Headedness and Exocentric Compounding1

Vitor A. Nóbrega
Federal University of Santa Catarina

Phoevos Panagiotidis
University of Cyprus

Abstract: Semantic headedness typically serves as the primary criterion for compound endocentricity, i.e.
whether a compound has a head. The semantic head is often defined as the hyperonym from which the
denotation of the compound is derived, with exocentric compounds being those whose denotation is not a
subclass of that of their head element. Headedness, so defined, leads us to analyze every non-compositional
compound as exocentric. We explore the boundaries between semantic exocentricity and non-compositionality
using established diagnostics in order to decide whether a semantic characterization of headedness is valid, and
to determine whether exocentricity and non-compositionality coincide. Assuming a syntactic model of
morphological combinatorics we show that exocentricity must be defined configurationally, occurring when the
structure of a compound modifies an external entity, frequently instantiated by an empty noun. Hence
exocentricity is not the absence of a head, but the realization of the compound’s head outside its internal
structure. Non-compositionality, in turn, derives from how the root of each constituent member of a compound
is compositionally or idiosyncratically interpreted. Finally, we put forth a new typological distribution of
exocentric compounds, discriminating real exocentric compounds (bahuvrihi and dvandva) from compounds
that are commonly, but wrongly, defined as exocentric (e.g. deverbal and de-prepositional compounds).

Keywords: compounding; exocentricity; bahuvrihi compounds; deverbal compounds; Distributed Morphology.

1. The interplay between exocentricity and non-compositionality

It is generally argued that compounds may comprise an endocentric (i.e. headed) structure.

For instance, at a pre-theoretical level, in a compound like blueberry we interpret berry as the

head of the compound, along the lines of both ‘a blueberry being a kind of berry’, and of the

noun berry giving its category (i.e. nominal) to the whole blueberry formation. Exocentric

compounds, on the other hand, are understood to be the opposite, as they are traditionally

1
This manuscript has been accepted for publication by EUP in the journal Word Structure 13.2 (2020): 211–
249. (https://www.euppublishing.com/loi/word).
analyzed as compounds in which none of the constituent members may be regarded as the

compound’s head, either semantically or formally.2

To determine whether a compound is endocentric, if it has a head, or exocentric, if it

is headless, most scholars use a semantic criterion as the main diagnostic. Broadly speaking,

the semantic head of a compound defines the superclass from which the denotation of the

compound is derived: exocentric compounds are those whose denotation is not a subclass of

that of their head element (e.g., a red cap is neither red nor a cap). This denotational

mismatch, which is typically understood to be central to exocentricity, can be characterized in

terms of hyponymy (Jespersen 1924; Bloomfield 1933), a subset-set relationship formalized

as the IS A Condition by Allen (1978), defined in (1).3 Exocentric compounds fail the

hyponymy test, since the denotation of such a compound is not a subset of that of either of its

constituents.

(1) IS A Condition
In the compound [[….]X [….]Y]Z, Z is a Y. (Allen 1978: 11)

The examples from Brazilian Portuguese (BP) in (2)–(5) illustrate the rationale underlying

this condition. In Romance languages, the head of a compound is preferably the left-hand

constituent, thus the IS A Condition has to be interpreted according to the following

configuration: [[….]X [….]Y]Z, Z is a X.

2
The formal head of a compound designates the constituent that imposes its grammatical category (e.g. noun,
verb, adjective) and/or its morphological features to the whole compound formation (see Bauer 1978; Lieber
1981; Zwicky 1985). In addition to blueberry, we have the compound algodão doce lit. cotton-sweet ‘cotton
candy’, from Brazilian Portuguese, whose formal head is the constituent algodão ‘cotton’, since the compound
behaves as a noun (rather than as an adjective), and displays the same morphological features as the noun
algodão, masculine singular (e.g. observable in agreement relations, O algodão-doce lit. DET.M.SG
cotton.M.SG+sweet.SG ‘The cotton-candy’). In morphological analyses, these two notions of headedness –
semantic and formal – usually have to be conjoined in order to identify the compound’s head, due to the
restrictive and irregular distribution of the semantic criterion, as we will see.
3
See Andreou (2014), especially Appendix B, for a comprehensive overview of the history of the endocentric
vs. exocentric distinction in compounding.
(2) peixe espada lit. fish+sword ‘sword fish’
IS A peixe ‘fish’
IS NOT A espada ‘sword’
= Endocentric.

(3) ano novo lit. new+year ‘New Year’

IS A ano ‘year’
IS novo ‘new’
= Endocentric.

(4) casca grossa lit. skin+thick ‘bouncer, thick-skinned person’

IS NOT A casca ‘skin’
IS NOT grossa ‘thick’
= Exocentric.

(5) limpa-vidros lit. clean+glasses ‘glass-cleaner, glass-detergent’

IS NOT limpa ‘clean’
IS NOT A vidro ‘glass’
= Exocentric.

This semantic conception of headedness, however, is severely restrictive. First, it forces us to

analyze every non-compositional compound – i.e. compounds whose overall meaning is

dissociated from the individual meanings of their constituent members – as exocentric, since

non-compositional compounds display a denotational mismatch with that of their constituent

members (Bauer 2008a; 2010; Ralli & Andreou 2012; Ralli 2013; Andreou 2014). This can

be observed in (4), where the denotation of casca grossa ‘bouncer, thick-skinned person’

bears no relationship either with casca ‘skin’ or grossa ‘thick’. Second, it leads us to consider

deverbal as well as de-prepositional compounds as fundamentally exocentric, as in the case

of the deverbal compound in (5), given the fact that its verbal (or prepositional) constituent,

in this case limpa ‘clean’, cannot serve as a hyponym for the noun denoted by the compound,

‘glass-cleaner, glass-detergent’ (Bauer 2008a; 2010). The IS A Condition is only felicitous

when applied to compositional attributive and subordinate nominal compounds, such as

[N+N]N, [N+A]N, and [A+N]N, illustrated in examples (2) and (3).4

4
Attribution and subordination refers to the kinds of grammatical relations holding between the constituents of a
compound, following Bisetto & Scalise’s (2005) terminology. The former expresses a modification relation
where the non-head element modifies the head element, as in blackboard and blackbird. The latter, on other
 The restrictiveness inherent in the semantic nature of the IS A Condition raises the

question of whether it serves as a valid criterion to identify endocentric and exocentric

compounds in natural languages. Moreover, it implicitly assumes that semantic exocentricity

– i.e. the hyponymy relation holding between a compound and its constituent members – and

non-compositionality should be regarded as equivalent, as is implicitly assumed in the works

of Katamba (1993), Bauer (2008a; 2010; 2017), Scalise et al. (2009), and Uriagereka (2012),

among others – an implication that deserves careful attention. These theoretical

inconsistencies pose a serious challenge to the notion of exocentricity and call for a

reassessment of what counts as the semantic and formal head of a compound. It also requires

a thorough investigation of whether non-compositional interpretation is determined by the

compound’s semantic exocentricity or by independent grammatical factors.

In this article, our general aim is twofold:

• To provide a syntactic account of the existence of exocentric constructions in

grammar;

• To identify the theoretical boundaries between exocentricity and non-

compositionality.

We adopt a realizational approach to morphology, which dissociates morphosyntactic

features and their phonological exponence (cf. Beard 1995). We also embrace the conjecture

that syntactic combinatorics underlies word formation (Halle & Marantz 1993; Marantz

hand, stands for a complement-head relation, as we can see in the compound apron string (some scholars, as
Kiparsky (1986), refer to subordinate compounds as tatpurushas, following the Sanskrit tradition). In this
case, a complement relation, described in terms of an ‘of relation’, can be extracted from the compound, viz.
‘string of an apron’. In both cases a subset-set relationship is created, as is required by the IS A Condition.
1997). To cope with the aforementioned problems, we provide an alternative approach to

exocentricity. We depart from the assumption that exocentricity does not represent the

absence of a head, as the condition in (1) suggests. Rather, it is – as its own name indicates –

the realization of the compound’s head outside of the compound’s internal structure – in

accordance with previous work by Ralli & Andreou (2012) and Andreou (2014). In contrast

to these authors, however, we claim that all compounds are endocentrically derived in the

syntactic component of grammar (like any other phrasal object), and that exocentricity

emerges when the compound’s structure serves as a modifier to an external nominal element,

which can be overtly or covertly realized. This nominal element will be interpreted as both

the semantic and formal head of the whole construction, since it will determine its denotatum

and bear the morphological features that participate in agreement relations.

We revise the typology of exocentric compounds provided by Bauer (2008a; 2010) to

argue for a two-fold syntactic classification of exocentricity, distinguishing between false

exocentric compounds (FECs) and real exocentric compounds (RECs). FECs are compounds

that contain a (null) nominal head, whose realization occurs inside the compound’s internal

structure. We assign to this class Bauer’s synthetic compounds – which will hereafter be

called deverbal compounds, in order to include V-X and X-V compounds –, 5 and de-

prepositional compounds. Building on the analyses of Contreras (1985), Di Sciullo (1991;

1992) and Bok-Bennema & Kampers-Manhe (2006), we assume that their head is base-

generated as a null pronoun pro within the compound’s structure.

As for RECs, we take them to be compounds modifying null “pronominal” nouns,

which are the phonologically null equivalent of English one as in the good ones, what

5
X is a variable standing for a set of distinct grammatical categories, such as noun, adjective, adverb, quantifier,
etc.
Panagiotidis (2002; 2003) has called empty nouns, eN. In RECs, the head is an NP external to

the compound’s structure, and it is instantiated by an eN, which bears independent

morphological features (especially gender). In our view, RECs comprise Bauer’s bahuvrihis,

as well as one additional compound group: dvandva compounds.

In a nutshell, we claim that exocentricity is a syntactic phenomenon in which complex

syntactic constructions made up of at least two roots modify (phonologically empty) noun

phrases. Non-compositionality, in turn, is related to the interpretation assigned to the

compound’s roots at the interpretive interface, the Logical Form (LF). Roots, as has been

widely argued, are syntactic primitives devoid of a predetermined conceptual content. They

acquire an interpretation with respect to the syntactic environment in which they appear (cf.

Marantz 2001; 2007; Arad 2003; 2005; Panagiotidis 2011; 2014a; 2015; Harley 2014). Thus

non-compositionality can be described as entirely independent from and irrelevant to

headedness. While exocentricity is the result of a particular structural configuration (hence

syntactically determined), non-compositionality depends on how roots, in a given syntactic

environment, are interpreted at LF, whether ordinarily or figuratively (thus post-syntactically

determined).

