#книгол��б

[uchimsyavmeste]

Word formation. Noun

There are several types of noun word formation, and today I’m going to tackle only one of them. General type. When we combine two (or more) roots of different words we get a compound word. Lighthouse, blackbird, airport are the examples. Combining more than two words is very rear in Russian, so let’s take the two-word model. The first part can be a stem of a noun, adjective, adverb or a numeral. The second one is usually a noun, an adjective or a root of the verb, which functions as a noun here and it defines what part of speech the whole word is.

But to combine words it’s not enough to just put them together. To form a compound word, we need to cut the ending of the first word if there is one and add an infix -e or -o before the second word. For example, if we take the character from the Nickelodeon cartoon CatDog, into Russian it was translated as Котопёс. Кот - cat, пёс - dog (a he-dog) and there is this little o between them that connects them.

Snowfall has the same structure in Russian. Snow - снег, fall - падать. But as we use only verb roots + we need to add an infix, a snowfall is снегопАд in Russian.  Airplane is a combined word in Russian, but the logic is different. For Russians, an airplane is something that can fly itself so it consists of a word сам (oneself) and летать (to fly) - самолЁт. Ice-breaker = ice+break. Лёд+колоть = ледокОл. These were the examples of a noun-verb formation. ГромкоговорИтель (a loud speaker), тяжеловЕс (a heavy weight) are adjective-noun variants.

Where the stem of the first component ends in a soft consonant or in ж ч ш щ ц, infix is -е. Dormitory is общежИтие, that consists of общий (collective, common) and житие which is not really a word but has this “жит” root, that means live, life etc. The infix is -e because it stands after letter щ. Пулемёт (machinegun) has soft л (е makes it soft) before infix, so it’s -e. Пуля - a bullet, метать - throw, dart, shoot. As the second word is a verb, we leave only a root as with the first word (the first word is always only a root).

Some names of professions or occupations have a common root. Like a specialist in literature is литературовЕд, in cinema киновEд, where the first component is a branch of knowledge, and the second one is an old verb ведать, which is to know (but we don’t use it anymore). 

More examples of compound words: пароход (пар + ходить = steamer), вертолёт (вертеть + летать = helicopter), новостройка (новый + строить = new building), мореплаватель (море + плавать = seafarer), бензобак (бензин + бак = petrol tank), нефтепровод (нефть + проводить = pipeline), книголюб (книга + любить = book lover), водопад (вода + падать = waterfall).