ABSTRACT
Catalan includes a good deal of compound words – words built from two stems and one single word ending, as in English 'bookcase', 'dishwasher' or 'skyscraper'. In general, the main difference with English is that Catalan compounds tend to place the main component on the left and the qualifying component on the right: rentavaixelles ('dishwasher'), bocagròs ('bigmouth'). Some compounds are written in two separate words, such as nouns followed by another noun acting as an adjective. This chapter revises compounds according to their grammatical structure. Syntactic relations between the compound's elements can differ: they can be object + verb as in capgirar, colltrencar-se, bocabadant; subject + verb as in terratrèmol or pellobrir-se; or adverbial + verb as in collportar, peucalcigar, aiguabatre, or manllevar. Those words appearing as infinitives can be inflected as verbs; those appearing as participles can be inflected as adjectives.
