This study examines the factors that constrain and promote the selection of noun compound types in spoken and written Hebrew. Lexical, semantic, syntactic and pragmatic analyses showed that construct-state compounds typically denote classifying relations, whilst analytic compounds are the default form for denoting possessive and partitive relations. Syntactic complexity promotes the selection of analytic compound types in written language given their relative transparency. Implications of these results for language learning and literacy development are discussed.