the major pattern of compound-
ing in Classical Greek, but the pattern is known, and some examples are
given below.
(1) Word Gloss Meaning
anemo-mulos wind-mill 'windmill'
melisso-keipos honey-grove 'apiary'
psukho-paidi soul-child 'adopted child'
nutki-koraks night-crow Owl'
Here we find an unmarked ordering of modifier + head,1 the behavior
of the word as a whole being determined by the morphological and
semantic nature of the head. We also see that there is a range of meaning
relationships between the two elements of the compound (although that
range may not be quite as wide as it is in English).
Neoclassical compounds are words that use this same method of forma-
tion and use Greek (usually, but occasionally Latin) elements and yet
were not produced for use in the classical languages but are modern
formations for use in modern languages. Again they have right-hand
heads and fulfill the ISA condition and the variable R condition:
(2) geology study of the earth
neuroglia glue that sticks the nerves together
photograph drawing made by light
phytochrome color in plants

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406 L. Bauer

There is one major descriptive problem in dealing with neoclassical

compounds in English, and that is the status of the -o- that generally
appears between the elements. In Classical Greek, the -o was a thematic
vowel, but it gradually became identified as a compositional linking
element, which is how it is analyzed in Modern Greek (Palmer 1980:
260; Jannaris 1897: 304; Joseph and Philippaki-Warburton 1987: 225).
The problem remains in current English as how best to analyze the
linking -o~ in words like photograph. There are four possibilities: (a) it is
viewed as a linking element between phot and graph, which is awkward
given how rarely phot appears in the form in English (photic, photopsy);
(b) it is viewed as part of the first element, on the grounds that when
the first element is attached to lexemes, it takes the -o- with it
(photoluminescence); (c) it is viewed as part of the second element, on
the grounds that when the second element is attached to lexemes, it takes
the -o- with it (Addressograph®, phraseograph); (d) it belongs to both the
initial and final elements (as in [b] and [c]), and the sequence of -oo- is
morphophonemically simplified to a single -o-. Of these (c) is perhaps
the least likely, but while (a) is the point of view usually taken by
lexicographers, (b) appears to commend itself to native intuitions, in the
sense that clippings invariably keep the -0, for instance (photo). I shall
not attempt to solve this problem here, but I draw attention to it as a
descriptive problem with neoclassical compounds that has not been fully
worked out.
To summarize, there is plenty of evidence for terming neoclassical
compounds "compounds." They differ from native compounds (a) in
having a linking element of a kind that is not found in native compounds
and (b) in using stems from classical languages rather than stems from
English; nevertheless they are words formed in English by the combining
of two (or more) stems.

Cases that provide descriptive problems

I stated at the outset that part of the motivation for this paper lay in the
observation that there were many words that failed to fit this fairly neat
description of neoclassical compounds. I shall now justify this claim,
illustrating with words that can be found in dictionaries of established
words and dictionaries of neologisms (Ayto 1989, 1990; Barnhart et al.
1990; Butler 1990; Green 1991; Tulloch 1991, etc.).
The first major type to provide such descriptive problems is the type
made up of an English word combined with one of these neoclassical
stems, words like sociof linguistics]. Specifically, we need to ask whether

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 Neoclassical compounds 407

socio- is a prefix or a compound element, and thus whether the complete

word is a derivative or a compound. The argument for calling such words
derivatives is that an obligatorily bound morph is added to a lexemic
stem to form the word, as is the case with prefixation. The argument for
calling them compounds is that in other (neoclassical) words, such as
sociology, the soci(o)- element is treated as a stem, not as a prefix; that
the element socio- has a semantic value or density2 more similar to that
of lexemes than to that of many prefixes (particularly prefixes that are
not of this type); also the variable R semantic relationship between
"prefixes" of this type and their bases is rather similar to that holding
between the elements in neoclassical compounds:
(3) geo[morphology] shape of the earth
/hamburger Jology study of hamburgers
photo [therapy] treatment of disease by light
eco[doomster] a person who foretells doom in ecological
matters
This type of formation seems to provide a compromise between the
neoclassical nature of neoclassical compounds and the native nature of
native compounds, but with the extra quirk that the result looks like
affixation in English. It is certainly not straightforward neoclassical
compounding.
A second type of descriptive problem arises from clippings and blends.
Consider the word telethon. This word may either be viewed as being
made up from a clipping from television and a splinter removed from the
word marathon, or as a blend of television and marathon. It is thus not
clear whether it is a compound, with -thon having sufficient lexical density
to count as a lexical element in its own right, a derivative using a new
suffix -thon, or a blend. Note that not only does the rather fuzzy borderline
between compounds and blends affect English, but that grammarians
describing other languages use the term "compound" to describe words
that would probably have been termed "blends" if they had arisen in
English. For instance, consider the following examples from Hebrew
(Glinert 1989: 441):
(4) rakevel < rakevet kevel
train cable
'cable car'
(5) midraHov < midraHa reHov
pavement street
'pedestrian precinct'
and the following from Dakota (Boas and S wanton 1911)

