5 Morphology and Word Formation key concepts

tric compounds
.
Second, the compound names a subtype, but the type is not represented 
by either the head or the modifier in the compound. For example, Dead-
head, redhead, and pickpocket represent types of people by denoting some 
distinguishing characteristic. There is typically another word, not included 
in the compound, that represents the type of which the compound repre-
sents the subtype. In the case of Deadhead, redhead, and pickpocket this other 
word is person, so a Deadhead is a person who is an enthusiastic fan of the 
band The Grateful Dead. These are called exocentric compounds.
Third, there are compounds in which both elements are heads; each con-
tributes equally to the meaning of the whole and neither is subordinate 
to the other, for instance, bitter-sweet. Compounds like these can be para-
phrased as both X and Y, e.g., “bitter and sweet.” Other examples include 
teacher-researcher and producer-director. These can be called coordinative 
compounds
.
Exercise
For each set of words below, say whether the words are endocentric, 
exocentric, or coordinative compounds. Justify your identification. 
a. redneck, yellowjacket, cocktail, blackhead
b. armchair, breathtest, rockopera
c. secretary-treasurer, scholar-administrator
As a third (and final) possible mode of analyzing compounds we briefly 
consider that used in the series of modern traditional grammars prepared 
by Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik (1972, 1985). In this method, 
the compounds are analyzed and classified according to the relationships 
among their constituents when the meaning of the compound is expressed 

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Delahunty and Garvey 
 
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as a phrase or clause. For example: 
phrases
bee-sting 
a sting by a bee
blood-test
a test of blood
swimming pool 
a pool for swimming
adding machine 
a machine for adding
girlfriend 
a friend who is a girl 
killer shark
a shark which is a killer
windmill 
a mill powered by wind
motorcycle
a cycle powered by a motor
self-control
someone able to control self 
clauses
sunrise 
when the sun rises
table 3: underlying syntactic/semantic analysis of english 
compounds
Exercise
Paraphrase each of the following compounds according to at least one 
of the patterns in Table 3.
babysitter, catfish, cry-baby, story-teller, dancing girl, darkroom, 
doorknob, taxpayer, security officer, sleepwalking