Linking element
"A linking element is a meaningless extension that occurs between the first and the second elements of compounds." (Lieber & Stekauer 2009: 13)Linking elements, also known as interfixes or intermorphs, are rarely used in English ACs. In fact, they appear only in neoclassical adjectival compounds like in psych-o-linguistic, where -o- is the element that links together the first and the second element in the compound.
In Bulgarian ACs, the linking element is the most significant criterion that distinguishes compounds from phrases. There are three main linking vowels
-e-
,
[ɛ] mid, front, unrounded, lax
-и-
and
[i] high, front, unrounded, lax
-o-
.
For example, жизн-е-радостен,[o] mid, back, rounded, lax
траг-и-комичен
,
'tragicomic'; [[tragedy]N[link.v.][comedy]N[adj.suffix]]A
сладк-о-гласен
. Sometimes the first element ends in a vowel, which takes the role
of a linking element. There are also ACs in which the constituents are not bound together by an interfix. These are compound adjectives in which the first base is
a number and the second denotes temporal relations: 'sweet-voiced'; [[sweet]A[link.v.][voice]N[adj.suffix]]A
десетгодишен
,
'ten years old';[[ten]D[year]N[adj.suffix]]A
петминутен
. Their solid orthography and syntactic inseparability help us to identify them as compounds.
'five-minute'; [[five]D[minute]N[adj.suffix]]A