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408 L. Bauer

(6) came < cante ze

heart disturbed
'be troubled'
(7) hämani < häyetu mani
night walk
'walk at night'
Some other forms whose analysis is uncertain include Eurocrat (which
might be a clipping added to the Greek element kratos 'power', or might
be a clipping added to a splinter from bureaucrat, or might be a blend
from European and bureaucrat) and technophobia (which might be a
genuine neoclassical compound from Greek elements, or might have a
Greek combining form added to an English word and thus be one of
those instances where it is hard to distinguish between prefixation and
neoclassical compounding). We also find words whose analysis is clear,
but which are a mixture of two kinds of word formation. One example
is securocrat. A securocrat is a ruling security person, so that this is a
clipping with a combining form (or possibly a new combining form
created by clipping, which may be the same thing). Similarly, since the
combining form gastro- means 'having to do with the belly', the semantics
of the word gastrodrama ('a theatrical performance in which food is an
important ingredient') indicates that it must have gastro- clipped from
gastronomy.
Another reason we have types that are not purely neoclassical com-
pounds is that such compounds or compound elements are sometimes
found combined with affixes. In instances like gynocidal, we can say that
a neoclassical compound gynocide is combined with an English affix -al.
The only difficulty with such a position is that it is frequently the case
that adjectives of this type are formed before their ostensible bases, so
there is no listed form gynocide. The problems involved here are not
necessarily any different from those caused by an overgenerating mor-
phology in other parts of the system, but attention needs to be drawn
to the phenomenon. Other examples include amphiphilic, geopathic,
hydroponic, summilexic, etc. More problematic are words like transgenic.
This means 'produced by the artificial insertion of genetic material from
one species into another' and contains Latin trans-, which in English is
a prefix not a combining form, -gen-, which is a combining form, and
the suffix -ic. It is the use of a prefix with a combining form that makes
this form particularly noteworthy and makes it appear to be a compro-
mise between a neoclassical compound and a derivative.
There are also occasional instances where things that appear to be
affixes are reinterpreted as bases, possibly neoclassical ones. One of the

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 Neoclassical compounds 409

clearest examples of this is superette 'a small supermarket'. This might

be a Latin first element or it might be a prefix that has an independent
existence in English. In either of these cases, though, we have the problem
that super- is not used as a base anywhere else, and that we appear here
to have a word built out of a prefix and a suffix with no base. An
alternative is to see super as a clipping from supermarket. This gives the
appropriate meaning, though super as a clipped form usually means
'superintendant'. Another example of a similar phenomenon is non-ism
('the avoidance of all products that might be harmful to the physical or
mental health'). Here there is no possibility of seeing either element as a
clipping, and although ism is occasionally found as a free form, the
semantics suggests that this is not what is intended here.
Finally, we find words that seem not to have a strictly morphological
makeup at all. An example is hydrophonic. There is a pun here on
hydroponic, but the formation is a regular combination of hydro- 'water'
and -phone 'sound' with the English suffix -ic. The meaning is masked
by this, however, since it is a system in which plant growth is stimulated
by sound, nothing to do with the instrument called a hydrophone.
The picture that emerges here is one in which there is not simply a
class of neoclassical compounds, well defined and clearly distinct from
other types of word formation. Not only do we find combining forms
being used with other combining forms and with English words, we find
them being used with affixes and with combinations of other items and
affixes, and we find them being invented like any other nonce word.
Rather than having a clearly defined set of neoclassical compounds, it
seems that neoclassical compounding acts as some kind of prototype,
from which actual formations may diverge in unpredictable ways.

