A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ENGLISH WORD COMBINATIONS AND COMPOUND WORDS

This article focused the differences and similarities between word combinations and compound words in the English language. The concepts of “grammatical unity” and “semantic unity” of compound words are explored. A number of criteria including phonetic, orthographic, morphological, syntactic, and semantic features are analyzed to distinguish compounds from phrases. Examples are provided to illustrate the practical application of each criterion. Keywords: compound word, word combination, semantic unity, lexical unit, word formation.