Compounding is a licit wordbuilding strategy in Common, although Common has generally isolating tendencies and will often prefer a set phrase or idiomatic expression of some kind to a compound word. In this article, we will talk about the rules and tendencies of Common as it pertains to compounding.

As a general thing, the meaning of compounds can be highly idiomatic, and it is not advisable to try and make your own unless you have a high enough degree of fluency with the language to be able to master clever wordplay. For most people, you should stick to expressions you learn by rote to make sure you use them right

Davidson used compounding in Old Common but initially did not specify rules for compounding, essentially creating compounds however he pleased. Some of these early coinings did not obey all the rules and tendencies of modern High Common, such as third grade modifiers being used directly in compounds. Before he died, Davidson did provide some guidances in his work with the fan community, and these guidances did turn out to be influential. However, the grammar and official guidances for modern High Common are based on observations of real, modern native speaker usage and the opinions of na Akkatemi na Xafen Zisse (AXZ).

Complex Expressions versus Compounds

There are a number of ways that Common can use to express a concept in more than a single morpheme. A classical noun phrase with its article and all of its modifiers including prepositional phrases, modifying terms, head term and various dependents can function together as a phrase that describes a concept, of course, and such expressions can become set phrases that people just commonly understand to refer to a certain referent - sometimes in a not-overly-transparent way.

A defective fragment of such an expression, such as a head term and its modifying terms, can be such a set phrase and then acquire different meanings depending on the modifiers used with it and so on. This can be the origin of eventual fused compounds.

Rules of Compounding for Terms

Compound words that functions as terms obey the following rules:

• They have a head as the right-most independent word, and then any derivational suffixes (many of which notionally or actually developed from formerly independent heads themselves, or else are still able to function as independent words in their own right).
• The head is a term.
• The overall compound is always a term.
• The other members of the compound have a very strong tendency to be terms, with the following exceptions:
  • Weak (First Grade) modifiers, those that have to take an object, are the most likely to attach to compounds - in fact, several function routinely more as prefixes that create certain variations in meaning.
  • Second grade modifiers are known to participate in compounds sometimes. Consider 'epáliheratkasyn' ('dependency'), that contains 'epáli', 'under'.
  • Third grade modifiers, those that never take objects, never directly participate in compounds. Instead, if they are part of a compound, they are first derived into terms with the suffix -yn.
    • The exception seems to be if adding the -(y)n would create an illegal consonant cluster - compare 'affetritfisa', the Globalist political faction that emphasises seeking public buy-in to globalist rule. 'Affe' is a third grade modifier, but the grammatical form 'affentritfisa' creates an illegal cluster that would require a repair. In these cases, Common speakers just don't add the affix.
  • Modifiers are always the left-most elements of a compound, never internal to it, unless a third grade modifier itself derived into a term.
• Internal conjunctions are generally not compounded, unless they are part of a very cliched set phrase, and this will still tend to be more of a Low Comon phenomenon. It is frowned upon by the AXZ.
• The compound can be a head term in a noun phrase itself, or it can be a modifying term - it is not constrained and can act like any other term.
• Common phonotactics must be obeyed, and standard repair strategies are enacted at word boundaries if any illegal clusters are created. The repair will generally always honour the morpheme boundaries.
• Common rules of allophony must be obeyed - if two of the same consonant are brought together the are geminated. If a consonant becomes word-internal in an environment where it would be voiced, voicing is triggered.
• In writing they are not hyphenated.

As a general rule, such compounds come about from formerly independent words that are often found in a certain configuration in set phrases and idioms and which are eventually spoken in such a way that they become run together and fused. They can be created deliberately as well. Common has a general allergy to the term and modifier parts of speech mixing in native speech, and this can be seen in the tendency for third grade modifiers to be derived into terms with -yn before compounding. This also ensures that the modifier always goes next to the term and nothing can be inserted in between regardless of the modifier's order class.

An exception to this rule is compounds containing a number, like 'na opetawan', 'octopus'. Numbers tend to readily enter compounds without derivation into a term unless the number ends in a vowel and the head begins with at most a single consonant.

Those modifiers that do attach directly tend to be those that normally want or need an object, especially first grade modifiers. When used to modify the meaning of an expression without having a normal object, they are defective and can't exist independently. These then have a tendency to act as clitics and stick to the front of the compound for support.

Endocentric versus Exocentric ('Headless') Compounds

Common can have compounds which are 'exocentric' in the sense that the overall referent for the compound is not the same type of thing as its head. An example of this in Common would be 'ny akpenmirkat' (literally 'a big-one belly', notice the modifier 'akpe', 'big', is derived to the term class for grammatical reasons before compounding), which is a derogatory word for a rich person - a person is not a kind of belly, so this is exocentric.

However, Common does not have exocentric compounds in the sense that the compound is a different part of speech than its parts. In Common, even colloquial Common, the head of the compound is always of the same part of speech as the overall compound, either a term or a modifier.

Rules of Compounding for Modifiers

Common can occasionally make new modifiers as compounds. One way to do this is to make a compound term and then derive it into a modifier with the -ys ending. When made directly from modifiers the following rules are generally obeyed:

• Only third grade modifiers participate in compounds. First grade modifiers never do.
• Only modifiers and internal conjunctions can participate in the compound.
• The right-most component is a head, and is a modifier.
• The modifiers tend to belong to the same or adjacent order classes, and if of different classes, appear in the right order.
• Tight-binding modifiers are not part of the compound but may be part of a set phrase involving the compound. They apply to the compound as a whole.
• The meaning of the compound is a blend of its components, with the head being considered the most salient.
• A compound is hyphenated, and does not have to use the repair strategies for illegal clusters or rules of allophony - however, in colloquial speech as opposed to formal speech and writing, sometimes they do.
  • Occasionally, this casual speech process can blur the recognition that the modifier is a compound and it can become legitimately fused like a compound term.
• The compound modifier can sometimes be derived into a term with the suffix -yn on its head, which causes its components to suddenly, properly fuse and obey all the phonological rules of a compound term, but it is comparatively rare for this to occur relative to a free modifier. Sometimes, in Low Common dialects, this type of process can even drag tight binding modifiers along with it, but not in High Common.

The line between a set phrase of modifiers found often together but not hyphenated and a 'compound' modifier is blurry. An example of a compound is 'azós-uzre', 'blue-green'.

Preference for Compounding

While there are plenty of examples of compounding, Common does this less than English and certainly less than languages like German. Common will generally prefer a set phrase, and compounds will generally only form from the phrase running together due to habit.

Where compounds are deliberately coined, they will often be words like 'epáliheratkasyn', which could be analysed as a compound (epáli + heratkasyn, with heratkasyn having the internal structure herat + ka + s + yn, where only 'herat' is a free morpheme and and the rest are derivational affixes), but which can also be analysed as a single root ('herat') with a series of prefixes and suffixes. More often than not, Common will show a strong preference for terms to have a single term root and its pendants and not be a real compound.