In the remainder of this article we will examine the empirical value of these

hypotheses. In Section 2, we review general assumptions in the morphological literature

regarding headedness in compounding. Then we evaluate the expressiveness of Bauer’s

typology for exocentricity. In Section 3, we detail our approach to headedness and provide

empirical support for our claims. Finally, in Section 4, we demonstrate how exocentricity is

syntactically implemented, as well as how exocentric constructions may be assigned a non-

compositional interpretation. Expanding and reviewing previous analyses, we provide a

detailed description of the derivational steps involved in the formation of bahuvrihi and

deverbal compounds, exemplars of the two classes proposed in this article, RECs and FECs

respectively.

2. Exocentricity in compounding cross-linguistically

In morphological literature, exocentricity is generally characterized as a cross-linguistically

marked phenomenon in compounding (Dressler 2006; Bauer 2008a; 2010). In one of the

most comprehensive overviews of its typological distribution, Guevara & Scalise (2009: 119)

find that across some 3,000 compounds from 16 languages approximately 69% are

endocentric, while 22% should be considered as exocentric. At this point, it has to be noted

that within this 22%, we find a broad range of syntactically and semantically distinct

constructions, which are frequently suppressed in various classificatory schemes (cf. Spencer

1991; Bauer 2001; Olsen 2001; Booij 2005; Haspelmath & Sims 2010).

These schemes typically provide a flat classification for compounding, as sketched in

(6).

(6) Compounds

Subordinate Coordinate Appositive Exocentric Synthetic

(Guevara & Scalise 2006: 186)

Notice that the purported lack of headedness, i.e. exocentricity, is traditionally seen as a

taxonomic category on a par with the grammatical relations holding between the members of
a compound, such as subordination, coordination, and appositive (cf. especially the works of

Spencer 1991; Booij 2005; Haspelmath & Sims 2010). This analytical choice implicitly

suggests that headedness and grammatical relations are to be analyzed as unrelated, yet

symmetric, taxonomic categories. In some cases, it also suggests that headlessness is linked

to a specific grammatical relation, normally coordination. Nevertheless Bisetto & Scalise

(2005) and Scalise & Bisetto (2009) show that headedness and grammatical relations actually

intersect, hence should not be treated as independent classificatory categories. More

specifically, Bisetto & Scalise’s revision indicates that all grammatical relations found in

compounding, defined in (7), display both endocentric and exocentric constructions, creating

the taxonomy of six major classes of compounds in natural languages, outlined in (8):6

(7) Grammatical relations internal to compounds

a. Subordination: head-complement relation;
b. Attributive: head-modifier relation;
c. Coordination: conjunctive (i.e. and) or disjunctive (i.e. or) relation.

(8)

(Bisetto & Scalise 2005: 326)

6
Scalise & Bisetto (2009) subdivide subordination into the categories ground and verbal-nexus. They also add
an additional grammatical relation composing with attributive, namely, appositive. These further subdivisions
are not relevant for our purposes, and for this reason we have opted for Bisetto & Scalise’s (2005)
classification.
This classificatory scheme is widely attested in a handful of unrelated language families (cf.

Ceccagno & Basciano 2007; Rosenberg 2007; Benigni & Masini 2009; Göksel 2009;

Štichauer 2009; Rio-Torto & Ribeiro 2012; Vercellotti & Mortensen 2012). Thus, using the

grammatical relations in (7) – which are typically the same as those holding between phrasal

constituents (Bisetto & Scalise 2005: 326) – and two purported states of headedness in order

to cross-classify compounds yields a picture far more nuanced than that in (6).

Having said that, the question that immediately emerges is whether the three sub-

classes of exocentric compounds in (8) are derived by the same combinatorial mechanisms

and by the same grammatical strategies. It is thus fundamental to determine whether grammar

possesses a unique or several ways of generating exocentricity. To answer this question, one

must first examine the types of exocentric compounds attested in the world’s languages. By

and large, bahuvrihi and deverbal compounds are described as the prototypical exocentric

compounds in the morphological and syntactic literature (cf. Bloomfield 1933; Bauer 2001;

Haspelmath & Sims 2010; Uriagereka 2012). To conform to this ordinary perspective as well

as with the Romance and Germanic bias that is typical of discussions on headedness, we will

briefly review Bauer’s (2008a; 2010) typological works, which survey all the different

patterns of exocentric compound types attested cross-linguistically. The author provides five

major types of exocentric compounds, each of which is described and exemplified in (9):7

(9) Bauer’s taxonomy of exocentric compounds

a. Bahuvrihi compounds express some salient feature of a modified element,

often indicating a ‘having/possessing ~’ interpretation (e.g. birdbrain,
‘someone who has a bird’s brain’). They normally comprise a noun (viz. the
possessed noun) and a modifier for that noun, with the compounds acting as a
noun or as an adjective.8
7
The examples used are taken from Bauer (2008a; 2010).
8
This category of compounds is also labeled as possessive compounds or metonymical compounds (cf. Benczes
2006). Bauer (2008a: 54) points out that this sort of exocentricity is not exclusive to compounding, since it can
 Examples: (French) rouge-gorge [A+N]N lit. red+throat ‘robin’; (German)
drei-eck [Q+N]N lit. three+corner ‘triangle’; (Cantonese) hāk+sām [A+N]A lit.
black+heart ‘malicious’; (Basque) txori-buru [N+N]A lit. bird+head ‘bird-
headed’.

b. Deverbal compounds generally comprise a verbal base and an argument,

normally its direct object. The compound as a whole denotes the person or
entity which performs the role of the external argument.9
Examples: (Japanese) tsume-kiri [N+V]N lit.nail+cut ‘nail-clipper’; (Italian)
lascia-passare [V+V]N lit. permit+to pass ‘a pass’; (Damana) munzisa-kuaga
[A+V]N lit. viscous+appear ‘gum’; (Greek) polí-grafos [Q+V]N lit.
much+write ‘duplicating machine’.

c. Co-compounds instantiate a sub-class of coordinate compounds, where the

two constituent members, sharing substantial parts of their lexical semantics
and lexical category, are combined together to denote their hyperonym.
Examples: (Chantyal) nɦe+tɦara [N+N]N lit. milk+buttermilk ‘dairy
products’; (Meithei) čáthǝk [V+V]V lit. eat+drink ‘dine’; (Mandarin) lěng+rè
[A+A]N lit. cold+hot ‘temperature’.

d. Metaphorical compounds have a metaphor in their non-modifying (i.e. head)

element. The head or the compound as a whole display a metaphorical
interpretation.
Examples: moose milk [N+N]N ‘drink made of rum and cream’, (Mandarin)
tiān+qì [N+N]N lit heaven+breath ‘weather’, (Urarina) ahãaori-kwitɕana
[N+N]N lit. turtle+blood ‘birth mark’.

e. Transpositional compounds stand for conversion cases in compounds whose

word-class is not overt. In other words, this class comprises compounds whose
grammatical category differs from the categories of their constituent members.
Examples: (Khmer) khɔh+trəw [A+A]N lit. wrong+right ‘morality; (Damana)
tua kuaga [V+V]A lit. to see+to live ‘visible’; (Vietnamese) bà+con [N+N]V
lit. grandmother+child ‘be related’; (Mandarin) zhuǎn-yǎn [V+N]Adv lit.
turn+eye ‘instantly’.

Bauer (2010: 167), in determining the criteria used to organize his typology, assumes the

hyponymy test as the main diagnostic to pinpoint exocentric constructions. He notices that

also be found in derived words and conversion; contra Bisetto & Scalise (2007), who argue that exocentricity
is a property restricted to compounding. Bare, Burushaski, and Kayardild have suffixes that could also be
glossed as ‘having ~’, while Lezgian has a suffix that may be glossed as ‘lacking ~’. Similar derivational
suffixes are found in Brazilian Portuguese, such as -ud(o) (e.g. cabel-ud-o lit. hair+SUFF+TV ‘one who has
long hair’; barrig-ud-o lit. belly+SUFF+TV ‘one who has a big belly’). In this article, we will not explore
exocentricity in the derivational domain, even though our analysis could be easily expanded to account for
these data.
9
As mentioned earlier, we have opted for the label deverbal compounds, rather than synthetic compounds as in
Bauer (2008a; 2010). Synthetic is a language-specific type of deverbal compounds (viz. compounds made up
of a verb and a noun plus a derivational affix), and it is inapplicable to a set of languages, especially Romance
languages, whose deverbal compounds lack the overt derivational affix.
exocentrics fail the hyponymy test in at least three circumstances, namely: (i) exocentric

compounds “fail to display a head element” (e.g. co-compounds), (ii) “they can function as a

member of a word-class which is not the word-class of their head element” (e.g. deverbal and

transpositional compounds), and (iii) “they can have a head element of the correct word-

class, but with apparently the wrong denotation” (e.g. bahuvrihi and metaphorical

compounds). These three contexts indicate us how broad the empirical domain involving

exocentric compounds may be, as well as the range of compound types that can be labeled as

exocentric if we consider failing the hyponymy test as the main criterion.

Even a cursory look, however, is enough for one to perceive that these compound

types pose a handful of empirical questions concerning their exocentric nature. We admit this

may be due to the semantic criterion used to identify them, as initially criticized in Section 1.

In addition to that, Bauer’s typology lacks a justification for why the set of endocentric

constructions in compounding should be considered so small. More specifically, why must a

compound, to be analyzed as endocentric, contain at least a nominal constituent and bear a

nominal category? In the next section, we expand the discussion on the effectiveness of the

hyponymy test in selecting for exocentric compounds. We then put forth a new definition for

semantic exocentricity – reinterpreting the notion of head –, and review the major compound

types suggested by Bauer (2008a; 2010) in light of these new assumptions.

3. Rethinking the interplay of exocentricity and the IS A Condition

Let us follow Scalise et al. (2009) in assuming that exocentricity is a three-fold phenomenon,

that is, that exocentricity can be divided into the three main sub-types, as in (10). In doing so,
we must assess how these three sub-types are related to each other, and whether one of them

characterizes a primitive notion of exocentricity from which the other two are derived.

(10) Sub-types of exocentricity

a. Semantic exocentricity
“A compound is semantically exocentric if it denotes a class which cannot be
derived from the classes denoted by its constituents” (2009: 60).
b. Categorial exocentricity
“A compound is categorially exocentric if the constituent in the head position
does not impose its categorial features on the whole construction” (2009: 58).
c. Morphological exocentricity
“A compound is morphologically exocentric if the morphological features of the
compound are not identical to the morphological features of any of its internal
constituents” (2009: 59).

