Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics

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Compound Nouns
(2,163 words)

Abstract

Compound nouns are words formed by two or more lexemes or lexical stems (e.g. Eng. girlfriend, Gk. akrópolis ‘high city’, < ákros ‘high’ + pólis ‘city’). The morphological process through which a compound is created is called nominal composition, or compounding.

1. Introduction

In Ancient Greek, compounding is one of the most productive means of word-formation, a morphological tool that the language inherited from Indo-European (IE…

Cite this page
Olga Tribulato, “Compound Nouns”, in: Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics, General Editor: Georgios K. Giannakis. Consulted online on 01 April 2023 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2214-448X_eagll_COM_00000069>
First published online: 2013



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