Investigating Morphosyntactic Patterns and Metaphorical Interpretation of Compound Words in Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself: A Construction Morphology Approach
Abstract
As a word formation process, compounding is essential to poetry because it enriches the poetic language, making it more compressed, concise, metaphorically dense, and effective. The article aims to investigate the morphosyntactic and metaphorical aspects of the compound words employed by the American poet Walt Whitman in his renowned poem Song of Myself. Whitman’s way of compounding words is a distinctive stylistic feature that sets his poetry apart from the work of other American poets. He created compound words that are unconventional and innovative. A Constructional Morphology (CM) approach has been employed to analyze the data. The Blending Theory of Metaphor (BTM) was also highly utilized in interpreting any metaphor encoded in the compound words. The data were solely collected from Song of Myself. A total of 627 compounds were identified and statistically analyzed, while 10 compounds were randomly selected and qualitatively analyzed. Whitman’s creation of compound words is driven by his intention to shed light on certain unique themes that are closely connected to his beliefs, visions, poetic identity, and outlook. This reveals a close connection between Whitman’s poetics and the morphosyntactic and metaphorical aspects of his compounds. The article concludes that the syntactic pattern adjective + noun is the most frequent type of compounds used in the poem. It also recommends future studies that further explore other morphosyntactic aspects in Whitman’s poetry such as neologisms and borrowings.