Chapter 4: Morphology

PART
-
WHOLE
coat-collar, door-knob, picture-frame 
COMPARISON
bell skirt, frogman, pot-belly 
TIME
nightclub, morning coffee, midnight feast 
LOCATION
water-rat, garden-party, tombstone 
MATERIAL
ironware, gold ring, stone wall 
CONTAINMENT
apple cake, sandpaper, picture book 
SOURCE
spring water, seafood 
Note that the semantic interpretation of compounds, especially root compounds, often offers 
several equally plausible options.  
 
KEY POINTS: Compounding 

compounds are complex lexemes consisting of at least two free lexical morphemes, 
i.e. lexemes 

root compounds consist of free morphemes only, while synthetic compounds include 
bound lexical morphemes 

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20 

endocentric compounds include a constituent encoding the head; in contrast, the head 
is not expressed on the morphological surface of exocentric compounds

the major types of compounds are determinative, bahuvrihi and dvandva compounds 

compounds can exhibit a variety of internal relations including 
FUNCTION
,
PART
-
WHOLE
,
COMPARISON
and others 
 
Exercise 4.3 
Describe the following compounds in terms of their morphological forms and structures and 
classify them as determinative, possessive or copulative compounds. Provide the information 
in a table following the two models given: 
Compound 
Morphological form and structure 
Classification 
a. credit card
credit card
N 
N 
Mod 
H 
determinative noun compound 
b. answering machine 
 
c. lemon-yellow 
 
d. roller blade 
 
e. actor-director 
 
f. hard-working 
hard 
work 
ing 
Adj 
V 
sfx (Adj) 
[Mod [Mod H]H] 
 
determinative adjective compound, 
synthetic 
g. birdbrain 
 
h. shareholder value