The study of Persian exocentric compounding words

Compound words, their structures and meanings, are subject of recent linguistic studies. Compound words regarding their meanings and head existence are divided into endocentric, exocentric, Dvandva and reciprocal. Each of these groups can be divided into small groups. Endocentric words will become meaningful in their contrast to exocentric words. On the contrary, most exocentric compound words have metaphoric meanings, and can be used as Persian equivalents for foreign scientific words in the process of word formation. This article presents first a description of compound processes and then a description of exocentric compound process, and at last classifies the exocentric compound Persian words based on Bauer’s (2008) classification. It also attemepts to show that Persian exocentric compound words have the same domain as Bauer’s classification. Application of this classification can be useful for word formation and also for teaching Persian to non- Persian speakers.