Chapter 7 Compound Nouns and Adjectives

A Descriptive Study of Bengali Words, 2015

In Bengali, the number of prefixes is far less than the number of suffixes, and the number of infixes is very limited. Analytically, various kinds of lexico-grammatical information (e.g., gender, number, person, tense, aspect, modality, particles, enclitics, auxiliary, etc.) are encoded within affixes when used in the formation of words. Moreover, these elements provide a better understanding of the form and function of the words used in a piece of text. In this chapter, an attempt is made to analyze the form, nature and patterns of use of the Bengali affixes with examples obtained from the Bengali written corpus (Section 5.2). In Section 5.3, an attempt is made to discuss the nature, form and use patterns of the suffixes in general. In the following sections, elaborate discussions are presented on the patterns of use of suffixes with nouns (Section 5.4); forms and usage of suffixes used with pronouns (Section 5.5); forms and patterns of use of suffixes used with finite and non-finite verbs (Section 5.6); forms and usage of suffixes used with adjectives (Section 5.7); and forms and patterns of use of infixes with words (Section 5.8). Supporting examples given in each section are also obtained from the Bengali written corpus database.

A Descriptive Study of Bengali Words, 2014

A Descriptive Study of Bengali Words, 2015

In this chapter, I have made a systematic corpus-based study to show how the vocabulary of the modern Bengali language is infested with a large number of new English words and terms that have recently crept into the Bengali vocabulary to make room for new concepts, items, and ideas. This study can also show these newly borrowed words and terms have made existing equivalent words and terms of Bengali functionally redundant. I have made an empirical attempt to explore how the vocabulary of the present Bengali language is undergoing linguistic metamorphosis at the lexical level by drawing heavily from the English vocabulary as a result of several linguistic and extralinguistic factors, and how new English general words as well as scientific and technical terms are being incorporated into the Bengali language through various methods of naturalization.

A compound is a word (lexeme) that consists of more than one free morpheme. Compounding refers to the joining or combining of two or more words which has its own meanings which then function as a single word. In Manipuri, there is a widespread phenomenon of compound nouns formed with the used of emphatic markers and reduplicated modifiers.In compound nouns formed with emphatic markers, the emphatic markers appeareither in the initial or medial positions; the compound nouns thus formed shows a kind of completeness, extremeness or totality of the entity that is being involved. The compound nouns formed with reduplicated modifiers-describes the state or nature of the deverbal nouns they modify; describes the nature or character of a person; indicates a kind of feeling of slightness of the modifying words. The reduplicated modifiers can only precede the deverbal nouns that it modifies.

Asian and African studies

The existence of compound verbs presents one of the most characteristic features of new Indian languages. The aim of this paper is to study the compound verbs in Bengali, i.e. to show what the components of the compound verbs are, to find out the restrictions valid for them, to examine the meanings of different compound makers, to classify compound makers according to their meanings, and to classify the class of compound verbs in the Bengali language.

Dhaka University Journal of Linguistics, 2009

In this article, we show, following the Minimalist approach, how features like definiteness and specificity are checked either through Probe-Goal or through overt movement to different projections situated in the left periphery of Noun Phrase complex (NPC) constituated of, as we suggest, the NP itself and the traditonal DP split into four different projections: Deixis Phrase, Determiner Phrase, Classifier Phrase and Quantifier Phrase. At the end of this article we point out some of the limitations of this approach and show how they can be handled in the Substantivist or similar approaches. Key words: Definiteness, Specificity, Deixis, Classifier, Quantifier, SubstantiveDOI: 10.3329/dujl.v1i2.3717 The Dhaka University Journal of Linguistics: Vol. 1 No.2 August, 2008 Page: 67-86

2018

Compounding and suffixation are important processes of word-formation in Malayalam. Compound words are formed mostly from two or more noun stems, from a noun and a verb stem, or, in a relatively small number of cases, from other combinations. The most common type of compound word is one in which both or all constituent parts are noun stems. This type of compounding is productive. Formation of a reduplicated noun compound by the combination of a noun root and a partially reduplicated form of the same root is also productive. Compound verbs are formed mostly from a noun + verb combination. This is a productive process. In addition to it, compound verbs are formed extensively by the combination of the verbal participle form of one verb with another verb. This process cannot be considered as a productive one. Prefixation is an entirely unproductive process, though there are some pairs of words borrowed from Sanskrit which differ only in the presence of a negative-marking prefix on one member of the pair. Verbs form many abstract nouns by suffixation. A proper understanding of the word-formation in a language needs classification of such processes on formal grounds. Bauer (1983) classifies the word-formation in English as follows: Compounding, Prefixation, Suffixation, Conversion, Backformation, Clipping, Formation of blends, Formation of acronyms and Word manufacturing. Malayalam makes use of compounding and suffixation extensively for the formation of words. Though the present paper attempts to give the types of word formation in Malayalam based on typology, explanations will be given by raising certain problematic issues.

A Descriptive Study of Bengali Words, 2015

The present chapter is divided into the following sections. In Section 2.2, I have presented a general percentage of use of affixes with Bengali words; in Section 2.3, I have discussed the percentage and patterns of use of articles with Bengali words; in Section 2.4, I have discussed the nature and pattern of use of particles in Bengali; in Section 2.5, I have recorded the form and use of plural markers in the formation of Bengali words denoting plurality; in Section 2.6, I have discussed about the use of non-finite verb markers in Bengali; and in Section 2.7, I have presented a short description about the frequency of use and pattern of usage of the case markers in the formation of inflected words in Bengali. Information relating to all these domains is obtained from the analysis of a corpus made with Bengali prose texts. By looking at the frequency results and related discussions, a reader can easily get some panoramic ideas about the use of word formative elements in Bengali. Moreover, a reader will also know if there is regularity in the use of these elements in word formation in the language. These results are also useful for developing language teaching materials as well as tools for language technology, such as, morphological analysers, lemmatizers, stemmers, digital dictionary, etc.

The Yearbook of South Asian Languages and Linguistics (2006), 2006

The purpose of this paper is to describe the word-level morphological processes of reduplication in Bengali. The description follows a particular model of morphology called Whole Word Morphology (WWM). In order to describe these processes, a clear distinction between 'pattern' and 'process', suggested in Singh (2003), has been used to expunge mere patterns of reduplication from the description. The paper also argues that WWM can handle the phenomena in question more adequately than some other theories of morphology.

A Descriptive Study of Bengali Words, 2015

The course of discussion in this chapter moves in the following order. In Section 8.1, I have defined the concept of reduplication; in Section 8.2, I have investigated the nature of reduplication from various linguistic angles and perspectives; in Section 8.3, I have reported different interpretations of reduplication presented by earlier scholars; in Section 8.4, I have discussed about different types of reduplication in Bengali; in Section 8.5, I have shown some of the phonological patterns of reduplication in Bengali; in Section 8.6 I have highlighted the senses evoked through reduplications; and in Section 8.7, I have elaborated reduplication patterns of words belonging to different part-of-speech of the language.