Hombre clave, hombre rana, ¿un mismo fenómeno?

Abstract

The principal aim of the present study is to show that noun groups like hombre clave‘key man’ are not compound words, but appositive nominal structures, against the opinion of a greaternumber of linguists. For this reason, such noun groups shouldn’t be assimilated to noun groups likehombre rana ‘frog man’, which are genuine compounds. One of their characteristic features is the factthat nouns admit syntactic modifications. Nevertheless, the division of the two groups is not simple,because they both share some properties and restrictions.