Timeline for Plural nouns in nominal compounds
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
7 events
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| Nov 21, 2011 at 10:35 | comment | added | Colin Fine | @FireAphis: yes, the cross-linguistic observation was on incorporation, which implies compounds. What I'm assuming is that these noun phrases in English are in some sense compound words rather than phrases (we don't write them as single words, but there is little functional difference between them and German compound nouns, which are written as single words). In languages which don't compound in this way, the phenomenon won't be evident. (There's a risk of circularity here - languages which retain nominal morphology ipso facto don't have this kind of compound). | |
| Nov 20, 2011 at 14:11 | comment | added | FireAphis | @FumbleFingers, Yes, I agree with you. Thinking of it, neither Russian nor Hebrew tend to employ such compounds, so it is almost impossible to apply the rule. Both languages have different constructs for similar situations. | |
| Nov 20, 2011 at 13:45 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @FireAphis: It's not my claim, after all, but Colin's point is valid (and peripherally relevant) even if only a minority of other languages have this characteristic. The proposition that inflections tend to be discarded within compound forms still seems at least credible to me, nothwithstanding specific examples to the contrary. | |
| Nov 20, 2011 at 11:31 | vote | accept | FireAphis | ||
| Nov 20, 2011 at 11:31 | comment | added | FireAphis | @FumbleFingers, I wouldn't count on it in other languages. For example, in Russian and Hebrew, which I speak fluently, this rule has no sense at all. | |
| Nov 17, 2011 at 18:17 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | I'm sure you're right as regards English, and I take it on faith that the principle applies to other languages. Your "solids" modelling seems like a good example of an "edge case", but I must admit initially I found the point somewhat obscured by the US/UK spelling difference. I think teaspoonfuls is a related application of the same principle. | |
| Nov 17, 2011 at 17:38 | history | answered | Colin Fine | CC BY-SA 3.0 |