A descriptive metaphor

One of the ways in which neoclassical compounds differ from other

patterns of English word formation is that they are not native but foreign.
The -o- link, however it is analyzed, is ultimately a formative of Greek
word formation, not one from English word formation. A form such as
hamburgerology is initially an English compound, and finally a neoclassi-
cal compound. In other words it is a compromise between the Greekness
of the neoclassical compounds and the Englishness of the native com-
pounds. Many other languages distinguish between native and foreign
word-formation patterns. Dutch, German, Czech, Russian, while having
both kinds, tend to keep native bases with native affixes and foreign
bases with foreign affixes rather more than English does. A form like

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410 L. Bauer

Sterbation might be totally ungrammatical in German, but starvation is

an actual word of English (albeit unusual precisely in this mix of native
and foreign). Vietnamese has native compounds and foreign (Chinese)
compounds, which differ in the order of modifier and head, as shown
below (Thompson 1965: 130).
(8) -\se
vehicle fire
'railway train'
(9) Jhoa -\sa
fire vehicle
'railway train' (Chinese loan)
Much recent work in lexical phonology and morphology (see, e.g.
Allen 1978) has operated with a stratified lexicon with affixes being
labelled as class I (internal, stress-affecting) or class II (external, stress-
neutral). Although the distinction between class I and class II affixes in
English is rarely presented in this guise, it can be seen as being in essence
a distinction between native and foreign affixation — with the rider that
French affixation is not seen as being as foreign in English as Latin or
Greek (for instance, the suffixes -age and -ment in English are class II
but derive from French; the only Greek affix that is class II according to
at least some discussions is -ize, which comes into English through French
rather than direct from Greek). We can therefore set up a cline along
which words (in English or in other languages) can be distinguished, with
fully native at one end and maximally foreign at the other.
A second dimension along which we can distinguish formation types
is the traditional one of compound versus affixed versus simplex. Because
the foreign compound elements we are concerned with here are not free-
standing elements of English (except by accident: ology can stand alone,
ography cannot), we cannot distinguish these in terms of the potential
independence of the constituent elements, as we might otherwise. Rather
we have to say that in compounds the elements are potential stems in
the language of origin and are still analyzable as such in English. This is
a very clumsy definition and demands some degree of bilingualness on
the part of coiners of neoclassical compounds. The problems this implies
will be taken up again briefly later. Simplex words are unanalyzable.
Derivatives are analyzable, but one of the elements involved is not a
potential stem.
At this point, therefore, we have a two-dimensional matrix, with
simplex-to-compound along one axis and native-to-foreign on the other.
This is presented in Figure 1, with some approximate positionings for a
few formation types.

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 Neoclassical compounds 411

Iδ loan sputnik Zeitgeist

,Ρ dzo

neo-classical cpd:
atypical geology
butchers
transgenic
hydro-slide

management
word-manufacture: native compound:
skag redress house-boat

simplex derivative compound

Figure 1. A two-dimensional matrix

This description, however, fails to take into account the words that
were listed earlier in which at least one of the elements was clipped.
Where compounds are concerned, the genre is well known for English,
with examples such as heli-tele TV or video camera mounted on a
helicopter'. The examples discussed earlier show that this type is also
found with words that include a combining form. Prefixes and suffixes
are also sometimes added to shortened bases (NB: this should be distin-
guished from instances where an affixed form is subsequently subject to
clipping): heritize (< heritage). At the simplex end of this scale are words
that look like simplices but are etymologically acronyms, though the
original may not be known to speakers: laser, radar, etc. A third dimen-
sion, therefore, is provided by a cline from abbreviated to nonabbreviated,
with intermediate steps being provided by degrees of shortening; see
Figure 2.

Discussion

The suggestion being made here, then, is that new words can be envisaged
as being constructed within a three-dimensional space, and that the three
dimensions are simplex-derivative-compound, native-foreign, and non-
abbreviated (or "full")-abbreviated. A large part of the motivation for
this notion is the number of compromise words that are found. It is
possible to consider this three-dimensional space in two ways: the first is
that it can be seen as a series of 12 cells in a matrix, each representing
the intersection of three of the marked points on the three dimensions;
the second is that compromise words can be sought — forms that sit

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412 L. Bauer

Perestroika KGB
,
glitznost

heli-tele

op-art

redness pre-AIDS ag

nonabbreviated abbreviated

Figure 2. A third dimension for Figure 1

between the extreme positions. I shall consider the notion from both
points of view.
First of all, consider the 12 cells that arise from the intersection of the
three dimensions. These are laid out in Table 1.
I would like to draw particular attention to two things in Table 1. The
first is the undifferentiated use of the label "loan," which makes no
reference to the structure of the borrowed word. It might be argued that
the structure of the borrowed word is irrelevant in English — after all,
we do not need to know that perestroika is a derivative to use it properly.

