1.1.1.2.1. Subordinate compounds
Subordinate compounds have a minimum of two lexical constituents, one constituent acting as a head and another one as its modifier. There is always interdependence between the constituents, as illustrated below in book^family. The constituent ‘family’ modifies ‘book’, which is the head of the subordinate compound.
book^family (‘family book’)
(extracted from the corpus created in Villaécija, 2019)
In LSC, subordinate compounds may include a subgroup called “apposed compounds”. Apposed compounds are so closely linked to subordinate compounds that all apposed compounds are always subordinate compounds. However, all subordinate compounds are not always apposed compounds. This compounding construction shares the same formal characteristics with subordinate compounds. Therefore, apposed compounds are constituted as well by a minimum of two lexical constituents, and they have one head and one modifier. In this case, though, the compound is formed by one head and one apposed element. The second word of the compound ―the apposed element― denotes some of the semantic characteristics of the head conveyed, which is exemplified below.
feces^liquid (‘diarrhea’)
(extracted from the corpus created in Villaécija, 2019)
The head of feces^liquid is feces and its apposed element is liquid, which shows one of the characteristics of the head.