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How do form compounds in your conlang(s)? (If at all?)

Do the head-morpheme come first or last in the compound?

Can you form compounds 'on the fly'?

What kinds of compounding do you allow for, and what kinds do you not allow in your conlangs?

Can any two nouns be compounded? Or only certain sub-classes of nouns?

Can adjectives plus nouns form compounds?

Do you allow for 'headless' compounds?

Can you have long strings of compounds, formed out of several words? Or are you restricted to, say, two-word compounds?

What orthographic conventions apply for compounds? Can you put spaces in the middle of compound words, like English?

If you don't form compounds, or do so only to a limited extent, what alternative strategies do you use?

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constructedlanguages.net

I don't know too much about compounds, but;

Arroe allows for lots of compounds. Typically, compounds consist of two nouns separated by the the vowel [ɛ]. It is possible to form compounds "on the fly". Noun-adjective compounds are forbidden, because adjectives act as (inchoative) verbs. It is permitted to have longer compounds, although the amount peaks out at around four morphemes. Orthographically, they are written separately, but in the romanization, they are written together.

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"Wait for the starvation of glaciers, chicken hamburger Noel Weber Arthur."

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oligosynthetic language loves compounds


sense is priority sound is always surprising

with dictionaryless strategy, on the fly is the way of


I compound roots (I don t use nouns, adjectives, (or anything is noun/adjective)) and chain of roots


Usually I use logography, I can transcribe without using any space in all the text (or where I want to (on aesthetic purpose)

It should of course be head-morpheme, sorry for the typo.

Does the head come firs or last, if you have an internally-headed compound?

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constructedlanguages.net

I answered about phono
I use head first strategy (because SVC sentences )

Compounding is very important in my conlang.

At the lowest level, the language is oligosynthetic, so every word is a compound. But this oligosynthesis is not a casual process. It is possible to create new words "on the fly" and this would be done in poetry and music, but most words are part of a definite lexicon, the roots are simply the semantic alphabet with which the word is "spelled" and new words and terms must be "coined" as in other languages. The writing system doesn't support very large words either, as each root in the word forms a radical in a logographic character.

On a higher level, my language considers adjectives and adverbs to be synonymous with compounds. The language is analytic, words do not derive or inflect in any way, the sentence is broken up by particles, and any series of words following a lone word modifies it as the head of a compound.

If it's isolating, then you should probably call it Oligoisolating.

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"Wait for the starvation of glaciers, chicken hamburger Noel Weber Arthur."

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For instance, if there were an English dvandva "horseman", it would more likely mean something like a centaur or a were-horse, than something like a man who rides horses.
Would that make "horseman" a headless compound?

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It's not isolating, it's analytic. Most words will be more than one morpheme, but none will inflect for role in the sentence.

Does Oligoisolating mean that it allowes combounds? (A new term for me)

To the extent it's isolating, I guess it should not allow compounds.

But I guess it's hardly possible to have a language that is isolating to the extent that is does never allow for compound, or some kind of multiple-morpheme words.

It's hard to imagine a usable language that would coin new roots for each of the 84 million named chemical substances or the ~one million named insects.

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constructedlanguages.net

All you have to do is take a loan from another language. There they can be compounds or whatever.

You must make sure that those loans are not analysed as compounds.

For instance, if you borrow both 'act utilitarianism' and 'rule utilitarianism', how do you make sure they are not analysed as compounds, when both words contain 'utilitarianism'?

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constructedlanguages.net

I can't remember who it was who said this, but I remember a quote to the effect that the only difference between oligosynthesis and oligoisolation is whether or not you write in the spaces. :/ A compound doesn't need to be a solid word, it can be two words with a space between them, so I'm sure you could have compound modifiers at least.

A tricky argument. Is the conclusion that a sivilized language cannot avoin compounds? If you just seldomly use a term of another language it doesn't count as a compund in your language, but if your language needs a term, not just for rule utilitarism that could be one stem, but for all kinds of philosophical instruments, your language must have compounds.

Whether something is a word or several words has nothing to do with orthography. Remember, English is notorious for inserting spaces in the middle of words, like in space shuttle and chocolate calendar. And some writing systems do not insert spaces even between words.

Alanguagedoesnotbecomepolysyntheticjustbecauseyouremovethespaces.

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constructedlanguages.net

That doesn't mean that the ting much to do with orthography couldn't have an own name.

That's exactly my point, Xing. In an oligo-anything language, the basic structure of the language is a string of simple roots. Whether or not the language is oligosynthetic or oligoisolating comes down to the perceptions of the people speaking it, whether they consider each root in the stream as a separate word, or they consider the stream as broken into words of multiple roots. i.e. the presence or absence of "spaces."

I used "word" to refer to a graphical element bounded on either sides by spaces or punctuation because I lack a better term for it. :/ Do you know a more precise name for that?

I know of no good term for it, because whether or not morphemes are written together or apart is an orthographic convention, that says little of the fundamental structure of the language.

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constructedlanguages.net

But surely there is an orthographical term for it. It's such a common structure across many languages.

I know in English at least, an orthographic word is defined exactly as I said above, even if it forms part of a larger phrase. For instance, "Ice cream" is two orthographic words.