Table 1. The three-dimensional space viewed as 12 categories

Type Example Category name

Foreign Simplex Full dzo, bistro loan

Foreign Derived Full gemütlich, arbitrageur loan
Foreign Compd Full Zeitgeist, Festschrift loan
Foreign Simplex Abbr. Ogpu loan
Foreign Derived Abbr. candor loan
Foreign Compd Abbr. Stasi loan
Native Simplex Full skag word manufacture
Native Derived Full redness derivative
Native Compd Full houseboat (native) compound
Native Simplex Abbr. AIDS acronym
Native Derived Abbr. heritize derivative
Native Compd Abbr. heli-tele clipping compound

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 Neoclassical compounds 413

There are at least two problems with such a view. The first is that exactly
the same statement could be made about words whose structure is
English: we do not have to recognise dearth as a derivative to use it
properly. This is not, however, generally accepted as a reason for ignoring
this structure. For the people who introduce loan words, the structure in
the lending language is probably transparent. The second problem is that
there are cases where the structure CAN be deduced by the monolingual
speaker because of parallel structures in other loan words (consider
arbitrageur, justice, sputnik, etc.). It may be that nothing hangs on this;
but unless we are sure, we should not ignore such information. The
second point about Table 1 that I wish to draw attention to is the number
of types of word formation that are not mentioned in the table, includ-
ing, specifically, neoclassical compounds. This is because neoclassical
compounds (and other types such as blends, clippings, etc.) are in fact
compromise types.
I shall now turn to consider the compromises between the types set
out in Table 1. It was suggested in Figure 1 that a compromise between
native and foreign at the simplex end might be loans from other varieties
of English. We might also take the point of view that acronyms that do
not comply with native phonotactic rules are a compromise here: I know
of no such examples in English, but fnac in French is such an example.
We might also point out that some loan words do not comply with
phonotactic requirements of English, though most are made to do so,
and they are more foreign than those that do comply with such rules.
Compromises between native and foreign derivatives are those "less
foreign" foreign derivatives that come from French, and words with
foreign bases but English affixes. Forms like sociolinguistic, discussed
earlier, provide such compromises at the compound end of the scale.
And neoclassical compounds themselves, being formed from foreign
elements but as words of English, are also a compromise set here.
Blends with recurrent splinters are compromises between derivatives
and compounds, as are forms such as sociolinguistic, which are a bit like
derivatives and a bit like compounds. Between derivatives and simplices
we find conversion, which though parallel to derivation in function shows
no formal marking of that function. Another type of compromise here
is derivation by ablaut, where there is some formal marking, but it is not
additive.
At the compound end of the scale we can distinguish between many
degrees of abbreviation, with the examples in Figure 3 showing a cline
of abbreviation. I am in two minds as to whether initialisms that are not
acronyms should count as abbreviated compounds or as new simplices

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414 L. Bauer

house boat politically correct

photograph opportunity

guess estimate electronic mail

hazardous chemical
I
houseboat guestimate photo-op e-mail Hazchem PC

Increasing abbreviation ^

Figure 3. Degrees of abbreviation in compounds

like acronyms, but I have included them here as a possible end-point to

the scale.
At the simplex end there is less room for variation in degrees of
abbreviation, though there is variation in the number of syllables left
and the number of syllables deleted in clippings, as is indicated by the
following examples: esky < eskimo, aggro < aggravation, ag < aggrava-
tion, comms < communications, bute<phenylbutazone.
The point of these examples is that there are many intermediate stages
on all three of the dimensions identified earlier. This indicates that we
are indeed dealing with dimensions rather than categories. Some of the
categories listed in the handbooks (e.g. blends) seem to be rather less
coherent than is usually assumed. Part of the difficulty in dealing with a
class of neoclassical compounds may simply be that we have a label
"neoclassical compound" that seems to presuppose a well-defined class.

