Nukus State Pedagogical Institute named after Ajiniyaz

Endocentric compounds

As mentioned earlier, the head of the compound plays an important role in determining the type of compound but also the meaning of the whole compound. Such compounds in which the rightmost element or the head helps to infer the meaning of the whole nominal compound are called endocentric compounds or tatpurusha, a term originating from Sanskrit language. Plag (2002) states that endocentric compounds are those type of compounds in which the head is a specialization of the whole compound’s meaning, whereas the modifier restricts the meaning of the head. For instance, blackboard is a specific type of board which is black. In this case the head determines the meaning of the nominal compound, while the modifier is used in an attributive manner. Similarly, laser printer is a kind of printer, letter head is the head of a letter. These types of compounds have their semantic head inside of them.

Most English compounds have a two-part structure composed of determinant (modifier) and determinatum (head). While the head bears the basic sense of
compound, the modifier specifies this meaning. In compound blackbird, the
modifier is black and it is obvious that it is a kind of bird. In case of endocentric
compounds, a determinant is hyponymy of its determinatum. In addition, both elements tend to be of the same word class. Examples: door-knob, armchair,
beehive.


Exocentric compounds
Exocentric compounds have their semantic meaning outside the head, therefore it is not so transparent. For example, compound white-collar does not refer to kind of collar or to something that is white and a determinant does not serve as a hyponymy to determinantum. Different from endocentric compounds in which the notion of headedness is uncontroversial, there exist a set of compounds where the same rules do not apply so easily. These types of compounds are called exocentric compounds. Linguists such as Bauer, Lieber and Plag in 2013, claim that exocentric compounds are those type of compounds in which the meaning is not represented by either the head or the modifier in the compound. Therefore, their semantics is markedly deviant. They are called exocentric, for the reason that their head is outside the compound. It is interesting however, that these compounds are only said to be exocentric by meaning. If we look at other aspects of them, we observe that at least the part of speech from which a new meaning is deduced, is inherited from the right-hand member. Some examples of exocentric compounds can be: loudmouth, gentleman, pickpocket. In the first example, the elements of the nominal compound do not denote a type of mouth but a person who talks a lot, typically in an impolite way. The second compound doesn’t mean a gentle man, but a courteous man, one of good breeding or high social class. Similarly, the third example is not a kind of pocket but a person who steals from other people’s pockets. This type of compounds seems to be limited to forms denoting human beings or higher animals.