The head of a compound can be determined on formal and semantic grounds, as we can see

in (10). Formal heads provide the category (e.g. noun, verb, adjective) and the morphological

features (e.g. number and gender) of the overall compound, while semantic heads determine

the hyperonym from which the denotation of the compound is derived. Let us begin by

evaluating the definition in (10a). As discussed earlier, semantic exocentricity is extremely

restrictive. Not only does it presuppose that every endocentric compound denotes an entity

(i.e., that endocentric compounds are exclusively nouns), it also leads us to analyze every

endocentric compound as consisting of a noun combined with a restrictive modifier (e.g.

another noun or an adjective), whose function is to further specify the entity denoted by the

head noun.

The above matters encapsulate one of the main drawbacks of the IS A Condition as a

test for headedness. Since it is defined in terms of hyponym relations, the IS A Condition is

felicitous with a very narrow class of compounds, namely compositional attributive and

subordinate nominal compounds, such as compounds made up of a noun plus an adjective or

a noun in an attributive or subordinate relation (e.g. [A+N]N: blackbird; attributive [N+N]N:

swordfish; subordinate [N+N]N: love story). When applied to deverbal or de-prepositional

compounds, for instance, the IS A Condition is moot regarding their headedness character,

since the compound’s internal verb or preposition cannot denote an entity anyway, as

opposed to the compound itself. In these cases it is impossible to make any judgment of

hyperonymy. As a result, defining semantic exocentricity in terms of the IS A Condition

completely hinders the identification of exocentric compounds.

Furthermore, non-compositional compounds also fail the IS A Condition due to a

denotation mismatch between the referent of their potential heads and the referent of the

overall compound, which in turn causes them to be misleadingly classified as exocentric, as

previously noticed by Bauer (2008a; 2010), Ralli & Andreou (2012), and Andreou (2014).

Interestingly, most work on exocentricity assumes the notions of semantic exocentricity to be

related to or on a par with non-compositionality (cf. Bauer 2008a; 2010, on the discussion of

the exocentric status of metaphorical compounds; Scalise et al. 2009, on the discussion of

Absolute Semantic Exocentricity; Uriagereka 2012). Nevertheless, it is not the case that

semantic exocentricity necessarily triggers non-compositionality, as de-prepositional and

deverbal compounds can be fully compositional. The Spanish de-prepositional compound

sin-vergüenza lit. without+shame ‘shameless person’ and the Italian de-prepositional

compound lungo-fiume lit. along+river ‘[road] along river’, for example, even though

exocentric – according to (10a) – are interpreted as the sum of their constituent parts (i.e. pro

[who is] shameless; pro [which is] along [the] river). Deverbal compounds display the same

sort of compositional interpretation, as in Brazilian Portuguese lava-louças lit. wash-

tableware ‘dishwasher’ (i.e. pro [which] washes dishes/tableware), and in Spanish sprime-

limones lit. squeeze-lemons ‘lemon-squeezer’ (i.e. pro [which] squeezes lemons). Deverbal

compounds can also display a non-compositional interpretation. For instance, in Brazilian

Portuguese quebra-galho lit. break-tree branches ‘trouble shooter’, in Italian mangia-

maccheroni lit. eat+macaroni ‘good-for-nothing’ (Bok-Bennema & Kampers-Manhe 2006:

14), and in French fouille-merde lit search+shit ‘journalist’ (Bok-Bennema & Kampers-

Manhe 2006: 13). This double interpretive nature of deverbal compounds poses a challenging

question: if semantic exocentricity and non-compositionality are to be analyzed as equivalent

grammatical notions, how should we explain the existence of both compositional and non-

compositional deverbal compounds? As we can see, semantic exocentricity in this context is

worthless, since it does not serve as a criterion to evaluate the semantic headedness of

compounds whose constituent members are not connected by a modification relation.

In this article, we start with the assumption that

(11) Exocentricity is not the absence of a (semantic or formal) head. It is the realization of
the compound’s head – overtly or covertly – outside the compound’s internal
structure.

According to (11), the non-compositional nature of any compound is better characterized, in

a broad sense, as semantic headlessness, but in no sense as exocentricity, which as a result

allows us to treat semantic exocentricity and non-compositionality as distinct. In addition to

that, the assumption in (11) prevents the grammatical relations internal to compounds from

playing a role in identifying their heads, differently from (10a), which is felicitous solely with

modification relations. Thus since semantic exocentricity, defined in terms of hyponymy, is

useless for a broad identification of exocentric compounds, we propose instead a new

definition:

(12) Semantic exocentricity

A compound is semantically exocentric if it modifies an external entity – i.e. the
compound’s head –, which can be overtly or covertly realized.
The definition in (12) incorporates the following hypotheses:

(13) a. Hypothesis #1
Exocentricity emerges only in the context of modification relations.10
b. Hypothesis #2
Exocentricity characterizes a modification relation between the compound and a
(structurally) external constituent, which may be covertly realized.
c. Hypothesis #3
Only compounds that denote a property can be exocentric (viz. mostly nouns and
adjectives). Compounds whose output category is verbal do not display
exocentricity since they cannot assign a property to a given referent.

In sum, we could say that the aforementioned facts indicate that semantic headedness, as in

(10a), is a good test for the identification of non-compositionality rather than of semantic

exocentricity.

Turning now to the other types of exocentricity in (10), we notice that all in all

mismatches in the grammatical category of a compound – when compared to its input

categories – are more likely to indicate cases of non-compositionality rather than cases of

exocentricity, as we can observe more directly in transpositional compounds. For example, a

Turkish compound such as yap-boz lit. construct+destroy ‘jigsaw puzzle’ ([V+V]N) and a

Chinese compound such as guang-gào lit. wide+to announce ‘advertisement’ ([A+V]N)

(Scalise et al. 2009: 55) are both categorially exocentric – since their overall category differs

from that of their constituent members –, but neither of them displays an external head.

Mismatches in category also suggestively signal the absence of a head, which consequently

indicates a domain for non-compositionality. Since non-compositionality is to be analyzed as

10
This modification relation refers to the way in which the compound’s structure is connected to an external
head, but not to the relation holding between the compound’s constituent members.
distinct from exocentricity, we set aside categorial exocentricity as a test for distinguishing

exocentric constructions.

In our view, morphological exocentricity serves as the most trustworthy diagnostic for

identifying exocentricity in compounding. It constitutes evidence that it is the morphological

features of a silent head that govern agreement relations, rather than the grammatical features

of the compound elements – an assumption that conceptually approximates the notions of

semantic exocentricity, in (12), and morphological exocentricity, as in (10c). In (14), we

present de-prepositional (14a), deverbal (14b), and bahuvrihi (14c) compounds in which the

gender and number features of the noun internal to the compound differ from the gender and

number features of the definite article with which the compound is combined. This mismatch

suggests that the controller of the agreement relation cannot be the compound itself, but an

empty head with which the compound is associated.

(14) BP
a. o [sem+vergonh-a]
DET.M.SG without+shame-F.SG
‘the shameless guy’
b. o [port-a+jói-a-s]
DET.M.SG hold.TV+ jewelry-F-PL
‘the jewelry case’
c. o [casc-a+gross-a]
DET.M.SG skin-F.SG+thick-F.SG
‘the bouncer, thick-skinned guy’

Based on these assumptions, we could reinterpret the relevance and the relations between the

three notions of exocentricity in (10). We put away categorial exocentricity as a relevant

criterion for identifying exocentric compounds, since the non-compositional interpretation

resulting from the categorial mismatch is to be analyzed as a phenomenon dissociated from

exocentricity, as discussed above. We assume that there is in fact a categorial requirement.

Once exocentricity, as in (11), requires the overall category of a compound to be a noun or an

adjective, as made explicit in (13c), a categorial requirement has precedence over the other

two remaining types of exocentricity in (10). The category of the overall compound can thus

be seen as the primary requirement to implement exocentricity. Once the categorial constraint

is satisfied, a modification relation can be established, giving rise to semantic exocentricity,

as defined in (12). Semantic exocentricity may trigger morphological exocentricity, since it is

the modified head (overtly or covertly realized), but not the compound itself, that governs

dependency relations. These assumptions on the implementation of exocentricity may be

described in an implicational hierarchy, as in (15), where “>” indicates which requirement

should be met first, as described above:

(15) Categorial requirement > Semantic exocentricity > Morphological exocentricity

With this new approach to exocentricity in mind, we will now review Bauer’s typology and

identify which compound types in fact could be considered exocentric.

3.1 Revisiting Bauer’s taxonomy

3.1.1 Coordination in compounding

A first issue emerging from the classification of exocentric compounds in (9) is what to make

of the distinction between co-compounds and dvandva compounds.11 Would it be the case

that both are exocentric, or are the former exocentric while the latter are endocentric, as

11
In this article, we employ the term “dvandva” to make reference to appositional compounds. We acknowledge
that there is a misapplication of the term “dvandva” in the western tradition, as highlighted by Bauer (2008b).
Compounds analyzed as “dvandva” in Sanskrit grammars do not seem to find equivalents in western European
languages. We decided to keep the term “dvandva” to avoid any terminological confusion when we comment
on western works that resort to the same term to classify coordinative compounds.
argued in Bisetto & Scalise (2005), Bauer (2008a; 2010), and Scalise & Bisetto (2009)? It has

already been noticed that coordination in compounding can be manifested in quite different

ways cross-linguistically, with remarkable semantic differences. For instance, Wälchli

(2005), Arcodia et al. (2010) and Arcodia (2018) claim that there are two macro-types of

coordinate compounds in the world’s languages.

On the one hand, we have co-compounds, described in (9c) above. In co-compounds the

referent of the compound is in a superordinate relationship to the meaning of the parts, as the

denotation of the compound tends to be more general than that of its constituent members.