Productivity in this framework

So far, the three-dimensional description that has been advocated in this

paper has been purely taxonomic: it does no more than permit a classifi-
cation of forms. I would suggest that this classification has certain advan-
tages over standard classifications in that (a) it allows for the variety of
types actually found, (b) because of this it does not force us to fit actual
types into a Procrustean terminology, but instead (c) it allows us to see
how actual types relate to more than one prototype and (d) it allows us
to see similarities between various formation types that may previously
have been obscure. It thus seems to me that the description provided
here has value, even if it is no more than a taxonomy.
However, for nearly half a century the term "taxonomic" has tended
to be loaded with extremely negative connotations in linguistics, and

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 Neoclassical compounds 415

something that is "merely taxonomic" is usually considered insufficient.

In any case, if we wish to deal with productive uses of word formation,
we need to ask whether such a taxonomy can be seen as part of some
kind of description of language production. However, it is not the aim
of this paper to provide a complete new model of the production of
vocabulary, or to explain precisely what constitutes a potential compro-
mise word and what (if anything) does not. If such questions are answer-
able, they may be so, in the longer term, within the optimality-theoretic
approach — an approach that I see as being fundamentally compatible
with the taxonomy presented here. My task in this paper is the much
more modest one of exploring whether a new classification of this kind
can be seen as providing insights for the production of words or not. I
shall argue below that it can, although I shall not attempt to develop
these insights in any formal way here.
One possible implication of a description of this type for productivity
is that there is a single rule of word formation with variable settings for
the three dimensions. Thus, instead of a rule of the form prefix form X
to a member of form-class Y, we might expect a single word-formation
(or better: word-creation) rule: produce a new word. Such a "rule" merely
directs us to the three-dimensional space within which any new word will
have to be positioned. This implies a very different picture of word
formation from anything with which we are currently familiar, particu-
larly since it appears that no direct appeal to form can be made in such
a rule. The precise form of the new word will have to be determined by
factors such as semantic ones, which are beyond the normal scope of
generative-type rules.
Although this is not a standard view, it may have some advantages
in terms of psychological reality. Consider the position of the early
European immigrants to New Zealand, who were faced with a wide range
of avian fauna that was unfamiliar to them. They could choose to give
an unfamiliar bird its English name from other parts of the globe (sea-
gull), to describe it (native wood-pigeon), to name it for some particularly
salient feature (parson bird — which has a white bunch of feathers at
the throat), or to borrow its name (tui). The fact that tui and parson bird
denote the same bird shows that the choice was not automatic and that
there were different options available. While it may be true that a noun
can be made by placing two nouns together in an appropriate prosodic
and morphological relationship, this does not help the speaker decide
between tui and parson bird. This nonstandard way of reviewing matters
comes closer to explaining the situation in which the speaker is placed.
This also says something about the use of loan words. The standard
view among many Dutch morphologists (see above) is that foreign word-

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416 L. Bauer

formation patterns can never be productive. Nevertheless, new words are

formed on foreign patterns or on foreign bases regularly. Either there is
some equivocation with the word "productive" here (which may well be
the case), or we need to explain the paradox. We can bring these two
points of view closer together if we recognize that the formation of words
is done by individuals. Societies may adopt or fail to adopt various
coinages, but the words are always coined by individuals — perhaps by
several individuals independently of each other over a large period of
time. Even in predominantly monolingual societies, individuals may be
bilingual (to a greater or lesser extent) and may thus have the knowledge
to form new words on nonnative patterns. If the need is great enough,
these new words may be adopted by the society in which the bilinguals
live and become widely used. The society may not have to make any
appeal to foreign patterns of word formation, just accept some of those
that its members use, until eventually, if sufficient with a single pattern
are borrowed, the pattern may become nativized. In some cases, of
course, its members are not sufficiently bilingual. The word television was
subject to a lot of normative criticism for mixing Greek and Latin
elements; hamburger provides a notorious case of a word that was miscon-
strued by someone who did not have enough knowledge of German. A
word does not have to be foreign for mistakes of this kind to arise.
Dry den's coinage of witticism on the pattern of criticism (Marchand
1969: 307) ignores the fact that there is no English word *wittic as there
is (or was, in the relevant part of speech) critic.
A consequence of the view being outlined here is that it denies a
clearcut distinction between automatic productivity and the kind of
productivity that may not be entirely rule-governed (semiproductivity,
creativity, analogy — the terms do not overlap exactly but are all used
as a contrast to automatic rule-governedness). This seems to me to be a
strength rather than a weakness. That is, I would at least want to query —
if not deny outright — the justification of a distinction between these
two (or more) categories. I have discussed this elsewhere in greater detail
(Bauer 1996). The crux of the problem is that such distinctions are
usually drawn either on the basis of differing frequencies of use of different
patterns or on the basis of different ease of use of various patterns. Where
frequency is a fundamental motivator, it must be noted that (a) frequency
differences provide at best clines rather than categorical distinctions and
(b) differences in frequencies do not necessarily reflect differences of type.
Where ease of use is the fundamental motivator, it must be noted that
there is plenty of evidence (a) that morphological processes show a cline
of difficulty, some inflectional processes being harder to acquire, for
instance, than others, and (b) that some morphological processes can be

