Re: noun compounds

On 04/03/06, John Vertical <johnvertical@...> wrote:
> >It would be more helpful if attention were paid to the difference
> >between true compound nouns and the 'epithet noun + head noun'
> >construct in English (...)
>
> >Ray
>
> So, what *is* the difference?
As Ray was saying, it's various things, but for instance, you can't
say "I caught some flat- and swordfish today", you've gotta say "I
caught some flatfish and swordfish today", because flatfish and
swordfish are compounds.

You can't say "I like black- and blueberry jam", but you can say "I
like blackberry and blueberry jam" or "I like blackberry jam and
blueberry jam", because "blackberry" and "blueberry" are compounds,
but "blackberry jam" and "blueberry jam" are 'epithet noun + head
noun' constructs (I assume ;) ("I like blackberry and blueberry jam"
can  mean something different from "I like blackberry jam and
blueberry jam", though it doesn't necessarily; context clarifies. ...
and you could have "I like black-and-blueberry jam, if you were into
genetically modified foods ... or maybe you started with raspberries
and punched them till they were black and blue ;)

There's also the stress-test, but I don't think it always works,
particularly because in a non-compound the stress could move to the
first element for other reasons, and possibly a compound can be
stressed on the second one anyway...

Not all proper compounds are always spelt as one word, but they
usually are. (e.g. "ice cream" is a proper compound and Australians
and Americans stress it on the first syllable, tho I think (some)
British stress the second syllable stronger. ... even "ice cream cone"
might be a compound word?) Spellcheckers enjoy doing things like
insisting that "spellchecker" or "webpage" are two words but they're
spelt as one word frequently enough because people recognise them as
new compounds and spell them as such.

I dunno if there's any reliable generalisations about what sorts of
things fall into one category or the other (before you can do tests
like my first two paragraphs, or in the article taliesin linked,
because you don't know yet if you can do them), and to some extent I
think it's just that the more often a particular phrase is used, the
more likely it is to become a compound. It's probably just some
arbitrary lexical thing that you need to've been exposed to the
language enough before you can work it out...

--
Tristan.

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