Re: Question about a grammatical term

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen,

You've never read my name on this list and I will post more information about myself
and my current conlang project soon. :-))

Regarding the question I agree with Christophe. All examples are compounds. As a German
speaker I sometimes have to look twice at English phrases because if you do
compounding in German then the space between the components disappears. So, the
first example "water cooler" is made from the components "water" (German
"Wasser") and "cooler" (German "Kühler") which gives a German result of
"Wasserkühler". Christophe, you are perfectly right that there will be no
assimilation of sounds and no shift of stress. If the first syllable of a
component is stressed, then it is still done - although with slightly less
intensity if it's not the first component. :-)

Keeping the noun phrases separate would constitute an apposition but this is not the
case in all the examples (water cooler, basketball court, road rage, license
plate, Coke machine, toilet humour, store hours).

>En réponse à Nihil Sum <nihilsum@...>:
>
>> Hello
>>
>> I need to find out something. Someone who has more knowledge of grammar
>> than
>> I do must know the answer to this: What is the term for the
>> construction
>> where a noun is placed in front of another noun to modify it? Almost
>> like
>> the first noun is acting as an adjective:
Cheers and greetings to everybody,
Harald

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