Exocentricity and endocentricity in English and Lithuanian compound nouns: derivational structure and semantics

The aim of this study is to contrast exocentricity and endocentricity in English and Lithuanian compounds and to identify isomorphic and allomorphic features of derivational patterns and semantics of English and Lithuanian counterpart compounds. The novel Amsterdam by Ian McEwan and its Lithuanian translation Amsterdamas translated by R. Rudaityte have been chosen as the data for the investigation. The method of contrastive analysis has been applied in the research. The research has revealed that the Lithuanian counterparts of English exocentric and endocentric compounds do not coincide in their derivational structure: the English compound nouns usually do not have equivalent compounds in Lithuanian. English compounds are translated into Lithuanian as phrases (noun phrases) and non-derived or suffixal/prefixal nouns. Only seven cases of English compound nouns have corresponding compound nouns in Lithuanian, and they are not always built according to the same pattern. From the semantic point of view, the vast majority of English compound nouns are endocentric when the head-constituent of a compound refers to the class of entities to which the compound belongs. However, only solitary instances are defined as exocentric compounds. The same tendency is common for Lithuanian compounds. The findings have confirmed that differently from the Lithuanian language compounding is more widespread in the English language because the majority of the roots are free and can be easily joined together to coin new entitiesVytauto Didžiojo universitetasŠirvintų pradinė mokyklaŠvietimo akademij