Re: noun compounds

Mark J. Reed wrote at 2006-03-04 21:05:06 (-0500)
 > On 3/4/06, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
 > >  A watermelon is not a melon containing water. We cannot expand the compound in the way
 > > that we can expand the non-compound 'apple pie'; we cannot, for example,
 > > say a *'a water- and whiskey-melon' (Now there's a thought  ;)
 >
 > Right.  So "watermelon" is an "exocentric" compound, a.k.a. a "bahuvrihi", yes?
 >

No, it's endocentric, because it's a kind of melon.  The key to the
bahuvrihi is that thing the compound describes isn't either of the
compounded elements, but something outside it.  (Sorry if I'm not
being clear - it's really a pretty simple concept, but I find it
difficult to describe concisely).

Now let me see... there was a page about Sanskrit classification of
compounds on a now defunct website... if it's archived... here we are:

http://web.archive.org/web/20021006050844/freespace.virgin.net/francis.miles/el4comp.htm

And it's actually about compounds in English, so that may be of some
interest too.

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