At first glance, both sentences seem identical but if one pauses over it, one realizes that they convey different meanings. Sentence (1) displays a SVOd structure in which the direct object is 'a man eating a bear' in which 'a man' is postmodified by the non-finite clause 'eating a bear'. Sentence (2) also displays a SVOd structure and exemplifies an adjectival compound of the N+V-ing type that functions as a noun modifier.It turns out that the two sentences have opposite meanings. But how do we understand that man-eating is a modifier of the noun and functions as a compound adjective and 'man eating a bear ' is a noun modified by a non-finite clause. Are there criteria that set compounds and free combinations apart? The syntactic criterion helps us to identify which combination of elements is inseparable and functions as a syntactico-semantic islands. For instance, if we try to insert the adverb 'cruelly' between the two target constituents 'man' and 'eating', it seems that only the first variant sounds plausible 'a man cruelly eating a bear' as the adverb 'cruelly' describes the action 'eating'. However, we cannot separate the lexical units in the second example. If we apply the second criterion to modify only the first constituent within the compound like in 'cruel man eating a bear', then it seems that 'cruel' modifies 'man' and 'man eating' is a phrase. As adjectival compounds are syntactic unities, we modify the whole compound, not only its first element e.g. 'a cruel man-eating bear'. Note that 'man-eating' cannot be modified by 'very' because it is not a qualitative adjective. Similarly to simple qualitative adjectives, only qualitative compound adjectives can be modified by 'very' e.g. 'very absent-minded'. Apart from being syntactic unities, adjectival compounds are also semantic unities as the whole compound conveys a single idea. For this reason, they are referred to as syntactico-semantic islands.