'noun' and 'adjective' (fuit: To What Extent is Standard Finnish a Conlang?)

Julia "Schnecki" Simon skrev:

> (Then again, I also remember my confusion when I first saw words like
> _apple_ in _apple pie_ analyzed as adjectives in a text on English
> grammar... To my German brain, this _apple_ isn't an adjective at all;
> it's very obviously another noun, which forms a compound noun with the
> second noun, and they're written as two separate words because of some
> idiosyncrasy of English spelling. So maybe there's no such thing as
> "SAE definitions of 'noun' and 'adjective'" after all, if we can't
> even get speakers of German and English to agree...)
I must say I agree with you: _apple pie_ *is* an Anglo-idiosyncratically
spelled compound.  I once read an Anglophone phonetician pointing out
the difference in intonation between the compound _orange juice_ meaning
"juice made of oranges" and the adjective + noun phrase _orange juice_
meaning "any juice of orange color": the compound has stress only on
_orange_ while the phrase has stress on both _orange_ and _juice_.
By that criterion _apple pie_ is a compound!

--
/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

    "Maybe" is a strange word.  When mum or dad says it
    it means "yes", but when my big brothers say it it
    means "no"!

                            (Philip Jonsson jr, age 7)

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