Compound
formation is a very productive morphological process in
Hmar. This turns out to be all the more significant because
of the absence of regular inflection. Some aspects of
compound formation have already been discussed while dealing
with verbs. However, a comprehensive accound of compound
formation in the language is in order here.
3.6.1
Types
of Compound
Compound
formation could be broadly viewed under three categories
each of which could be sub categorised as under :
Nominal
Compound
Possessor N + possessed N compound
Head N + attributive N compound
Atributive
N + head N compound
N
+ N pure compound
N + N + N compound
Reduplicated
compound
Completely reduplicated
words
Partially reduplicated
words
Semantically reduplicated
compound
It
may be mentioned here that all the above sub-categories
are not equally productive. However, each as a morphological
process, deserves a detailed discussion.
Possessor-possessed
N+N compound
Hmar
constructs quite a large number of nominal compounds where
the first member is a possessor noun and the second member
is a possessed one. The possession could be either alienable
or inalienable, although, however, in most cases, it is
inalienable. Given below are a few paradigms of illustrations:
àithlá:k/
r/
