A detailed analysis of nouns derived from Noun + Noun structures in the African language Yoruba is presented. These nouns are categorized into two types: compound and phrasal nouns. Assuming some of the basic principles of lexical phonology, it is argued that compound nouns should be derived in the lexicon, while phrasal nouns are derived in the syntactic component. Previous analyses and their shortcomings are also discussed, and two types of compounding are proposed. Contains 25 references. (Author/LB)