Talk:Exocentric

"Bittersweet" is a noun? --Trovatore 05:10, 14 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Ooops, good catch. Yeah, it's an adjective. OK, time to think of a new example... too tired at the moment. Hmm, does "hardscrabble" (adj+verb) ever function as a noun? How about "longstanding" as an adjective? Ah, got one - "shortcoming" - adj+verb, but it's a noun. Noel (talk) 05:25, 14 July 2005 (UTC)


 * As "coming" is a gerund, rather than a finite verb, "shortcoming" is not an exocentric word, just a humdrum hyphenated noun phrase. Neither, for that matter, is "humdrum", since "hum" is a participle, a contraction of "humming" (which is how a drum with a loose head sounds).  So what does it mean, if you have a grammatical distinction but can't think of an example?

Exocentric vs Egocentric
Don't you think that a difference here should be established between exocentric and egocentric compounds? Defining exocentric in a way of comparison? Egocentric- if the meaning can be deduced from the compound (millowner, sunbeam). Exocentric- the meaning cannot be deduced as contstituent parts of a compound have different meaning when standing in isolation. However, having been joined together a resulting compound obtains an essencially different meaning. (e.g pickpocket- not a pocket nor "to pick", but what is meant is 'thief'). What do you think of my proposal?

"In the doghouse"?
I didn't want to change this since it might just be some dialectical use I'm not familiar with, but in my dialect, 'in the doghouse' means roughly 'in trouble' or 'ostracized', not 'tired'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.233.122.12 (talk) 17:49, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

That's not the problem (the author was saying that "tired" and "in the doghouse" have the same kind of function in that they are both predicative complements). The huge problem is that "in the doghouse" in absolutely not an adjective! It's a prepositional phrase! Strangeguitars (talk) 13:50, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

For the dictionary
This is a definition page - it should move to Wiktionary - it's not encyclopaedic stuff Spanglej (talk) 14:22, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Keep the entry
There is encyclopedia content - but it may be obsolete. As with the entry for endocentric. I haven't uncovered any serious use of this in linguistic theory for, say, forty years. Then again maybe obsolete theory is especially important because it will not be covered anywhere else. I leave that to people running the show.

Incidentally the adjective "incoming" is from a preposition plus a verbal nominal. If that helps as an example. DKleinecke (talk) 03:48, 3 December 2009 (UTC)