Maciej Jarzębski

Exocentric compounds

“So my old man--the old blockhead--off he goes” (www.online-literature.com). The

following passage was taken from the play The Power of Darkness written by Leo Tolstoy.
One may be wondering why one of the lexemes is in bold. The word “blockhead” belongs to a
broad group of vocables called compounds, which are the focus of this paper. More precisely,
this essay will concern one particular class of compounds traditionally called exocentric,
sometimes also appearing under the term bahuvrihi. The second name has its origins in the
tradition of the ancient Sanskrit grammarians, who were already concerned with problems of
compounding. The paper has been organized in the following way. The first section will
present some genral information about compounds. The following section will provide and
compare definitions of an exocentric compound on the basis of various sources. It will then go
on to the justification why the term bahuvrihi should not be applied to all the types of
exocentric compounds. Subsequently, it will focus on the different classes of exoentric
compounds, including such types as: the Romance type, the phrasal-verb type, and the so-
called possessive type. This paper concludes by a brief summary of the discussed aspects of
exocentric compounds.
To begin with, there are quite a few definitions of compounds, definitions that are
widely accepted and sufficiently well comprehensible to average readers. For instance,
according to Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary a definition of a compound reads as
follows: “a word which combines two or sometimes more different words. Often, the meaning
of the compound cannot be discovered by knowing the meaning of the different words that
form it. Compounds can be written either as one word or as separate words”
(http://dictionary.cambridge.org). Ingo Plag in his book Word-formation in English proposes
yet another brief, however very well-formulated definition of a compound: “a word that
consists of two elements, the first of which is either a root, a word or a phrase, the second of
which is either a root or a word” (2002: 173). Compounding is the most productive word-
formation process in English. On the basis of some formal and semantic criteria various
patterns concerning the formation of compounds can be distinguished. “Compounds
systematically combine words of certain categories, they display certain predictable stress
patterns, and they are interpreted in principled ways” (Plag 2002: 207).
 As far as the definition of exocentric compounds is concerned, in order to better
comprehend the idea of their exocentricity, the aforesaid book Word-formation in English
provides the reader with some examples:

a) redneck
loudmouth
greenback
b) pickpocket
cut-throat
spoilsport

The compounds presented in (a) and (b) all refer to persons, “which means that their semantic
head is outside the compound, which is why they are traditionally called exocentric
compounds” (Plag 2002: 186). Another source describes an exocentric compound as follows:
such compound cannot be a hyponym of one of its constituents, and therefore appears to lack
a head or perhaps to have a head (or ‘centre’) external to the compound itself. English
language abounds in instances such as redhead ‘a person with red hair’, flat-foot ‘policemen
(slang)’ and egghead ‘intellectual’ (http://www.victoria.ac.nz). As far as ‘bahuvrihi’
compounds are concerned, it is not the pattern of formation, but the relation with their
referents that the term refers to.

Neither constituent of such a compound refers to the entity named but, with a semantic
movement that may be thought of as ‘lateral’, the whole refers to a separate entity (usually a
person) that is claimed to be characterized by the compound, in its literal or figurative meaning:
Thus a highbrow means ‘an intellectual’, on the basis of the facetious claim that people of
intellectual interest and cultivated tastes are likely to have a lofty expanse of forehead. Similarly
heartthrob is someone who causes the heart to throb in a person of the opposite sex; ie ‘a
sexually attractive person’ (Quirk et al. 1985: 1576).

Some further examples:

birdbrain, blockhead, bluebell, butterfingers, egghead, fathead, featherbrain, featherweight,
hardback, hardtop, heavyweight, hunchback, loudmouth, paleface, paperback, pot-belly,
redcap, scarecrow, shellback (Quirk et al. 1985: 1576)

By contrast, “most compounds in English are endocentric, that is, one of the elements
(typically the right-hand element) is the head of the construction” (http://www.victoria.ac.nz).
The three examples in (c) present the idea of headedness:
 c) laser printer
letter head
book cover

All of the above examples are noun-noun compounds and “they denote a subclass of the
referents of the head: a laser printer is a kind of printer, a book cover is a kind of cover, a
letter head is the head of a letter. We could say that these compounds have their semantic
head inside the compound, which is the reason why these compounds are called endocentric”
(Plag 2002: 186).

