Is this a compound?

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Pedagogy Literature Studies grade: 12 University of Rostock language: English abstract: People recognize differentiate and understand therefore categorize ideas and objects in everyday life. Unsurprisingly linguists classify words. Compounds for instance are a part of the human language and an interesting process of word-formation. 'Is this a compound?' Sometimes linguists are unsure whether certain words are compounds or not. The definition of compounds is important because defining compounds simply as being lexeme[s] whose immediate constituents are representatives of lexemes (Bauer 2005: 105) creates a wide array of borderline cases. Since neo-classical compounds and phrasal compounds for example do not consist of two words it is incorrect to categorize these classes as forms of compounding according to the definition. This problem can be solved if one defines a compound as a word that consists of two elements the first of which is either a root a word or a phrase the second of which is either a root or a word (Plag 2003: 135). This definition explains the compound status of the neo-classical compounds because the constituents in these items such as bio- are central meaningful elements (bio- has the meaning 'life') thus can be considered as bound roots instead of affixes (see e.g. Plag 2003: 73). Additionally Plag's definition demonstrates that phrasal compounds can be classified as compounds because a phrase and either a root or word are joined together to a word in these complex words. Despite the advantages that this definition reveals demarcation problems cannot be solved and borderline cases still arise regarding English compounds. [W]e must emphasize that these [continuing D.S.] classification difficulties are [...] the inevitable result of the fact that phenomena in living languages can rarely be compartmentalized into clearly [...] disting