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

Quoting R A Brown <ray@...>:

> Mark J. Reed wrote:
> [snip]
> >>>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.
> >
> > I'd say, rather, that they're written as two separate words because
> > English doesn't share the idiosyncrasies of German spelling. :)
>
> Yes, and in English _apple pie_ is not a compound in the same way as the
> German compound nouns, as we can expand the phrase: apple and blackberry
> pie; apple, pear and quince pie etc.
Er, we can do the same in Swedish - _äppel- och björnbärspaj_ - and nobody has
ever suggested that _äppelpaj_ is anything but a compound noun. If the
expandability of "apple pie" proves that "apple" is an adjective here, Sw.
_äppel_ is some sort of weirdo adjective that can only be used attributively.

It seems much more reasonable to conclude that the expandability says diddly
squat about whether "apple" is an adjective.

                                                         Andreas

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