This study had two purposes: (i) to see if bilingual children can differentiate their languages with respect to the ability to form compound nouns and (ii) to test the validity of previous explanations of the acquisition of compounds. Compound nouns are right-headed in English and left-headed in French. If the French–English bilingual child in this study could differentiate between the two compounding rules, his compounds should show differential order based on the language of the semantic head. The analysis was based on the child's spontaneous compound productions from 2;9 to 3;3. The results showed that the language choice of the semantic head noun predicted the order of his compounds, suggesting that he had two distinct compounding rules. The pattern of errors made by the child cannot be accounted for by any previous explanation alone. It is suggested that children use various cues to learn compound structure.