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Compounding
"Compounding" simply means that
there are more than one of whatever you are dealing with. For example,
there are compound adjectives: "my messy and dirty study."
There are compound subjects: "Bill and Suzzy went fishing."
There are compound verbs: "He swam,
fished, hunted,
and slept." Traditional grammar books make a mess of the concept
of compounding by introducing students to compound nouns, compound verbs,
compound objects, compound clauses, etc., as if some constructions in the
language can be compounded and some cannot. For our purposes, simply consider
that any construction can be compounded, and remember to watch for them,
as always, based on meaning. In the sentence "My bones were broken
by sticks and stones," the prepositional phrase is "by sticks and stones,"
not just "by sticks."
Compounds are almost always formed
by using what are called compound conjunctions:
and
or
but
either . . . or
neither . . . nor
You need not remember the name "compound conjuction,"
but you should remember that these simple words are usually (and best)
used to join equal grammatical constructions -- subject and subject; object
and object; adjective and adjective, etc. Whatever grammatical construction
appears before one of these words should also appear after it. Otherwise,
good readers may become confused.
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