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 Neoclassical compounds 417

hard to use on some occasions and easy on others. While I agree that
the matter has not yet been resolved, it seems to me at the moment that
the evidence favors the notion that there is a gradual cline from the most
productive to the least productive type of process rather than an abrupt
division.
There is an apparent counter-argument to this, which the approach
outlined above appears to ignore to its detriment, and that is that
although actual word types that get listed in dictionaries of neologisms
have many intermediate patterns, as we discussed earlier, the really pro-
ductive patterns — the patterns that are so productive that the words
formed according to them do not make it into dictionaries at all and yet
can be found in large corpora — are not formed according to these
intermediate patterns, but are formed on relatively restricted patterns
that are much closer to the prototypes (Baayen and Renouf 1996). The
most productive patterns in English, for instance, include the formation
of adverbials with -ly suffixation, the formation of nouns by -ness suffix-
ation, and so on. If words are formed without recourse to formal rules,
why should this general pattern be observed? If the answer is simply one
about rule-governed or non-rule-governed, then the new model is of no
value. If there is an alternative answer, the new model may be useful.
A first approximation to an alternative view may be found in the view
of analogy put forward by Becker (1990). According to Becker all word
formation is by analogy, but some analogies are more likely than others.
One of the factors affecting the likelihood of analogies is the type fre-
quency of potential models. Because -ness and -ly provide many potential
models, they are more likely to form the input to new analogies than the
-ter of laughter and the -ric of bishopric. Of course, this is not sufficient.
There is no precise equivalence between the type frequency of words
using a particular morphological pattern and the productivity of that
pattern. Productivity can vary apparently independently of such matters.
Consider Figure 4, which shows the diachronic productivity of -ment in
English according to the OED. If the productivity of -ment were deter-
mined purely by the number of appropriate analogies, we would expect
a gradual and consistent increase in the use of the suffix. If the number
of available bases were the only other consideration, we might expect a
reduction at the end of the period. In neither case would we expect the
two peaks of productivity that the OED suggests. (The problems of
dealing with a source like the OED apply here, as elsewhere, of course;
the real productivity in terms of new coinages must have been higher at
most periods than is shown by this data; nevertheless I take it that the
pattern shown here is at least indicative.)3

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 §

Years

Figure 4. Productivity of -ment (based on the Oxford English Dictionary,)

I do not wish to try to overinterpret the data presented in Figure 4 by

trying to explain why this particular pattern should be observed. It may
nevertheless be worth pointing out that a similar bimodal distribution is
observed if words in -ment are calculated as a percentage of new words
registered in the OED for each period instead of as raw numbers — the
peaks are just in different places. The important thing to note from this
figure is that productivity may change over time in ways that are not
directly related to the number of available bases. This indicates that there
must be limitations on the use of analogies that are yet to be accounted
for, if Becker's hypothesis is to be maintained. Such data provide diffi-
culties for both the rule-governed approach and the analogical approach
and are not a byproduct of the theory.
Such difficulties may be partly overcome, I think, by suggesting that
appropriate models for the analogy are determined not simply by parallels
with the same affix but by the density of types within the three-dimen-
sional space postulated here. Affixes like -ly and -ness are in the thick of
a highly populated part of the potential word-creation space and thus
provide better models than words from the less densely populated parts.