Examples include Khmer ʔɜwpuk medaaj lit. father+mother, meaning ‘parents’, and Rural

Tok Pisin han-lek lit. hand+foot, which means ‘limbs’. Notice that the lexical semantics of

their two constituent members is considerably similar. Their overall meaning is in a part-

whole relationship with the meanings of each member, frequently denoting collective entities,

such as relatives, body parts, and clothes. Arcodia et al. (2010: 185–186) show that things can

become more complex. For instance, there are at least four different coordination readings in

nominal co-compounds from East and South-East Asia, where such compounds tend to be

more productive: (i) additive reading (e.g. Japanese oya-ko lit. father+son ‘father and son’);

(ii) collective reading (e.g. Vietnamese bàn-ghê’ lit. table+chair ‘furniture’); (iii) relational

reading (e.g. Mandarin Gang-Ào lit. Hong Kong+Macao ‘Hong Kong and Macao’) and (iv)

disjunctive reading (e.g. Mandarin sheng-fù lit. victory+defeat ‘success or failure’).12

On the other hand, the referent of dvandva compounds is in a subordinate relationship

to the meaning of the parts, as the overall meaning of the compound is suggestively more

specific than that of its constituent members, such as in actor-director or in Brazilian

12
Their distribution was initially described as areally skewed, predominating in the Eastern part of Eurasia, New
Guinea and Mesoamerica; cf. Arcodia et al. (2010). But see Arcodia (2018) for a revision of this typological
distribution.
Portuguese bar-restaurante ‘bar-restaurant’. Dvandva compounds, extensively attested in the

major European languages, are – according to Arcodia et al. (2010: 188) – coordinate

compounds with an anti-iconic interpretation, i.e. “they do not designate a pair of people

(thus they are not the result of the addition of coordinands), but a single person sharing

features designated by both coordinands”. For example, actor-director is not a group of

actors and directors, not even a designated super-class, such as a ‘theater crew’, but a single

individual who acts as both an actor and a director.

Based on this distinction in the interpretation of co-compounds and dvandva

compounds, we suggest that a more parsimonious analysis for headedness in the super-class

of coordinate compounds is the opposite of what Bisetto & Scalise (2005), Bauer (2008a;

2010), and Scalise & Bisetto (2009) have previously proposed. Precisely, we claim that co-

compounds are actually endocentric coordinate compounds, whose overall meaning is

composed of the semantic characteristics of their constituent members. The compound itself

does not assign any property to an external entity, but sort of designates the (quasi-

)arithmetical sum of the referents denoted by its constituents. Dvandva compounds, on the

other hand, are the real exocentric coordinate compounds. As suggested by Arcodia (2018:

1228), they express two simultaneous properties of a single external entity, which is not

necessarily overtly realized, very much in accordance with our core hypothesis.

Let us see how we arrive at the conclusion that dvandva compounds are in fact

exocentric. The basic rationale underlying the assumption that dvandva compounds are

endocentric derives from the IS A Condition. When applied to dvandva compounds, the result

is that both constituent members seem to act as a hyperonym of the concept denoted by the
compound as a whole. Observe the following dvandva compound in Italian, similar to actor-

director:

(16) Italian
studente-lavoratore
lit. student+worker
IS A studente ‘student’
IS A lavoratore ‘worker’ (Scalise & Guevara 2006: 191)

The IS A Condition is misleading in this case, as well as in so many others. According to this

hyponymy test, (16) cannot characterize a hyperonym relationship in coordination, since the

compound itself is not a hyponym of any of its constituents. This consequently hinders the

identification of a head in coordinate compounds. The only way to assign a proper subset-set

relationship to (16) is to interpret the compound as encoding an attributive reading, rather

than a coordinative reading. In an attributive reading, studente-lavoratore should be

interpreted, for example, as a student who, in addition to being a ‘student’, has another

parallel occupation, ‘worker’. In this case, ‘worker’ is interpreted as the non-head noun that

specifies ‘student’, assigning it a characteristic. Interestingly, such an attributive reading can

in fact be inferred on pragmatic grounds.

Arcodia (2018: 1202) points out that the order variation attested in studente-

lavoratore suggests that its constituents may be connected in an asymmetric relation,

especially if we take into account some specific pragmatic circumstances. For instance, in the

order variation illustrated below, (17a) is an excerpt from university regulations, in which

‘student’ has a more relevant role, while (17b) is from a textbook on labor law, in which

‘worker’ has a more relevant role. In each case, the constituent member on the left – the

canonical head position in Romance compounds – has a relative pragmatic prominence over

the constituent on the right, which implies, to a certain extent, an attributive reading (viz. a
hyponym/sub-category of ‘student’, in (17a), and a hyponym/sub-category of ‘worker’, in

(17b)). Thus, given the implicit prominence assigned to the constituent member on the left,

studente-lavoratore and lavoratore-studente seem to be more appropriately analyzed as

attributive rather than as dvandva compounds in (17).

(17) Italian
a. […] la figura dello studente lavoratore.
DET.F.SG status.SG of.DET.M.SG student-SG worker-SG
‘the status of student-worker.’
b. […] il lavoratore studente ha diritto
DET.M.SG worker-SG student-SG have.PRES.3SG right
all’ orario flessibile […]
to.DET.M.SG schedule-SG flexible-SG
‘[…] the worker-student has the right to a flexible working schedule […].’
(Amoroso et al. 2009: 379 apud Arcodia 2018: 1202)

On the other hand, Arcodia et al. (2010) (see also Bauer & Tarasova, 2013) argue that the

attributive and coordinative readings of a compound can be differentiated when order

variation is possible: “if constituent order is reversible, then the compound is certainly

coordinate” (2010: 189). Once reversibility is strictly forbidden in compounds comprising a

hierarchical structure, such as the case of attributive compounds (e.g. woman doctor), order

variation should not be allowed. Admitting this latter diagnosis is on the right track (which

seems quite reasonable if we consider coordination in the phrasal domain, cf. Yuasa &

Sadock 2002; Haspelmath 2004), we should approach the compounds in (17) as two distinct

attributive compounds, which happen to display the same constituents (i.e., they are not

variants of each other). A coordinate analysis for the compound studente-lavoratore is then

solely available when order variation leads to no pragmatically significant differences in

meaning, contrarily to what we observe in (17). In this particular case, we can assume that the

compound displays an internal symmetric coordinate structure; hence it can be defined as a

dvandva compound.
 We follow Arcodia (2018) in assuming that the two nouns or adjectives normally

involved in dvandva compounds function as property-denoting items, i.e. they simultaneously

attribute two properties to the same referent. This is essentially what distinguishes the

interpretive role of coordinated nouns in co-compounds and dvandva compounds. More

specifically,

‘[…] The hyponymic [i.e. dvandva] type […] requires that the two constituents be

used, in a sense, as attributes; this constitutes marked usage for nouns, a point

which may help to explain both the skewed distribution of nominal HYPO’s

[dvandva] in the world’s languages and the restriction to specific types of nouns,

i.e. concrete nouns which may be interpreted as indicating, among others,

professional or human attributes. In this respect, HYPO’s [dvandva] are not

fundamentally different from attributive compounds as frogman or snail mail: here

frog and snail are used as attributes (‘amphibious’ and ‘slow’, respectively […]); in

HYPO’s, however, the relation is symmetrical, i.e. both constituents equally

contribute to identifying the referent of the whole compound. In other words,

whereas a frogman is, indeed, a man, but not a frog, an actor-singer is both’

(Arcodia 2018: 1229).

Bearing in mind this revision of headedness in coordinate compounds, we emphasize a new

characterization of this major class, namely: co-compounds are endocentric because the

compound does not serve as a modifier of an external entity. Additionally, their overall

meaning is composed of the semantic characteristics of their constituent members, as can be

observed in the Japanese co-compound oya-ko lit. father+son ‘father and son’, and in the
Mandarin sheng-fù lit. victory+defeat ‘success or failure’.13 Contrarily, dvandva compounds

are exocentric as both constituent members simultaneously assign a property to an external

head. According to this assumption, both constituent members of the compound studente-

lavoratore – when no pragmatic bias is at play – serve as the predicate of an external empty

NP head eN, as depicted in (18).

(18) nP
3
nP nP
g 3
eN n14 &P
g 3
∅ nP &’
4 3
studente & NP
g 4
∅ lavoratore

The coordinative reading of the compound emerges due to presence of a coordinate complex,

formalized in terms of a Boolean phrase &P (cf. Munn 1987; Zoerner 1995; Johannessen

1996), whose head may be, in some cases, overtly realized by a conjunction (e.g. bed-and-

breakfast).15 It is also valid to highlight that the compound structure in (18) also applies to

inanimate dvandva compounds, such as Brazilian Portuguese sofá-cama lit. sofa-bed ‘day

bed’, and bar-restaurante lit. bar-restaurant ‘bar-restaurant’. In the latter cases, the empty

noun eN is not interpreted as an individual, but as an instrument or a location.

13
We could say to a certain extent that co-compounds seem to constitute an instance of double-headedness in
compounding, an assumption that requires more investigation.
14
The motivations underlying the assumption of this category head will be presented in Section 4. Basically, it
turns a phrasal constituent into a compound, i.e. a single syntactic object for the purposes of movement and
binding.
15
See also Di Sciullo (2005; 2009), who assumes a functional head AND connecting the constituent members of
dvandva compounds. The author, however, does not analyze these compounds as exocentric constructions, as
we are arguing for in this article.
3.1.2 Are metaphorical and transpositional compounds truly exocentric?

The vast majority of metaphorical compounds presented by Bauer (2008a; 2010) displays

non-compositionality rather than exocentricity. Exocentricity presupposes an external head,

or as we suggested, an external nominal element modified by the compound itself. Now,

although exocentricity may appear in compounds displaying non-compositionality, e.g. in

bahuvrihi compounds like Brazilian Portuguese casca grossa lit. thick+skin ‘bouncer, thick-

skinned person’, not all non-compositional compounds display exocentricity. While Bauer

(2008a; 2010; 2017) hesitates to assign metaphorical compounds to their own major class, we

claim that the compounds assigned to this class are not exocentric, but plainly non-

compositional.

In metaphorical compounds, either a single constituent member or the compound as a

whole is interpreted idiosyncratically.

(19) dust bowl ‘area with no vegetation’

According to Bauer (2010: 173), (19) is not a kind of ‘bowl’ hence the compound could be

described as exocentric, since it fails the hyponymy test. However, as we have seen with

dvandva, deverbal and de-prepositional compounds, the hyponymy test is a bad criterion for

identifying exocentricity in compounding. In (19), for instance, it does not apply successfully

once the head of the compound is interpreted figuratively. In other words, the fact that the

head constituent or the compound as a whole is interpreted in a metaphorical way does not

entail that the compound head is external to it: non-compositional interpretations do not entail

exocentricity. In this sense, we admit that the idiosyncratic nature of a compound should be
analyzed as a matter of how the compound’s roots are interpreted at LF, rather than as a

matter of (exocentric) structure.

