Word combination is a very important task in both language and translation. Word combination can be classified according to many different criteria: morphological, semantic, syntactic, typological, etc. The aim of this article is to study word combination. The word combination system is a part of grammar. It includes two types of words i. e. free forms and bound forms, which are used for word combinations.
It is important to understand how we classify word combinations. This can be done on three levels: (1) word categories, (2) word classes and (3) word types. The first level divides words into different categories; the second level divides them into different classes; and the third level divides them into different types. These three classifications of word combinations will help us to more clearly understand the way we use words.
Word combinations can be classified according to their function in a sentence. On the basis of this criterion, the word combinations are divided into two categories
1) those which serve as part of a sentence, e.g. B. predicate, direct object, adverb modifier, etc. and
(2 ) Which do not have this function, but whose function …. equivalent to that of a preposition or conjunction, and which are in fact equivalent in all respects to these parts of speech.
It should be noted that the first of these two classes constitutes the vast majority of English word combinations, but the second is no less important.
When discussing possible classifications, we cannot ignore Bloomfield’s collocation theory. It has already been pointed out that Bloomfield distinguishes such word combinations as endocentric and exocentric. He also introduced a term for a member of an endocentric sentence that can replace an entire sentence in a larger structure. In subordinate endocentric constructions, this member can be called the head or the center, while the member of the coordinate set was called the center. Chatman noted in this regard that, according to Bloomfield, all spirits are centers, but not all centers are spirits.
Another development of Bloomfield’s classification concerned the types of relationships within a word combination. Therefore, it was possible to analyze some word combinations that did not fit into the Bloomfield classification. Thus, the scope of syntactic analysis has been extended to syntactic groups with weakly connected elements. These constructs are classified as paratactic (e.g. No, thank you). Other word combinations are called hypotactic because they are based on hypotaxis. Hypotaxis here refers to the dependence or subordination of one element (or clause) on another element (or clause). Parataxis is interpreted as the juxtaposition of correlated elements without formal expression of syntactic dependence. This interpretation of parataxis makes it a useful term for bands like No, Thank You, where the relationship between the components is difficult to explain.
Changes in classification and the introduction of two new types of syntactic constructions have led to different interpretations of endocentric and exocentric collocations. Thus, all word combinations in a language can be divided into two main groups: 1) word combinations based on hypotaxis, and 2) word combinations based on parataxis. A further subcategorization of hypotactic groups follows the Bloomfield scheme, i.e. all hypotactic structures are divided into endocentric and exocentric. The same applies to endocentric groups, which are divided into coordinated and subordinate word combinations.
The classification of word combinations into hypotactic and paratactic is based on the relationships within the structure, i.e. between its constituent parts. The following steps of analysis relate only to hypotactic constructs; an attempt to subcategorize paratactic constructs has not been advocated and is generally not performed.
As already mentioned, the second step of the analysis concerns the classification of hypotactic structures into endocentric and exocentric. This classification is based on the role of the group as a whole in an extended syntactic construction and not on the relationships between the elements of the group. The second step is therefore based on a different categorisation principle. The third step, in turn, demonstrates another principle of syntactic categorization: Endocentric word combinations are divided into subordinatives and coordinatives, while exocentric word combinations are divided into predicatives and prepositionals, which is another deviation from the classification principle. Thus, at each step, the principle of the previous classification changes, and the word combinations are characterized according to their internal or external relationships.
Moreover, endocentric constructions are further subcategorized into more general syntactic relations that determine the status of combinatorial elements in their relation to each other (coordination vs. subordination), while exocentric constructions have a mixed syntactic-morphological subcategorization. Groups called predicate groups are distinguished on the basis of syntactic relations within the group and described in terms of syntactic relations of a more specific type, such as coordination-subordination, while prepositional groups are characterized on the basis of their morphological features. Such inconsistency in the approach to syntactic subcategorization significantly reduces the scientific value of the classification in question.
In Ukrainian linguistics, word combinations are classified according to their internal structure. This approach proposes two groups of word combinations: 1) those with a main element, and 2) those without a main element. These two types of word groups should not be confused with the endocentric and exocentric groups introduced by Bloomfield. The classification of word combinations according to the presence or absence of a header element is based solely on the relationships within the word combination.
