tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Dec 10 15:54:04 1995

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: Compound Nouns and N1-N2 (again)

Holtej writes:
>...You claim noun-noun and compound noun are the same...

Well, not really.  I haven't been precise enough in my claims, I guess.

I said:
> My main point is that I don't think *WE* can create a compound noun with
> a meaning of anything except "N2 of the N1".

Holtej pointed out:
>Here you say that we can create a compound and intepret it as a noun-noun.

I was sloppy, no doubt about it.  I guess my main point really is:

"We don't know how to interpret any string of nouns except as described
 in TKD 3.4, the noun-noun possessive construction."

If we do make a compound noun, there's no prescribed way to interpret it.

>Since TKD 3.4 is labelled "The noun-noun construction", I'll wager that
>he's talking about noun-nouns.  If he'd been talking about compounds, I
>think it'd have been in TKD 3.2.1, which is labelled "Compound nouns".

I still read section 3.4 as saying that we can make constructions that
act like compound nouns, and that if we do this, we get a possessive
meaning.  It states "it is possible to combine nouns IN THE MANNER OF
A COMPOUND NOUN" (my emphasis).  As I see it, this ties compound nouns
and noun-noun constructions pretty closely.  If someone creates a new
compound noun, I'm going to try to interpret it as a possessive.

>It also only gives examples of true possession, but canon indicates that
>the interpretation extends beyond possession, with examples like /telun
>Hovtay'/.  Are you now only interpreting noun-noun as possessive, since
>this is all that's described in 3.4?

I've been through this before, and almost every example of noun-noun
fits what I have always considered to be the meaning of "possessive."
{telun Hovtay'} seems quite reasonable to me as "Tellun's star system."
I have no problems whatsoever with this particular noun-noun example.
After I was introduced to GENITIVE case (I'm still a bit unsure about
this uppercase convention, but I'll use it), I decided that what I
mean when I think of "possessive" is the same thing as what linguists
meant when they say GENITIVE, and a linguist's "possessive" is much
more limited in scope than what I consider.  I've accepted that Okrand's
use of "possessive" is probably exactly what I thought it was in the
first place; i.e. we both really mean GENITIVE.  (There are noun-noun
examples of the form "noun verb-{wI'}" that still bother me slightly,
but I have no desire to reopen that particular argument.)

>Now, you didn't answer any of my questions.  You started off by saying
>that compounds and noun-nouns are the same.  You equated their
>interpretations, and said that if it made sense one way, then it'd make
>sense the other.  At that point, it appeared that you were permitting the
>construction of compound nouns.  You made a similar assertion above, as I
>noted.

Yes, I did.  I meant that if we *did* make a compound noun, I saw no way
to interpret it except as a noun-noun construction.

>It now appears that you won't permit the construction of compound nouns.

I had said that I thought we were stretching the rules a bit by making
them in the first place; I now agree that TKD 3.2.1 permits them.

>Just to keep track, your claim is that we cannot form new compounds.  Is
>it still your belief that compounds and noun-nouns have the same rules
>for interpretation?

My claim is that we cannot meaningfully *interpret* new compounds.
The only rule we have for interpreting any string of nouns comes
from TKD 3.4, which describes the noun-noun possessive construction.

>Here are, it seems to me, the questions we need answers to:
>
>a) are compounds and noun-nouns different?
>b) can we construct novel compounds (or are we restricted to what we find
>   in TKD)?
>c) if we can construct them, how do we interpret them?
>
>Your answers, I'm guessing, are no, no, and n/a.  Mine are yes, yes, and
>we need to know.

My answers are maybe, sort of, and noun-noun.  To be specific:
a) Compounds in the dictionary may be different from noun-nouns, but I
   don't know how to interpret compounds that aren't in the dictionary
   except as a noun-noun.
b) If we construct novel compounds, the only way I know of to interpret
   them is according to the noun-noun rule, so that's the only kind of
   novel compound I will be able to understand without more explanation.
c) Since we DON'T know how to interpret compound nouns in general, it's
   kind of pointless to create them in the first place.  The only type
   of compound noun we DO know how to interpret is a noun-noun, so I will
   try to interpret novel compounds as noun-noun constructions.

>If you don't believe in novel compounds, then you must stare in blank
>incomprehension at words like /HolQeD/ and /Holtej/.

Since these are *names*, I don't need to parse them strictly according
to the rules of grammar as I understand them.  However, I believe the
GENITIVE interpretation lets me read these as "language's science" and
"language's scientist" without any problems.  The way I interpret such
"novel compounds" is by treating them as noun-noun constructions.

-- ghunchu'wI'               batlh Suvchugh vaj batlh SovchoH vaj

Back to archive top level