tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon May 19 12:22:57 2003

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Adjectives In Noun-Noun Constructs (resend)

I send this out back when the mailing list was being jittery; I eventually
got a copy in my own mailbox, but I never got a response, to I'm thinking
no one else really got it:

This question came up on the MUSH this morning:

Can you place adjectives inside a noun-noun construction?  For example,
/yejHaD quv De'wI'/ "the computers of the honored institute"?

The relevant piece of the TKD says:

"Some combinations of two (or more) nouns in a row are so common as to
have become everyday words.  These are the compound nouns (as discussed in
section 3.2.1).  In addition, it is possible to combine nouns in the
matter of a compound noun to produce a new construct even if it is not a
legitimate compound noun ("legitimate" in the sense that it would be found
in a dictionary)."  (TKD, p30)

The two sides we came up with were:

a)  No, the TKD specifically states "two nouns in a row", and putting an
adjective in the middle would break that sequence.

b)  Yes, there are many times where the word "noun" in the TKD refers to a
noun or "noun phrase", which would allow for the first noun to be a noun
phrase composed of a noun and an adjective.

Comments?  Are there any canon examples of the latter argument?

...Paul

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