| Compounding is a very productive means of creating new words, and has been regarded as a hot topic in the linguistic field for a long time. Among all the types of compounds, N1+N2 compounds are very large in number in both English and Chinese and very complex in meaning construction, so quite a lot of researches have been conducted on this particular type. Although N1+N2 compounds can be investigated from a variety of perspectives, there is one common viewpoint among the researchers, that is, N1+N2 compounds are normally derived from two (or more) separate noun forms or concepts after a process of meaning combination. In English, when only linguistic form is considered there seems to be only one simple modifier+head construction. So semantic factor can hardly be taken away if more in-depth or comprehensive research shall be conducted. After detailed and careful analysis of large Chinese data, Packard set the distinction between structural head and semantic head. As a brand-new line of thoughts this distinction brings convenience to the study of Chinese N1+N2 compounds. However, it also has serious problems when it is applied to some special Chinese compounds. The root cause of the problems is that the judgment of semantic head is totally based on truth value condition, while the truth value of some types of compounds can not be definitely specified. So, considering the peculiar features of some Chinese compounds in meaning construction, we propose the concept of focus to replace the original concept of semantic head, and emphasize the importance of locating the focus within a certain context rather than specifying the head in decontextualized manner.
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