Re: Compounded compounds.

I have no idea how common recursive compounding is. But yay for
remembering random facts: Japanese has a phonological process that
happens to be a neat little disambiguator. In Japanese, the second
element of a compound word undergoes a process called Rendaku, where
the first sound gets "voiced" if it's a voiceless consonant. The
kicker is, there are several situations where Rendaku is blocked,
which can help with semantic subtleties. Wikipedia explains
thoroughly, and far better than I can:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendaku