Compounds and Headedness

In this section I will introduce some examples of compounds, point out their headedness, and distinguish between endocentric and exocentric compounds. But first, some definitions:

A compound is a word created by putting two free morphemes together.

Headedness tells us which of these free morphemes determines the semantic category. As it turns out, English is a right-headed language, meaning that the head of a compound will always be on the right.

Endocentric compounds can be understood just from the morphemes themselves, whereas exocentric compounds require some outside knowledge. This is because exocentric compounds don’t really have a syntactic head at all.

Examples

Waterfowl

This word is a compound of the two nouns “water” and “fowl.” It is defined as being a type of bird that has adapted to live in/near water, such as ducks, geese, and swans. It is a sub-category of fowl, so “fowl” is the head. We can tell what it is just based on the two components (i.e., a fowl that is particularly suited for water is a waterfowl), so it is an Endocentric compound. Most compounds follow this same structure, including doghouse, trustworthy, purebred, and sidestep.

Sabretooth

This word is a compound of two nouns: “sabre” and “tooth”. A sabretooth is an exctinct cat with long, almost sabre-like teeth, hence the name. So although it seems like “tooth” is our head, we are not describing a kind of tooth, but rather a kind of animal. This is because sabretooth is an exocentric compound. Its meaning cannot be deduced, therefore, from just its two components, and it requires additional outside knowledge to understand. Other examples like this are redhead and spoilsport.

Outcome

Here is another odd case. “outcome” combines a preposition, “out,” and a verb, “come.” However, it describes a result, i.e., something that comes out or from an action. So, despite its components being a preposition and a verb, “outcome” is a noun. This is another example of an exocentric compound. We cannot really describe either component as its head, because it does not have a head at all. Examples like “outcome” include dust-up and tell-all.

Bittersweet

“Bittersweet” is a combination of two adjectives, “bitter” and “sweet.” It is an adjective itself, but it describes something that is both bitter and sweet. “Bittersweet” is not really a type or subcategory of sweet, so we cannot say that “sweet” is its head. However, it is not exocentric either, because we can know exactly what it means just by combining the two components. This is actually an example of a special kind of compound, a dvandva compound. Dvandva is a sanskrit word meaning “pair,” and these compounds have a sort of dual-headedness, where both morphemes act equally as heads. Some other examples of dvandva compounds are secretary-treasurer and blue-green.