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 Neoclassical compounds 419

This is still not enough: truth, reality, and correctness are all formed in
the densely populated part of the space, but only one of these patteras
shows any great productivity, so more is required. In this connection, it
would be interesting to know whether all languages choose the same part
of the three-dimensional space to have their preferred word-formation
patterns or not. If they do, this may be to do with general cognitive
principles for the formation of new words.
One such general cognitive principle, helping to answer the question
as to why the prototypical cases are the most productive ones, may
have to do with transparency. Classic cases of prefixation, suffixation,
and native compounding are exhaustively analyzable into recurrent
units of form that have a fixed meaning (the classical morpheme, in
fact). This makes such words not only easy to interpret, but easy to
form (see, e.g., Clark 1993: 116). Along with other principles, such as
the preference for formations that do not involve morphophonemic
changes (Clark 1993: 120), such considerations restrict the patterns
that can be maximally productive. There must be other such prin-
ciples, and there would be value in finding out what they are. An
anonymous referee suggests the existence of a transpositional function
as well as a lexical-enrichment function for some processes and the
ability of some processes but not others to create textual coherence.
These seem like excellent candidates, and I should like to see the list
developed.

Is neoclassical compounding productive?

This question of whether neoclassical compounding is productive breaks

down into two subparts: is there such a thing as neoclassical compound-
ing, and if so is it productive? The first part is called into question by
the approach that has been proposed in this paper, the second is called
into question by Dutch morphologists like Van Marie, who insist that
foreign word formation cannot be subconscious, and that true produc-
tivity cannot be conscious.
If we follow the line that has been taken in this paper, then neoclassical
compounding is a name for a relatively but not completely arbitrary
subdivision of word-creation space and should be read as being a proto-
type rather than a clearcut category. The reason this particular point in
space deserves a name, however, is interesting. A name is required because
of the number of words that can be found using this pattern. In other
words, the term "neoclassical compound" is used to label a part of the
three-dimensional space defined for word creation that has been used to

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420 L. Bauer

create a particularly large number of words. Labels are usually given in

this way, although some labels (such as "word manufacture") appear to
label an extreme position despite the fact that the number of words
produced in that space is relatively low.
The question of the productivity of the category depends first on the
answer to the previous question, and second on a definition of produc-
tivity. If there is no category of neoclassical compounds, it cannot be a
productive category. But if there is such a category, its productivity
depends on how productivity is defined. The reason we need such a
category is that we have so many words within it and thus so many
words that have been formed according to that pattern. This implies
productivity in one sense. But many scholars have defined productivity
more narrowly than this. The model presented here suggests that it is
not possible to draw a hard line between the creative potential of neoclas-
sical compounds and that of other word-formation types, since they are
all different aspects of the same thing. As such it is a challenge to those
morphologists who wish to draw distinctions in terms of conscious versus
subconscious production of words.

Received 29 July 1997 Victoria University of Wellington

Revised version received
20 January 1998

Notes

* Versions of this paper were presented at the University of Essex and at the DGfS
conference in Düsseldorf in February, 1997. I should like to thank members of both
those audiences for their comments, and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for
financial support to allow me to attend the conference. I should also like to thank
Winifred Bauer for her considerable help with this paper, and two anonymous referees
for their comments. Correspondence address: Victoria University of Wellington,
P.O. Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand. E-mail: laurie.bauer@vuw.ac.nz.
1. There are some exceptions in Classical Greek, such as hippopotamos 'horse-river'. Some
grammarians seem to suggest random head-modifier order when they comment that
laimo-ponos 'throat pain' is synonymous with pono-laimos 'pain throat' ('sore throat') —
I suspect this is not so, although the two compounds must have very similar freedom of
occurrence.
2. The term is not a general one but can be seen, to some extent, as the converse of Bybee's
(1985:16f.) notation of generality: the more general an affix, the less specific its meaning;
neoclassical elements have a level of specificity more nearly equivalent to lexemes that
to most affixes. This notion, under various headings, goes back at least to Sapir (Bybee
1985: 7). It is not, however, a measurable concept, but an observation of difference
based on what I take to be a fairly common intuition.

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 Neoclassical compounds 421

3. An anonymous referee points out that the figures from a source such as the ED have
no implication for the ability of speakers to construct new words. This is correct, but
not strictly relevant. In terms used by Corbin (1987: 177), the figures from the OED tell
us that the suffix -ment was disponible 'available' in all of the periods shown; but they do
tell us quite a lot about the rentabilite 'profitability' of the suffix at various periods. Since
the discussion here is in terms of how productive things are, it is the latter that is in
question. There is another point of view, that profitability is something that is related to
speakers rather than to grammars (Langacker 1987: 71-2). If that is the case, then all
the compromise types discussed in the early part of this paper are productive on a par
with the common types like suflfrxation and native compounding. Moreover, under this
assumption, the counter-argument being discussed here becomes vacuous, and the view
that there is no difference between automatic and limited types of productivity becomes
easier to uphold.

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