The classification of compounds

Compounds are generally acknowledged to be formed by at least two words (e.g. Eng. taxi-driver, postman, It. divano-letto ‘sofa-bed’, camposanto ‘cemetery’, Fr. tire bouchon ‘cork-screw’, timbre-poste ‘stamp’, etc.). Though this definition does not always hold true, it is nonetheless descriptively valid for the core of compounding processes. Since we have reasons to believe that the classifications of compounds provided so far are not adequate, in this paper we would like to propose a new classification which is at the same time based on consistent criteria and not just valid for one language or for a family of languages, but hopefully universally valid. The paper is organized as follows: in section 1 we will discuss the main problems with current and previous classifications of compounds; in section 2 we will present our proposed classification and in section 3 we discuss some residual problems and draw some provisional conclusions.