Transpositional compounds in turn are quite challenging, since besides their

categorial exocentricity they tend to display a non-compositional interpretation. The main

characteristic of this class is that none of the constituent members imposes its categorial

features on the compound. Observe the transpositional compounds in (20):

(20) Transpositional compounds

a. (Khmer) khoh trew lit wrong+right ‘morality’
b. (Turkana) ni-kari-mojon lit. thin+old ‘The Karimojong tribe’
c. (Damana) tua kuaga lit. to see+to live ‘visible’
d. (Swahili) ujauzito lit. come+heavy ‘pregnancy’
(Bauer 2010: 172)

The first two compounds are made up of two adjectives being interpreted as a noun. The third

example is a compound made up of two verbs being interpreted as an adjective, while in the

fourth the combination of a verb and adjective is interpreted as a noun. Although we still do

not have a thorough analysis for this major class, it clearly does not involve any external

modification; thus it could not be characterized as an exocentric compound. Again, non-

compositionality should not be considered a criterion for determining exocentricity. We will

return to the role of categorial exocentricity in the next section.

In sum, after scrutinizing Bauer’s typology of exocentric compounds, we end up

concluding that only bahuvrihi compounds can confidently be defined as exocentric.

Therefore, according to the revision based on the working hypotheses assumed in (11), we

can admit at least two (out of five) major classes of exocentric compounds: bahuvrihi and

dvandva compounds. In the following section, we will argue that deverbal compounds,
frequently analyzed as the textbook example of exocentric compounds, are not truly

exocentric but endocentric, since their modified head is realized internally to the compound’s

structure. The same conclusion is extended to de-prepositional compounds.16

4. Toward a syntactic characterization of exocentricity and an account for

the assignment of non-compositional interpretations in compounds

In line with our assumptions in Section 1 of this article, we provide in this section a syntactic

characterization of how exocentricity is syntactically derived, and how it differs from the

assignment of non-compositional meaning to complex structures. We understand all

meaning, including the idiosyncratic meaning of the linguistic sign, to be mediated by

structure (Borer 2013). To wit, we follow the line of investigation inaugurated in Marantz

(2001) that the meaning of syntactic objects made up of a √ROOT (√R) – i.e. the smallest

syntactic unit bearing conceptual content – that combines with a category head (i.e.

[n]ominal, [v]erbal, [a]djectival) is idiosyncratic (Marantz 2001; 2007; Arad 2003; 2005;

Panagiotidis 2011). 17 This systematic idiosyncrasy/non-compositionality associated with

structures such as [n n √R] and [v v √R] indicates that the syntactic domain minimally

containing the root and the categorizer is a privileged domain for the assignment of

unpredictable meaning.

16
If we take into account the grammatical relations described in the work of Bisetto & Scalise (2005), we can
say that, according to our revision, there are only attributive (i.e. bahuvrihi) and coordinate (i.e. dvandva)
exocentric compounds. Until now, no exocentric class whose constituent members are arranged in a
subordinate (i.e. head-complement) relation was identified.
17
The notation ‘√ROOT’ is used, as is the practice in some syntactic work, to distinguish the roots as forms, i.e.
“what remains after all morphology has been wrung out of a form” in Aronoff (1994: 40), from √ROOT as the
abstract syntax-internal index of lexical identity (Acquaviva & Panagiotidis 2012; Harley 2014).
4.1 Theoretical background

Marantz (2001; 2007) argues that roots are never interpreted independently, since they never

constitute a syntactic phase, i.e. a relevant portion of the syntactic structure capable of being

interpreted semantically (at LF) and phonologically (at the Phonological Form (PF)). Thus

once a root is categorized, i.e. when a root is combined with a category head, it is dispatched

to the interfaces – as depicted in (21) – and receives an interpretation, which can be

idiosyncratic. Once this interpretation is fixed, it is carried along throughout the derivation

(pace Acquaviva & Panagiotidis 2012).

(21) n, v, a
3 LF
n, v, a √R
PF

Compounds are interesting in this respect because in syntactic objects made up of at least two

roots the assignment of a single, non-compositional meaning requires both roots to be in the

same Spell-Out domain, i.e. in the same portion of the syntactic structure shipped to the

interfaces. Hence if we are to construct a coherent account of non-compositionality in

compounding, we must consider the following syntactic facts: first, roots are never

interpreted independently. Their meaning is negotiated within their structural environment

after they have been categorized, when they are sent to the interfaces. Second, roots per se are

defective syntactic objects and this is why they must be merged with a category-assigning

head, so as not to induce a crash at the interfaces with the Conceptual-Intentional system

(Panagiotidis 2011; 2014a; 2015). Third, non-compositional interpretation in compounding

emerges when both roots are sent together to the interfaces, allowing this combination to be

assigned a fixed, idiosyncratic meaning.

 Some recent studies have argued that compounds, specially root compounds (such as

the case of bahuvrihi and dvandva compounds), are the result of two free acategorial roots

merged without undergoing categorization (cf. Zhang 2007; Zwitserlood 2008; Borer 2013;

Bauke 2014; 2016). In their view, the merger of two uncategorized roots could extend the

phase domain, and as a consequence, it would maintain two uncategorized roots awaiting

further Merge operations in the derivation, as illustrated in (22). When a category head (i.e.

α) is merged on the top of this structure, it would trigger the Spell-Out of both roots. In this

context, independent interpretation is not expected, thus both roots can be assigned a fixed,

non-compositional meaning.

(22) αP
3 Spell-Out domain
α √P
3
√R1 √R2

LF à non-compositional meaning

Nevertheless the assumption in (22) cannot account for a handful of empirical facts in

compounding. For instance, (22) would preclude the insertion of inflectional markers in the

first member of Romance non-compositional compounds, since the construction would only

contain a single category head to which these features could be attached (e.g. BP samba-s

cançõ-es lit. samba-PL+song-PL ‘boxers’). Second, since compounds made up of two

uncategorized roots bear a single category head, they should display a single primary stress

(Marvin 2002; 2013), conflicting with the phrasal stress pattern of Romance compounds, as

described in the works of Nespor (1992), Ralli & Nespor (1996) and Nespor (1999) (e.g. BP

vìdeo-depoiménto lit. video-testimony ‘video-testimony’; Italian càpo-stazióne lit. chief-

station ‘stationmaster’; Spanish emprèsa-fantásma lit. firm-ghost ‘cover-up company’).

Third, (22) does not predict the insertion of two distinct class markers in Romance [N+N]

compounds (e.g. BP peix-e espad-a lit. fish sword ‘sword fish’; ministr-o chef-e lit. minister-

chief ‘chief minister’). Fourth, it does not explain why we find different grammatical

relations within root compounds, such as attributive (e.g. sword fish), subordinate (e.g. apron

string), and coordinate relations (e.g. actor director). Fifth, it does not explain in a principled

way why in endocentric attributive compounds only a single root is interpreted figuratively

(e.g. BP bolsa-sanduíche lit. financial.aid+sandwich ‘financial aid to graduate students to

visit a foreign university’; banana-maçã lit. banana+apple ‘Latundan banana’; cão-salsicha

lit. dog+sausage ‘dachshund’). Finally, it is not clear to which root of a [A+N] compound a

class marker will be attached, and to which of them gender agreement will be attached (e.g.

BP mã-o-bob-a lit. hand.CM-silly.F ‘perverted hand’).

4.2 Our proposal

With these facts in mind, we propose that categorization is not an optional derivational step.

In all compounds every root must be assigned a category. Following Panagiotidis (2011;

2014a; 2015), we admit that categorially non-individuated roots are not legitimate LF and PF

objects, inducing formal crashing at the interfaces. Furthermore, we assume that, in the

syntactic component, the unifying characteristic of compounds is the presence of a category

domain on top of two or more categorized roots, as previously suggested by Nóbrega (2014;

2015). These two general assumptions underlie our syntactic definition of compounds:

(23) Compounds within syntax

Compounds are phrasal structures with two or more categorized roots combined in a
specific grammatical relation – viz. subordination, attribution, or coordination –,
which are further categorized by a category head, n, v or a.
The definition in (23) is illustrated in the compound structure in (24).

(24) γ
3
γ ℜ
3
α β α, β, γ are category-defining heads and
2 2 ℜ stands for the grammatical relations of subordination,
α √R1 β √R2 attribution, and coordination.18

The assumption of an additional category head on top of a compound structure (i.e. γ) allows

us to account for a set of drawbacks involved in the syntactic derivation of a compound,

originally pointed out in the work of Zhang (2007). First, this category domain (i.e. γ) permits

us to account for contexts of categorial exocentricity, previously defined in (10b), and

illustrated with the Chinese examples in (25). Second, the γ domain also requires both

categorized roots to be moved together, thus no element can be moved out of the compound,

as indicated by the ungrammaticality of (26b). It also inhibits reference to only one of the

compound’s roots, explaining the unacceptability of (27).

(25) Chinese
a. zhe zhang zhuozi de da-xiao [A+A] à N
this CL table MOD big-small
‘The size of this table.’
b. yi ge hen bao-shou de ren [V+V] à N
one CL very keep-defend MOD person
‘A very conservative person.’ (Zhang 2007: 172)

18
The ℜ symbol was primarily presented in Guevara & Scalise (2009) to represent the three main grammatical
relations holding between the members of a compound. In (24), it does not indicate a phrase marker, but the
grammatical relation connecting [α α √R] and [β β √R], which in turn can lead to distinct projections.
(26) Chinese
a. Tamen yixiang fu-ze
they always carry-duty
‘They are always responsible.’
b. *Tamen yixiang lian ze dou fu
they always even duty also carry
Intended: ‘They are always even responsible.’ (Zhang 2007: 176)

(27) Chinese
*Ta xian na-le yi ba chai-hu ranhou ba tai dao-ru beizi-li
he first take-PRF one CL tea-pot then BA it pour-in cup-in
Intended: ‘He first took a tea-pot, and then poured the tea into a cup.’ (Zhang 2007:
177)

More importantly, the category domain defined by γ demarcates the limits between what is to

be considered internal or external to the compound’s structure. Hence the presence of a (null)

modified nominal head within the structural domain delimited by γ indicates that the

compound is fundamentally a FEC. In contrast, if the compound modifies a (null) nominal

head concatenated “outside” the structural domain delimited by γ, then it can be considered

as a REC. This distinction will become clearer in the following subsections.

