영어의 외심합성어 분석

Abstract

This paper aims to review some previous studies on the English exocentric compounds, to point out some problems in classifying English exocentric compounds, and to propose an alternative to the classification of English exocentric compounds based on semantic and grammatical relations between compound constituents. Previous studies showed an inconsistency in using the headness as a crucial factor for the classification of English compounds. Depending on the semantic and syntactic headness, some English compounds might be classified as both endocentric compounds and exocentric ones. Exocentric compounds have been classified according to the degree of semantic and syntactic relationship between compound components. However, on the basis of the grammatical relations without using such relationship, exocentric(including endocentric) compounds could be classified as head-modifier, predicate-argument, and coordinative compounds. The proposed analysis does not use the notion of headness in the classification of English compounds. This will help to understand the meaning of English exocentric compounds.