Re: noun compounds

Whoah, that's alot of replies. I'll try and respond in some sort of coherent
fashion ...


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

> Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > Quoting R A Brown <ray@...>:
> [snip]
> >>
> >>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.
>
> Yes, I know - and German can do the same. But to my anglophone mind that
> expedient with the hyphen looks a bit like a fudge and I've wondered why
> you stick to this clumsy way of writing things. Why not simple "äppel
> och björnbär spaj"?    :)
Because that would be absolutely nonsensical. :p

However, in older Swedish you do see spellings corresponding to _äppel och
björnbärs paj_ (note relative positions of 's' and space!). Similar spellings
are also common errors among pupils and other inexperienced writers. Since
spaces don't correspond one-to-one with any distinction made in speech, I
suppose this isn't inherently more illogical than standard spelling.

Since you mentioned Greek compounding forms, it may be mentioned that _äppel-_
is a compound form; the simplex "apple" is _äpple_. _Björnbärs-_ is an example
of a genitive used as a compounding form.

> I really do not see why Carsten and our Swedish conlangers are being so
> awkward about English and regarding our usage as 'idiosyncratic'. The
> juxtaposition of one noun with another, where one is the head of the NP
> and the other its attribute or epithet is *not* peculiar just to
> English. It is common in Welsh, for example, (where the nouns in the
> opposite order to English), in Indonesian/Malay and quite a few other
> languages AFAIK.
Thing is, I don't believe I've run across the notion that the Malay noun-noun
constructs are anything but compounds before. That might very well be a bad
analysis, but as long as it's the only one I'm familiar with, your
argumentation sounds a bit like "English 'apple pie' is not a compound, which
can be seen from the fact it behaves like Malay compounds".

Quoting Carsten Becker <carbeck@...>:

> BTW, is 'blackberry' in fact 'bear berry' in Swedish?
> 'Bärenbeere' -- Bären/Beeren is a pun in German: [E:] ~
> [e:], and many people even merge those.
Yup, _björnbär_ means litterally "bear berry".

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

> Mark J. Reed wrote:
> > IML, "apple and blackberry pie" can only mean one pie with both apples
> > and blackberries in its filling.
>
> Absolutely!
>
> I assumed when Andreas replied with: "Er, we can do the same in Swedish
> - _äppel- och björnbärspaj_ " that he meant that the Swedish 'äppel- och
> björnbärspaj' means exactly the same as 'apple & blackberry pie' in
> English, i.e. a pie filled with apple & blackberries. But......
It does, in the singular. In the plural it's ambiguous between several pies each
filled with apples and blackberries, and some pies filled with apples and some
with blackberries.

> > On 3/4/06, Carsten Becker <carbeck@...> wrote:
> [snip]
> >>
> >>Well, in German there's _Apfel- und Brombeerpastete_ as
> >>well -- if it's about one pie made of apples and another one
> >>made of blackberries. And if it's just one pie made of both
> >>fruits, it's of course _Apfel-Brombeer-Pastete_.
>
> Now that is helpful, I think, in pointing up the difference between the
> German compound and the analytical English construct. 'Apple &
> blackberry pie' means Apfel-Brombeer-Pastete_, and the German is clearly
> a compound (in a similar way to what is found in Greek, for example) and
> does not require a word for 'and' as, apparently, the Swedish does (if
> indeed Andreas' Swedish does mean the same as my English).
I suppose you could say _björnbärsäppelpaj_ too, but it isn't what I'd say
spontaneously.

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