Notice, however, that both roots in the generic structure represented in (24) are

merged as the complement of their categorizing heads. This is a problem for the assignment

of idiosyncratic interpretations to a compound. The reason is: once category heads are phase

heads, the two roots will be spelled-out separately, precluding the assignment of an

idiosyncratic meaning to both roots. In order to allow both roots to be in the same Spell-Out

domain (and categorized), we assume with Marantz (2013) that roots are adjoined to a

category head. Expanding Marantz’s assumption, we specifically propose that roots are

externally pair-merged to their category heads. Admitting that roots are externally pair-

merged, as represented in (28), we can ensure that: (i) each root will be in a local domain
with a category head, and (ii) both roots will be in the same Spell-Out domain, allowing the

assignment of idiosyncratic meanings in compounds at LF.19

(28) ℜ
3
<√R1, α> <√R2, β>

What about ℜ? Following discussions made in the works of Zhang (2007) and Nóbrega

(2014; 2015), we claim the grammatical relations holding between the constituent members

of a compound can be derived by the nature of Merge applied to combine them, either set-

Merge, indicated by curly brackets { }, or pair-Merge, indicated by angle brackets < >,

according to the distribution in (29):

(29) Establishing the grammatical relations internal to compounds via Merge

a. Subordination
Head-complement relation in which a constituent α is set-merged with β.
(e.g. {<√R1, α>, <√R2, β>})
b. Attribution
Adjunction relation in which the non-head constituent α is pair-merged to its
head β.
(e.g. <<√R1, α>, <√R2, β>>)
c. Coordination
Conjunctive relation in which two categorially identical constituents, α and β,
are connected by means of a functional coordination head, giving rise to a
Boolean phrase &P.

The syntactic formation of a compound, as represented in (24), would follow the same

derivational steps of complex specifiers or complex adjuncts, as envisaged by Nunes &

Uriagereka (2000), Nunes (2012) and Piggott & Travis (2013) – an assumption that is in line

with our commitment to syntax-all-the-way-down. Thus, given the Numeration (N) in (30a),

the computational system would independently select a category head, α, and a root, √R1

19
See also Epstein et al. (2016) for a discussion involving external pair-merge of heads and phase cancellation.
(30b-c), and subsequently it would externally pair-merge them (30d). A second root, √R2, will

be externally pair-merged to a category head, β, as a second root syntactic object (30e-g).

Then both derived syntactic objects will be externally merged to each other following one of

the possibilities in (29). In (30h), the categorized roots were concatenated in an attributive

relation, as described in (29b).

(30) Derivational steps involved in the formation of an attributive compound

a. N = {α, β, √R1, √R2} f. N''''= { α, β, √R1, √R2}

M = <√R1, α>
b. N' = {α, β, √R1, √R2} O=β
K=α P = √R2

c. N'' = {α, β, √R1, √R2} g. N''''= { α, β, √R1, √R2}

K= α M = <√R1, α>
L = √R1 Q = <√R2, β>

d. N'' = { α, β, √R1, √R2} h. N''''= { α, β, √R1, √R2}

M = <√R1, α> U = <<√R2, β>, <√R1, α>>

e. N'''= { α, β, √R1, √R2}

M = <√R1, α >
O=β

After being merged together in (30h), both categorized roots (i.e. roots in a strict local

domain with a category head) have a third category head set-merged on top of them (i.e. γ).

At this moment, this category head γ determines a phase head and triggers the Spell-Out of its

complement, allowing both categorized roots to be dispatched to the interfaces altogether.

Bearing the above in mind, we will now show how exocentricity diverges from non-

compositionality in structural terms.

4.3 Bahuvrihi compounds

Let us now take the exocentric compound casca grossa lit. skin+thick ‘bouncer, thick-

skinned person’, first presented in example (4), to illustrate the exocentricity vs. non-

compositionality domains. Bahuvrihi compounds, such as casca grossa, instantiate a type of

REC, that is, compounds modifying eN (a null “pronominal” noun). RECs have their

modified head realized externally to the compound’s structure, outside the γ domain depicted

in the generic structure in (24).

In order to account for the modification relation established between the compound

and its external head, we claim that RECs are created in a separate workspace before they are

adjoined to the null ‘pronominal’ noun eN. First, a compound such as casca grossa will have

both roots categorized, as they are merged as a pair with their category head, as explicated in

(30). A third category head γ is then set-merged on the top of this structure. Since this third

category head determines a phase head, both categorized roots in its complement will be

shipped to the interfaces, as indicated with the strikethrough in (31a). At LF, both roots are

assigned a fixed, non-compositional meaning, namely: ‘bouncer, thick-skinned’. This is the

syntactic domain where non-compositionality is defined. Thereafter the null pronominal noun

eN is taken from the Numeration and it is inserted in a separate workspace, as represented in

(31a). The compound is then merged as an ordered pair with this null nominal head, creating

a modification relation, as in (31b).

(31) a. N = {eN, α, β, γ, √R1, √R2}

U = {γ, <<√R2, β>, <√R1, α>>}
F = eN

b. N = {eN, α, β, γ, √R1, √R2}

W= < eN, {γ, <<√R2, β>, <√R1, α>>}>
The complete structure containing each step of Merge applications can be seen in (32). Angle

brackets in the phrase markers indicate where pair-Merge applications have taken place.

Notice that the non-compositionality domain is defined by the category head that takes the

categorized roots as its complement. This domain is represented by the lower circle in (32).

Exocentricity, on the other hand, is determined higher in the syntactic structure, where the

compound as a whole is concatenated as an adjunct to a nominal head eN, as indicated by the

upper circle.20

(32) 3
D <nP> Exocentricity domain
3
nP aP
g 3
eN a <nP> Non-compositionality domain
g 3
∅ n a LF
g g
<√CASC, n> <√GROSS, a> PF

Since the null pronominal noun eN is the head and also the uppermost nominal element in

(32), it will serve as the goal for any probe c-commanding the structure, as depicted in (34).

Thus morphological exocentricity is the result of a probe-goal relation holding between a c-

commanding D head, containing unvalued and uninterpretable φ features (i.e. number and

gender), and the actual head eN of an exocentric compound, which in turn contains a set of

valued and interpretable φ features. As a consequence, eN serves as an intervener, precluding

the D head from establishing a probe-goal relation with any noun within the compound

structure, viz. casca ‘skin’, or even with a suffix head instantiating the γ domain (contra

20
The adjectival nature of casca grossa is justified by the possibility of applying degree modification (e.g. Ele é
muito/um pouco casca-grossa ‘He is very/a little bouncer/thick-skinned’), and the ‘seem test’ (e.g. Ele parece
(ser) casca-grossa ‘He seems (to be) thick-skinned’) to the compound.
Gračanin-Yuksek 2006; Ralli & Andreou 2012). Therefore, it is the assumption of an eN that

accounts for the occurrence of agreement features distinct from those observed in the

compound’s constituents, as exemplified in (33) and depicted in (34).21

(33) BP
o/a casca-grossa
DET.M.SG/F.SG skin-thick.F.PL
‘the bouncer, thick-skinned boy/girl’

(34) 3
D <nP>
uφ:__ 3
nP aP
g 3
eN a […]
iφ:val g
∅

With this set of assumptions in mind, we can now reconsider the implicational hierarchy

discussed in (15), repeated in (35) for convenience.

21
With respect to the possessive reading of bahuvrihi compounds, Nevins & Myler (2014: 245) claim that in
English bahuvrihi compounds, such as blue-eyed, an adjectival category head a, overtly realized by the suffix -
ed, has the effect of mapping a possession relation to something that can be predicated of a possessor, as
defined by its denotation: [[a-ed]] = λR<e,<e,t>>.λx.∃ye.[R(y,x)]. Thus little-a takes a relation as its first argument,
and outputs a predicate. According to the authors, such possessive relation depends on the denotation of the
bare root in the complement of little-a (viz. [a [√ [brown ∅a] √eye] -eda]), thus the compound will only be
interpretable if the root denotes an inalienable noun, hence denotes a relation (e.g. eye, skin, beard, etc.). If the
root denotes an alienable noun, such as car, the construction is considered ungrammatical (e.g. *John is big-
carred; 2014: 248). Interestingly, a set of alienable nouns can be analyzed as inalienable when they are
interpreted as either an inherited property (e.g. moneyed) or if it is being worn at the time (e.g. top-hatted). We
follow Nevins & Myler’s account to possessive predication in compounding to account for the inherent
possessive reading of bahuvrihi compounds, which in Brazilian Portuguese generally display an inalienable
noun, even in cases where the noun is interpreted idiosyncratically, such as casca ‘skin, bark’ in casca grossa
(e.g. olho gordo lit. eye+fat ‘envy, jealousy’; mão-fechada lit. hand+closed ‘tight-fisted’; sangue-bom lit.
blood+good ‘nice person’, etc.). However, we admit that (in)alienable interpretation is encoded as part of the
semantics of a category head, rather than as a feature of the root itself. As pointed out earlier in the beginning
of Section 4, roots must be categorized, thus each root within a compound has an independent categorizing
head, cf. (24). To incorporate Nevins & Myler’s proposal, we argue that it is the category head instantiating
the category domain of a compound (i.e. γ in (24)) that comprises the above denotation, which in turn enters in
a relation with a nominal category defining the type-features of a root (inalienable or not). Roots are generally
assumed to be highly impoverished semantically, thus the most parsimonious account is one that avoids
assigning to them category-specific semantics, such as the case of (in)alienability.
(35) Categorial requirement > Semantic exocentricity > Morphological exocentricity

A categorial requirement, as we have pointed out, has precedence over the other two types of

exocentricity. This requirement is fundamentally associated with the category value of the

category domain defined by γ in (24). It has to be either nominal or adjectival. Thus once the

categorial requirement is satisfied, a modification relation – by means of pair-Merge of the

compound with an external nominal head – can be derived, giving rise to semantic

exocentricity. Semantic exocentricity may trigger morphological exocentricity, since the

external modified head (in this case, the null pronominal noun eN), but not the compound

itself, will govern dependency relations.

4.3.1 Comparison to previous approaches

The assumption of an external head in exocentric compounds is very much in line with

previous works, such as Ralli & Andreou (2012), who claim that Greek and Cypriot

exocentric compounds always display a derivational suffix head located outside the

combination of the compound’s constituents, following the generic morphological structure:

[[stem stem]STEM-Dsuff]STEM-Infl]WORD. More specifically, the authors suggest that exocentric

compounds have “a head inside their word limits, which gives them the basic category,

meaning, and morphosyntactic features, but this head lies outside the confines of the structure

involving the combination of the two lexemes” (2012: 71). Although we share their core

assumption, we assume in contrast that the actual external head of a compound is a nominal

constituent, which is often null. What they assume as the derivational suffix head could be

roughly associated with our category domain, formalized in terms of an abstract category

head γ, which could be phonologically manifested in languages where the suffix is overtly

realized (such as in Greek and Cypriot). However, this category domain plays a quite
different role in our view: it is not primarily involved with semantic exocentricity. Instead it

is responsible for turning a complex syntactic structure into a single syntactic constituent for

the purposes of movement and binding, as seen in (26) and (27). It also accounts for cases of

categorial exocentricity, which does not necessarily imply the presence of a proper head

outside the compound structural limits (e.g. as in co-compounds and transpositional

compounds).

