Abstract

This study aims to propose a taxonomy of Arabic compounds and then compare it to Scalise & Bisetto's (2009) taxonomy of compounds for the world's languages, which is based on the relationship between the two components of a compound. The analysis shows that Arabic exhibits a wide range of subordinate, attributive and coordinate compounds. In addition, cases of both endocentric and exocentric compounds have been identified. The diversity of types of Arabic compounds supports the universality of Scalise & Bisetto (2009) taxonomy and shows that compounds may exhibit similar behaviour cross-linguistically. With regard to the specific class of coordinative compounds, I established a hitherto unnoticed difference between Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Jordanian Arabic (JA); only the latter allows recursion in this class.