Compound nouns
A - Examples of these:
1) Noun + noun:
London Transport Fleet Street Tower bridge
hall door traffic warden petrol tank
hitch-hiker sky-jacker river bank
kitchen table winter clothes
2) Noun + gerund:
fruit picking lorry driving coal-mining
weight-lifting bird-watching surf-riding
3) Gerund + noun:
waiting list diving-board driving licence
landing card dining-room swimming pool
B - Some ways in which these combinations can be used:
1) When the second noun belongs to or is part of the first:
shop window picture frame college library
church bell garden gate gear lever
But words denoting quantity: lump, part, piece, slice etc. cannot be used in this way:
a piece of cake a slice of bread
2) The first noun can indicate the place of the second:
city street comer shop country lane street market
3) The first noun can indicate the time of the second:
summer holiday Sunday paper November fogs
spring flowers dawn chorus
4) The first noun can state the material of which the second is made:
steel door rope ladder gold medal
stone wall silk shirt
wool and wood are not used here as they have adjective forms: woollen and wooden, gold has an adjective form golden, but this is used only figuratively;
a golden handshake a golden opportunity golden hair
The first noun can also state the power/fuel used to operate the second:
Gas fire petrol engine oil stow
5) The first word can indicate the purpose of the second:
coffee cup escape hatch chess board
reading lamp skating rink tin opener
golf club notice board football ground
6 )Work areas, such as factory, farm, mine etc., can be preceded by the name of the article produced:
fish-farm gold-mine oil-rig
or the type of work done:
inspection pit assembly plant decompression chamber
7) These combinations are often used of occupations, sports, hobbies and the people who practise them:
sheep farming sheep farmer pop singer
wind surfing water skier disc jockey
and for competitions:
football match tennis tournament
beauty contest car rally
8) The first noun can show what the second is about or concerned with.
A work of fiction may be a detective/murder/mystery/ghost/terror/spy story. We buy bus/train/plane tickets. We pay fuel/laundry/ milk/telephone bills, entry fees, income tax, car insurance, water rates, parking fines.
Similarly with committees, departments, talks, conferences etc.:
housing committee, education department, peace talks
9) These categories all overlap to some extent. They are not meant to be mutually exclusive, but aim to give the student some general idea of the uses of these combinations and help with the stress.
As will be seen from the stress-marks above:
1- The first word is stressed in noun + gerund and gerund + noun combinations, when there is an idea of purpose.
2- Both words are usually stressed in combinations of types Al. Bl-3 above, but inevitably there are exceptions.
3- In place-name combinations both words usually have equal stress:
King's Road Waterloo Bridge Leicester Square
But there is one important exception. In combinations where the last word is Street, the word Street is unstressed:
Bond Street Oxford Street
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