Moreover, it is unclear to us how such a derivational suffix could account for both (i)

the assignment of independent morphological features – which are not random, since they are

fundamentally linked to a specific referent – and for (ii) the interpretation ‘who has the

property of ~’, as the authors argue. With respect to (i), we observe that bahuvrihi

compounds (as well as deverbal and de-prepositional compounds) show natural gender

agreement (i.e. their gender depends on the gender of their referent), as pointed out in

Gračanin-Yuksek (2006: 114). In fact, natural gender agreement is one of the main reasons

for the emergence of morphological exocentricity. Thus the variation in gender agreement in

(33) is essentially associated with the compound’s referent (if either masculine or feminine).

In Ralli & Andreous’s account, natural gender agreement is totally arbitrary, since it basically

corresponds to the adventitious inflectional morphology attached on top of the derivational

suffix. Without admitting an (external) nominal head, it is hard to explain how the gender of

the compound’s referent can play a role in the agreement relations established. With respect

to (ii), the authors do not explore the semantics of the derivation suffix assumed, and they do

not point out whether its different morphological realizations correspond to distinct
manifestations of a single abstract morpheme from which the semantics ‘who has the

property of ~’ can be inferred.22

Additionally, Andreou & Ralli (2015) explore a set of Greek nominal bahuvrihi

compounds that display a challenging distribution: they can either function exocentrically

(i.e. displaying the possessive reading ‘having ~’) or endocentrically. Examples are the

compounds void-o-kiliá lit. ox+LE+belly 1. ‘one who has a big belly’; 2. ‘ox-belly’, and

vúkranon lit. ox+head 1. ‘one who has an ox head (a silly person)’ 2. ‘ox-head’. In order to

avoid an account that necessarily resorts to two distinct structures for the same word,

Andreou & Ralli claim that nominal bahuvrihi compounds should be rather analyzed as

endocentric constructions, which can be used metonymically to denote a person or an object.

In the case of voidokiliá, for instance, ‘the salient feature of an entity with a big belly is used

to denote the whole entity’ (2015: 175). Nevertheless, if we assume the structure in (32),

there is no need to propose two distinct structures to explain the different interpretations of

Greek nominal bahuvrihi compounds. Their exocentric reading implies, as expected, that the

compound itself functions as the modifier of an external (null) nominal head eN (viz. [nP eN [nP

[nP void(o) kiliá]]] ‘one [who has a] big belly’), while the endocentric version is directly

derived from the proper structure of the compound, up to the category domain γ, as described

in (24) (e.g. [nP [nP void(o) kiliá]]] ‘ox-belly’). Any idiosyncratic interpretation, as previously

discussed, will be determined at the interpretive interface, based on the structural

environment of the compound’s roots.

22
Other scholars (e.g. Marchand 1969; Kiparsky 1982; Melloni & Bisetto 2010) have also proposed that the
meaning ‘having ~’ in bahuvrihi compounds is derived from a zero-suffix (suggestively comprising a
[+human] feature, as pointed out by Bauer 2008a:56) concatenated on top of the compound’s structure.
However, such an account faces the same drawbacks highlighted for Ralli & Andreou’s (2012) proposal.
 A final note: Bauer (2008a: 60–61) suggests that there is a subclass of bahuvrihi

compounds whose overall category is verbal (see also Andreou & Ralli 2015: 169), which

contradicts Hypothesis #3 in (13c). According to the author, these compounds are quite rare

and bear the meaning ‘to have ~’ (e.g. Samoan isu mamafa lit. nose+heavy ‘have a cold’;

Thai dii cay lit. good+heart ‘be glad’). We argue that, in these cases, their verbal nature

forces the compound to take any external nominal head as an argument, rather than as a

modifier. For this reason, we do not consider that verbal (bahuvrihi) compounds are

semantically exocentric. Moreover, these compounds tend to be essentially non-

compositional, which suggests that they could be more appropriately analyzed as a kind of

semantic headlessness rather than as externally headed.

Considering our assumption of how exocentricity can be syntactically implemented,

we will now explore the false exocentric nature of deverbal compounds.

4.4 Deverbal compounds

Deverbal compounds are found in at least three major varieties cross-linguistically, namely:

V-X compounding, X-V compounding, and synthetic compounding, where X stands for a set

of distinct categories, such as nouns, adjectives, adverbs, quantifiers; see examples in (9b).

V-X compounding is very productive in Romance and in a few Bantu languages, as is the

case of Chichewa (cf. Basciano et al. 2011). X-V compounding is found, for instance, in

Dutch (Ackema 1999), Catalan (Padrosa-Trias 2007), and Japanese (Kageyama 2018).

Synthetic compounding, by its turn, is attested in Germanic and Slavic languages, as well as

in Modern Greek and in Chinese. While these compounds are similarly formed by the

combination of a verbal constituent generally selecting its direct object, synthetic compounds
display a nominalizing suffix following an X-V order, yielding the synthetic template [[X-V]-

derivational suffix].23 V-X compounding can roughly be seen as a subclass of synthetic

compounding which does not have overt marking of the nominalization. Let us first briefly

review some internal and external properties of V-X compounds before exploring its

headedness. We will focus on the V-N type, which is considerably more productive.

Regarding the internal properties of V-N compounds, and as mentioned earlier, a

general characteristic of deverbal compounds is that the verbal constituent selects its direct

object, a noun, assigning it a theme/patient role (cf. Di Sciullo & Williams 1987; Rainer &

Varela 1992; Scalise 1992; Lieber 1992; Bok-Bennema & Kampers-Manhe 2006).24 The

nominal constituent is generally a bare noun, preferably a bare plural (with the exception of

Brazilian Portuguese, see Nunes 2007: 30), and the verbal constituent is, as expected, a

transitive/causative verb.25 With respect to their interpretation, V-N compounds can denote

either an agent or an instrument, as the agentive Brazilian Portuguese salva-vidas lit. save-

lives ‘lifeguard’, ‘a person who saves lives’, and the instrumental limpa-vidros lit. clean-

glasses ‘glass-cleaner/detergent’, ‘a device/instrument/product that clean glasses’. Turning to

the external properties of V-N compounds, a first issue lies with their morphological

exocentricity. This can be observed in cases of agreement mismatch, exactly when the

number and gender feature values of the noun internal to the compound differ from those of

the overall compound, as exemplified in (36):

23
Interestingly, Greek, Chinese, Germanic and Slavic languages attest the existence of V-X compounding, even
though they are no longer productive. Comparative works, such as Basciano et al. (2011), show that V-X
compounding was replaced by synthetic compounding in these languages, which suggests that, diachronically,
languages tend to overtly realize a nominalizing category head present above the V-X combination.
24
There are instances of V-N compounds where the noun is not a direct object but an adjunct (e.g. locative,
temporal adjunct) or a subject. For instance, French traîne-buisson lit. hang.around.on-bush ‘hedge sparrow’;
reveille-matin lit. wake.up-morning ‘alarm clock’ (Villoing & Desmets 2009); Chichewa mlowammalo lit.
enter-in-place ‘substitute/pronoun’; chigonambáwa lit. sleep-in-bar ‘a drunk, an alcoholic’ (Mchombo 2004:
117). See other deviant cases in Bisetto (1999), Magni (2009), and Franco (2012; 2015).
25
Franco (2015: 84–85) lists some deviant cases of Italian V-N compounds formed with unergative (e.g. trema-
cuore lit tremble+heart ‘trepidation’) and unnaccusative (e.g. scendi-letto lit.get.down+bed ‘bedside rug’)
verbs. However, it is unclear whether these are productive patterns in Italian.
(36) BP
a. o para-quedas b. o porta-malas
DET.M.SG stop-fall.F.PL DET.M.SG save-baggage.F.PL
‘the parachute’ ‘the trunk’

Similarly, in Bantu languages, illustrated by Chichewa in (37), there is a mismatch between

the class markers, namely: the noun class marker of the object noun in V-N compounds is

different from the noun class marker of the whole compound, as pointed out by Mchombo

(pers. comm.).26

(37) Chichewa
a. m-pala-nkhâni < nkhâni b. chi-pha-dz’uwa < dz’uwa
NC1-take-news NC9-news NC7-kill-sun NC5-sun
‘reporter’ ‘beautiful woman’

Gračanin-Yukek (2006: 113) noticed that the compound’s interpretation plays an important

role in agreement, an observation that can be generalized to the Romance branch. Instrument

compounds are masculine regardless of the gender marking of its nominal constituent, as we

can see in the contrast between the agreement relations of the internal noun in isolation (38a),

rolhas ‘stoppers’, and the agreement relations of the compound saca-rolhas ‘corkscrew’,

exemplified with the contrast between (38b) and (38c). Agentive compounds, as we

discussed earlier, show natural gender agreement, to wit: their gender is associated with the

gender of their referent, as in (39).

26
Sam Mchombo (pers. comm.) pointed out that the verb does not get marked with the class marker of the
object. In compound noun formation, that construction is, technically, a verb unit. Then it is necessary the
assigning of a class marker to that verbal unit. In general if the nominal denotes a person, the tendency is to
assign it the class marker for class 1, usually ‘mu’ or syllabic ‘m’. When the person is viewed as of special
characteristics, sometimes the class marker is taken from either class 7 ‘chi’, also signaling augmentation, or
class 13 ‘ka’ also used to denote diminution.
(38) BP
a. uma rolha
a-F.SG stopper-F.SG
‘a stopper’
b. um pequeno saca-rolha(s)
a-M.SG small-M.SG pull-[stopper-F.(PL)]
‘a small corkscrew’
c. *uma pequena saca-rolha(s)
a-F.SG small-F.SG pull-[stopper-F.(PL)]
‘a small corkscrew’

(39) BP
a. o/a salva-vida(s)
DET.M.SG/ DET.F.SG save-life.F.PL
‘the lifeguard’
b. o/a quebra-galho
DET.M.SG/ DET.F.SG break-tree branch.M.SG
‘the trouble shooter’

Table 1 below summarizes the general internal properties of V-N compounding, which seem

to be shared cross-linguistically:

Table 1 General properties of V-N compounds.

