1.1.1.2.2. Coordinate compounds
Coordinate compounds are constituted of several lexical components, a minimum of two, which denote a single concept. Syntactically they have a symmetrical relationship, in lexical juxtaposition. Coordinate compounds, depending on their nature, may have three different meaning outcomes regarding the final lexical item.
First, coordinate compounds may stand for a hypernym, higher lexical concept. In other words, the lexical components that form a coordinate compound belong to the same semantic area and the juxtaposition of these signs yields the meaning of the hypernym of that semantic category, as illustrated below.
pharmacy^syrup^pill (‘drug’)
(extracted from the corpus created in Villaécija, 2019)
The coordinate compound meaning ‘drug’ is formed by words from the same semantic area (cohyponyms), which are ‘pharmacy’, ‘syrup’ and ‘pill’. The signs altogether stand for its superordinate concept, ‘drug’, the hypernym.
Second, coordinate compounds may be formed by two, or more, different signs that can be considered synonyms. When they are juxtaposed and creating a coordinate compound, they refer to a specialized concept, like in the following example. The example is formed by two synonyms, sign and inform, and they altogether stand for the specialized concept ‘to testify’.
sign^inform (‘to testify’)
(extracted from the corpus created in Villaécija, 2019)
Third, a coordinate compound may be made up by two different lexical constituents, with different meanings but equal syntactic relationship. They can be unrelated to each other, as shown below.
ear^mouth (‘deaf’)
To sum up, the lexical constituents of a coordinate compound contribute the same concept together. They do not completely lose their original meanings, but the new meaning is based on them.