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Focussing on compounds with an element that corresponds to a noun as non-head, e.g. flick+skola (girl + school) 'school for girls', this article addresses the question of how word formation can be syntactic - hence principally free - and yet at the same time constrained by language-specific rules. The answer will be that the basic structure of the lexicon differs between languages, according to what is described as lexical macroparameters, i.e. whether or not the lexicon contains elements devoid of checkable features that are available for productive compounding. The lexicon of non-English Germanic languages contains such elements, viz. pure roots (like dag- in dag+bok (day+book) 'dairy') or roots + a linking element (like dag + -s, in dag-s+ljus (day-s+light) 'day light'). The modern Romance languages do not, hence compounding of the described type is unavailable. Free Merge may thus very well be reconciled with the idea of constraints on word formation. Three language groups are discussed: non-English Germanic languages, Romance, and English. A diachronic overview shows how changes in the phonology may cause a transition from one system (represented by Latin and Old English), where compounding involving roots was generally OK, to another system (represented by Modem Romance and Modem English), where (root) compounding is not available. Productive compounding in the latter languages is presumably phrasal in nature.
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