Argumenthood N is the direct object of V

N constituent Bare plural or mass noun
V constituent Most transitive verbs
Interpretation Agentive/instrumental interpretation

Regarding the syntactic derivation of V-N compounds, we grant that they are endocentrically

derived in syntax, following the basic derivational steps involved in the formation of a verbal

phrase. We admit that V-N compounds comprise a v layer, which serves as the verb-creating

categorizing head. It also comprises a Voice layer, the external-argument introducing head

(cf. Kratzer 1996), since the verbal head created by v is generally transitive/causative. The
Voice layer is functionally distinct from the verb-forming vP (cf. Pylkkänen 2002; 2014).27 It

has three functions in the verbal domain, namely: (i) it assigns accusative case to the nominal

constituent taken as the complement of v, (ii) it hosts the external argument of the verbal

projection – which is normally realized as a null subject pronoun pro – assigning to it an

agentive or instrumental interpretation, and (iii) it also defines a phase head, in addition to the

category head v, whose output may be interpreted idiomatically (cf. Panagiotidis 2014b;

2015). Thus, with respect to (iii), we assume that in the verbal/clausal domain it is the Voice

Phrase that constitutes the structural ‘limit’ of idiosyncrasy, differently from what we have

seen in the nominal/adjectival domain with bahuvrihi compounds.

The assumption of a generic pronoun pro or of an empty category as the external

argument of V-N compounds has been largely explored in distinct approaches to deverbal

compounding, such as in Contreras (1985), Di Sciullo (1991; 1992), Landiere (1994), Bok-

Bennema & Kampers-Manhe (2006), among others. Di Sciullo (1991; 1992), for instance,

assumes that pro was licensed directly by the verb, and that its content was identified by

theta-marking (1992: 67).28 In this article, we claim that pro is licensed by VoiceP, and we

assume alongside Bok-Bennema & Kampers-Manhe (2006: 17) that pro accounts for the

agentive and instrumental interpretation of deverbal compounds. In our view, however, it is

the role assigned to the null subject pro in [Spec, VoiceP], either agentive or instrumental,

that will lead to morphological exocentricity, as discussed with the examples (38) and (39),

rather than the category head responsible for nominalizing the verbal phrase, as proposed by

27
See also Iordăchioaia et al.’s (2017) account for English and Greek synthetic compounds, which departs from
a split verbal structure including vP and VoiceP projections.
28
Furthermore, Di Sciullo (1991; 1992) assumes that, in English synthetic compounds, the agentive derivational
suffix -er serves as the external argument of the verbal head, similarly to pro in Romance languages (see
Collins 2006, for similar analysis of derivational suffixes as verbal arguments). See, however, Di Sciullo
(2005; 2009) for an analysis of deverbal compounds including an embedded CP/FP structure.
Ferrari-Bridgers (2003), Bok-Bennema & Kampers-Manhe (2006), Gračanin-Yuksek (2006),

and Ralli & Andreou (2012).

Thus once the derivation of VoiceP is complete, the structure receives further

categorization in order for this verbal phrase to turn into a syntactic compound, and behave as

a single object for the purposes of movement and binding, as defined in (23). This category

head can be overtly manifested as a nominalizing suffix (e.g. in synthetic compounds) or it

can be null (e.g. in Romance languages). As a result, the basic structure of a deverbal

compound can be represented as in (40).

(40) nP
3
n VoiceP
g 3
∅ pro Voice’
3
Voice vP
g 3
∅ <√R, v> <√R, n>

Now to derive the reduced relative clause interpretation of V-N compounds, explored in the

works of Tollemache (1945), Coseriu (1978), Franco (2012; 2015), and Di Sciullo (2013), we

assume alongside Bok-Bennema & Kampers-Manhe (2006: 17-19) that pro has to move from

an A-position (i.e. [Spec, VoiceP]) to an A’-position, since relativization implies the raising

of the antecedent to a non-argumental landing site (cf. Kayne 1994), similarly to what we

observe in the Brazilian Portuguese reduced relative clause [os [CP pro [C’ que [IP pro

fugiram]]] lit. DET.M.SG that ran away ‘those who ran away’. The authors argue that a

possibility to extract a relative interpretation from a nominalization would be admitting that

[Spec, nP] can serve as an A’-position. Hence in this case the null subject pronoun pro raises

from [Spec, VoiceP], an A-position, to [Spec, nP], and A’-position, obtaining the reading: x
which/who [x [VN]]. In [Spec, nP], the null pronoun pro is then in a suitable syntactic

configuration for agreement relations with any head external to the compound’s structure,

such as a determiner or an adjective, allowing the emergence of morphological exocentricity.

(41) 3
D nP
3
DP n’
g 3
pro n VoiceP
g 3
∅ DP Voice’
g 3
pro Voice vP
g 3
∅ <√R, v> <√R, n>

Since pro, the formal and semantic head of such a relativized nominalization, is kept inside

the structural domain delimited by the category head n, deverbal compounds do not satisfy

the criterion for being analyzed as semantically exocentric, as stipulated by the three

assumptions in (13). Thus although deverbal compounds comprise a modified null nominal

head, this head lies inside the compound’s structure, hence the name false exocentric

compounds.29 This latter conjecture is not explored in the work of Bok-Bennema & Kampers-

Manhe (2006), who assume an exocentric status for these constructions. It is also relevant to

point out that the external argument introduced by Voice can in fact be overtly realized. We

admit that the nouns surfacing in many of these constructions – which led to a debate about

the category status of V-N compounds (whether these are nouns or adjectives, see Magni

29
The same explanation can be extended to de-prepositional compounds, such as Spanish sin-vergüenza lit.
without+shame ‘shameless person’. Incorporating the assumption that prepositions consist of two categorially-
distinct heads (cf. Svenonius 2003; 2007; 2010), we can admit that their external argument, introduced by a
functional head p, is realized by pro, which would account for the interpretation (e.g. one [who is] without
shame; see Bok-Bennama & Kampers-Manhe 2006). Similarly to what we have seen with deverbal
compounds, this nominal (null) head is realized internally to the compound’s syntactic structure, hence this
compound type is unsuitable for being assigned an exocentric status (viz. [nP [pP pro [PP [sin vergüenza]]]]).
2010, and Franco 2012; 2015) – are in fact the overt realization of the verb’s external

argument.

(42) Italian
a. aiuola sparti-traffico
lit. flower bed traffic-dividing
‘traffic dividing flower bed’
b. vano porta-bagagli
lit. compartment car trunk
‘car trunk compartment’
(Franco 2012: 2)

c. cannone spara-neve d. monstruo comegente

lit. cannon shoot-snow lit. monster eat-people
‘snow cannon’ ‘people-eating monster’
(Magni 2010: 6)

A final point regarding the derivation of deverbal compounds has to be addressed: how they

are assigned an idiomatic interpretation. Bearing in mind that category heads define Spell-

Out domains, as we discussed in the beginning of this section, we expect the nominal

constituent <√R, n>, in (40), to be spelled-out as soon as it is set-merged with <√R, v>, since

<√R, n> would be in the complement domain of v. This is a problem for the requirement that

both compound’s roots have to be shipped to LF in the same Spell-Out domain, in order to be

assigned a fixed interpretation. To account for this derivational drawback, we assume with

Panagiotidis (2014b) that both v and Voice are phase heads, which define phases with

different qualities. The former head – which encompasses all category heads, including n – is

to be considered the ‘First Phase’. The rationale underlying this assumption, as we pointed

out earlier, is that all material within the phase domain defined by a category head behaves as

‘inner morphology’, thus it is directly associated with a root (a semantically impoverished

syntactic object). In this first interpretive cycle, interpretation is generally idiosyncratic. The

interpretive output of the Voice head, on the other hand, may be idiosyncratic (e.g. in idioms,

like spill the beans) or it can be fully compositional (e.g. spill the wine). This is the same we

observe in V-N compounding, which can display both a compositional and an idiomatic
interpretation, as discussed in Section 3. What is more, the non-compositional interpretation

of V-N compounds generally derives from pre-existing idioms (e.g. the Brazilian Portuguese

idiom quebrar um galho lit. break a branch ‘help someone to solve a problem’ corresponding

to the compound quebra-galho break-tree branches ‘trouble shooter’). So to account for this

conundrum, we admit that idiomatic interpretations derived at the VoiceP level are

cancellable. 30 Thus in compositional V-N compounds, such as Spanish sprime-limones lit.

squeeze-lemons ‘lemon-squeezer’, any idiomatic interpretation assigned to the nominal root

is cancelled, and the whole vP domain receives a compositional interpretation in the phase

domain delimited by VoiceP.

5. Final remarks

In this article we have argued for exocentricity as a syntactic phenomenon dissociated from

non-compositionality. Related to this is the assertion that the hyponymy test, formalized as

the IS A Condition, is not a good test for identifying exocentric constructions. Rather, it

serves as a good test for identifying non-compositional compounds. Assuming that exocentric

compounds display an external modified head, instantiated by an (empty) noun phrase, we

have shown that exocentricity and non-compositionality are differently implemented in

grammar, namely: the former is syntactically determined, since it fundamentally depends on

a particular structural configuration, while the latter is post-syntactically determined, and

depends on how the compound’s roots are interpreted at LF, whether compositionally or

idiosyncratically. Our proposal resorts to a single basic assumption to account for

30
Panagiotidis’s (2014b) argument was built on a set of empirical evidence signaling that the First Phase cannot
be assumed as a clear, unique structural dividing line between regular, compositional interpretation and
idiomatic interpretation; cf. Borer (2009), Acquaviva & Panagiotidis (2012), Anagnostopoulou & Samioti
(2014) and Harley (2014). While the first category head undeniably constitutes a domain for idiosyncratic
interpretation, higher domains, especially the one defined by VoiceP, also seem to comprise an idiomatic
meaning.
exocentricity in the varied grammatical contexts envisaged by Bisetto & Scalise (2005).

Furthermore, we have shown that the sub-types of exocentricity proposed by Scalise et al.

(2009) – especially morphological and semantic exocentricity – are not disconnected, but

relate to each other in a implicational hierarchy. Departing from the typology of exocentric

compounds provided by Bauer (2008a; 2010), we have argued for a two-fold classification of

exocentricity, distinguishing between RECs (i.e. compounds modifying null “pronominal”

nouns, eN), which comprise bahuvrihi and dvandva compounds; and FECs (i.e. compounds

whose (null) nominal head is realized within the compound’s syntactic structure), which

comprise deverbal and de-prepositional compounds.

Abbreviations

A adjective; ADV adverb; BP Brazilian Portuguese; CL classifier; CM class marker; DET

determiner; F feminine; FEC False exocentric compound; LE linking element; LF Logical

form; M masculine; MOD modification; N noun; NC noun class; PF Phonological form; PL

plural; PRF perfect aspect; Q quantifier; REC Real exocentric compound; SG singular; SUFF

suffix; TV theme vowel; V verb.

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