Second stem argument-taking [...] Example (14) illustrates some compounds of this type: (14) N V compounds: hand-make, spoon-feed, play-act, hand-wash; A V compounds: dry-farm, double-coat, sweet-talk [...]: the second stem, being an argument-taking stem, passes on to the compound as a whole [...] its argument structure, along with its category and all of its other features. This argument structure must then [...] be satisfied "outside" the compound in whatever syntactic structure the compound occurrs. The first stem will remain unlinked to the argument structure of the second stem; that is, it will be free in these compounds.
- Lieber (2004), a pag.219-220