Most compounds in English are endocentric, that is, one of the elements (typically the right-
hand element) is the head of the construction. Headedness is shown most clearly by
hyponymy: the compound as a whole is a hyponym of its head. For example, traffic-light is a
hyponym of light, but not a hyponym of traffic. In some languages compounds take their
declension class or gender from those of the head element, but in English this is not
particularly important. An exocentric compound, by contrast, is one which is not a hyponym
of one of its elements, and thus appears to lack a head or perhaps to have a head (or ‘centre’)
external to the compound itself. English examples such as redhead ‘a person with red hair’,
flat-foot ‘policemen (slang)’ and egghead ‘intellectual’ abound. As far as I am aware, the first
person to extend the notion of exocentricity from syntax to the morphological form of
compounds was Bloomfield (1935: 235).

a word which combines two or sometimes more different words. Often, the meaning of the
compound cannot be discovered by knowing the meaning of the different words that form it.
Compounds can be written either as one word or as separate words

Ingo Plag

a compound is a word that consists of two elements, the first of which is either a root, a word
or a phrase, the second of which is either a root or a word.
Consider the difference between the forms in (19a) on the one hand, and (19b) and (19c) on
the other:

(19)
a. laser printer
book cover
letter head
b. redneck
loudmouth
greenback
c. pickpocket
cut-throat
spoilsport

The forms in (19a) all have in common that they are noun-noun compounds and that they
denote a subclass of the referents of the head: a laser printer is a kind of printer, a book cover
is a kind of cover, a letter head is the head of a letter. We could say that these compounds
have their semantic head inside the compound, which is the reason why these compounds are
called endocentric compounds (cf. the neo-classical element endo- ‘inside’). With the forms
in (19b) and (19c) things are different. First, they are not noun-noun compounds but contain
either an adjective (19b) or a verb (19c) as first element. Second, their semantics is strikingly
deviant: a redneck is not a kind of neck but a kind of person, loudmouth does not denote a
kind of mouth but again a kind of person, and the same holds for greybeard. Similarly, in
(19c), a pickpocket is not a kind of pocket, but someone who picks pockets, a cut-throat is
someone who cuts throats, and a spoilsport is someone who spoils enjoyable pastimes of other
people.
The compounds in (19b) and (19c) thus all refer to persons, which means that their
semantic head is outside the compound, which is why they are traditionally called exocentric
compounds. Another term for this class of compounds is bahuvrihi, a term originating from
the tradition of the ancient Sanskrit grammarians, who already dealt with problems of
compounding. It is striking, however, that the exocentric compounds in (19b) and (19c) can
only be said to be semantically exocentric. If we look at other properties of these compounds,
we observe that at least the part of speech is inherited from the right-hand member, as is
generally the case with right-headed compounds: redneck is a noun (and not an adjective),
loudmouth is a noun (and not an adjective), and pickpocket is also a noun (and not a verb).
One could therefore state that these compounds do have a head and that, at least in terms of
their grammatical properties, these seemingly exocentric compounds are in fact endocentric.
Semantic exocentricity with English compounds seems to be restricted to forms
denoting human beings (or higher animals). Furthermore, of the semantically exocentric
compounds, only the class exemplified in (19b) is (moderately) productive, whereas those of
the type (19c) are extremely rare (e.g. Bauer and Renouf 2001). The compounds in (19b) are
also sometimes called possessive compounds, because they denote an entity that is
characterized (sometimes metaphorically) by the property expressed by the compound. A
loudmouth is a person that possesses ‘a loud mouth’, a greybeard is a person or animal with a
grey beard, and so on. Possessive exocentric compounds usually have an adjective as their left
element.

Quirk & Greenbaum

‘Bahuvrihi’ compounds
All of the compounds to be listed in this section are formed on one or other of the patterns
already described. Most of them are like ‘dark,room, others are like, for example , ‘frog,man
or ‘snow,flake (cf App I.65 [B], [C], and [D] respectively). The term ‘bahuvrihi’ refers not to
their pattern of formation but to the relation they have with their referents. Neither constituent
of such a compound refers to the entity named but, with a semantic movement that may be
thought of as ‘lateral’, the whole refers to a separate entity (usually a person) that is claimed
to be characterized by the compound, in its literal or figurative meaning: Thus a ‘high,brow
means ‘an intellectual’, on the basis of the facetious claim that people of intellectual interest
and cultivated tastes are likely to have a lofty expanse of forehead. Similarly ‘heart,throb (cf
App I.61 [A] for its non-bahuvrihi use) is someone who causes the heart to throb in a person
of the opposite sex; ie ‘a sexually attractive person’. Many bahuvrihi compounds are (like
highbrow) somewhat disparaging in tone and are used chiefly in informal style. Some further
examples:

birdbrain, blockhead, bluebell, butterfingers, egghead, fathead, featherbrain, featherweight,

hardback, hardtop, heavyweight, hunchback, loudmouth, paleface, paperback, pot-belly,
redcap, scarecrow, shellback

The term bahuvrihi is from Sanskrit. Compounds of this type have also been called
‘exocentric’.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/On+the+idiomatic+status+of+English+compounds.+
%28Linguistics%29-a095571786

http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/power-of-darkness/1/