Colleagues may be interested in the event advertised below, hosted at Newcastle University on Wed, 17 April. The talk is followed by a wine reception. Directions to the venue are available from http://www.ncl.ac.uk/about/visit/maps.htm. All welcome.

Wednesday, 17 April, 4-5 pm in Percy Building, Room G.13, Newcastle University, UK

Laurie Bauer (Victoria University of Wellington, NZ)

Exocentric compounds in English and some other languages

A class of exocentric compounds has been recognised for 4000 years. Bloomfield defines them negatively in Language: they are what is left over when the endocentric compounds have been removed. We might expect such a definition to lead to a plethora of classes of exocentric. In fact, the number of classes of exocentrics discussed in descriptive grammars of languages from around the world is remarkably small: possibly only five types. However, English seems to have some types that fall outside this classification. This raises the question of whether these are all really exocentric compounds (and what they are if they are not); in turn this leads us back to the five classes – are they all exocentric or might they be something else?