Exploitation stylistique du processus de composition nominale en anglais contemporain

Abstract

We focus on a few English compound nouns stylistically marked in that they are non conventional denominations. These compounds are also characterized by their shortness, in as much they synthetize an underlying discourse. We compare compound nouns to compound adjectives, and it comes out that compound adjectives are much less characterized by shortness, even if they can also be seen as the synthetic form of an underlying analytic structure. If it can be assumed that these remarks pertaining to the domain of word-formation give us some insight into nouns and adjectives in general, shortness then appears to be a characteristic of nouns rather than adjectives. Our initial stylistic approach leads us to a reflexion on grammatical categories.

Keywords

• stylistics
• compound nouns
• parts of speech