The Comprehension of English Nominal Compounds by Turkish University Students

Nominal compounds are frequently formed when two or more words combine to create a single noun phrase. The number of words found in compound nouns varies from language to language. Nevertheless, compounding is among the most prolific lexeme formation processes across languages. As in the past, the tendency to expand the vocabulary through compounding continues today due to new advances in fields such as in science, economics, sociology, and politics. The present study aims to investigate the comprehension of English nominal compounds by Turkish L1 university students, including 9 males and 16 females, who were studying English Language and Literature at the time of data collection. This study employed a qualitative research design using quantitative data. Another point for this research was to determine whether endocentric or exocentric nominal compounds would be more challenging for the subjects. To fulfil this purpose, a test consisting of 7 endocentric and 11 exocentric compounds was applied. These grammatical categories, each of which occurs in a short sentence, were underlined with a bold line, and the subjects were asked to write their Turkish equivalents below them by considering the general meaning of the sentence. Exocentric compounds proved significantly more challenging than endocentric ones. In light of the analysis of the total responses, it was observed that there was not much difference between males and females. The findings indicated that participants struggled to comprehend English nominal compounds.