tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Dec 16 20:04:31 1995

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Re: Compound Nouns and N1-N2 (again)

First things first:  I don't have anything else I can say to support
my position that newly coined compound nouns ought to be understandable
as noun-noun pairs.  If this is a debate of attrition, Holtej has just
won.

I had written:
> 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.

Holtej wrote:
>I think you are placing the wrong emphasis on the phrase "in the manner
>of."  I don't think this ties compounds and noun-nouns as closely
>together as you do.

Well, it's said again in the next sentence: "The translation of two nouns
combined IN THIS WAY..." (again, my emphasis).  At this point, I'm just
repeating myself, but I see TKD 3.4 talking about noun-noun constructions
as if they were compound nouns with a space between them.

I had written:
> The only rule we have for interpreting any string of nouns comes
> from TKD 3.4, which describes the noun-noun possessive construction.

Holtej wrote:
>Not *any* string of nouns, but noun-nouns.

I think there's a misunderstanding here.  I didn't mean to assert that
TKD 3.4 must apply to "any string of nouns," i.e. "all strings of nouns,"
but that TKD 3.4 is the only explanation of any sort for interpreting a
string of nouns.  It specifically applies to noun-noun and does not say
that it applies to compound nouns.  It's still the only explanation for
how to interpret a noun followed by a noun, though it does not seem to
be appropriate for many of the compound nouns in the dictionary.

>  If you are going to
>take whatever is said in TKD 3.4 and apply it to compounds, then you
>are going to sanction constructions like I pointed out before:
>
>   * 'Iwvamghargh
>   * mangvetlhghom
>   * mu'meytlhej

Until we know how to interpret compound nouns in general, I'd rather not
sanction their creation at all.  This whole discussion started when I
claimed that a newly formed compound ought to make sense as noun-noun.
## I now willingly retract that claim. ##  However, I reserve the right
to complain when I see a novel compound, based on the fact that we don't
really know how to interpret what a compound noun is intended to mean.

>[...]
>What I'm saying is, we don't know how to interpret these.  We have some
>examples, and that's it.  In some cases they appear to be similar to
>noun-nouns, but in many cases it's clearly not possible, such as with
>/mu'tlhegh/ and /'Iwchab/.
>[...]
>So, what do we have?
>
>   We know how to build compounds (two or three nouns, without spaces).
>   We know how to build noun-nouns (two or three nouns, with spaces).
>   We know how to interpret noun-nouns.
>   We do not know how to interpret compounds.
>
>Anything else is speculation. [...] Based on the
>evidence (TKD, grammar, and canon), I can only conclude that compounds
>are not noun-nouns, but something different.

I agree completely.

Even though we know HOW to do build compounds, we don't know exactly
WHY to do it.  Until we have further information, I'm going to consider
compound nouns to be a lazy way to say something that can be expressed
more precisely using other tools at our command.  I'll try to keep my
complaints to myself, though.

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

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