Dvandva

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A dvandva ('pair' in Sanskrit) is a linguistic compound in which multiple individual nouns are concatenated to form an agglomerated compound word in which the conjunction has been elided to form a new word with a distinct semantic field. For instance, the individual words 'brother' and 'sister' may in some languages be agglomerated to 'brothersister' to express "siblings". The grammatical number of such constructs is often plural or dual.

The term dvandva was borrowed from Sanskrit, a language in which these compounds are common. Dvandvas also exist in Avestan, the Old Iranian language related to Sanskrit, as well as in numerous Indo-Aryan languages descended from the Prakrits. Several far-eastern languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Atong (a Tibeto-Burman language of India and Bangladesh) and Korean also have dvandvas. Dvandvas may also be found occasionally in European languages, but are relatively rare.

Examples include:

• Atong achu-ambi ("grandfather-grandmother") for "ancestors".
• Azerbaijani ər-arvad ("husband-wife") for "married couple".
• Basque anai-arrebak ("brothers and sisters").
• Chinese: 山川; pinyin: shānchuān and Japanese yamakawa (山川), for "landscape, scenery" (lit. "mountains and rivers").
• Finnic maa-ilma ("land-air") for "world".
• Friulian marimont ("sea-world") for "the entire world, the universe".
• Georgian: დედ-მამა (ded-mama) (lit. mother-father) for parents, და-ძმა (da-ʒma) (lit. sister-brother) for siblings
• Modern Greek μαχαιροπήρουνο /maçeɾoˈpiɾuno/ for "cutlery" (lit. "fork-knife"), ανδρόγυνο /anˈðɾoʝino/ for "married couple" (lit. "husband-wife").
• Leti leli masa (lit. 'ivory gold') for "treasure"
• Sanskrit mātāpitarau "parents" (lit. 'mother-father').
• Nahuatl in xochitl in cuicatl (lit. 'the flower, the song') for "poetry"
• Yiddish טאַטעמאַמע tatemame (papa-mama) for "parents".

Dvandvas should not be confused with agglutination, which also concatenates words but is a different process.