plural/singular compounds

terdon

Mar 26, 2016 12:02

Oh, @snailboat you might know. How do you explain to a non-native that "tree felling" is correct but "trees felling" is wrong? I was trying to explain that to a French friend and, since in French they only have the "felling of trees" construction and not the "tree felling" one, I couldn't find a clear way of explaining it.

It is very obvious to a native speaker but I can't put my finger on the relevant rule.

Matt E. Эллен

Mar 26, 2016 12:25

@terdon tree is an adjective and felling is a noun, perhaps?

is meaning is kind of like

terdon

The whole thing is some kind of construct. I'm sure there's a name for it.

I called it "subject+gerund" for the question I just asked on ELL.

That is better suited to ELL, by the way, isn't it?

Matt E. Эллен

yes :)

terdon

Yay! And we can hold it as an example that even natives can ask on ELL and it's not simply a matter of how well the OP happens to speak English.

By the way, this is a good point:

The question is really why the plural of a noun isn't used adjectivally. It isn't only with gerund. Tree frogs not trees frogs. Tree diseases not trees diseases. — TRomano 3 mins ago

Lawrence

@terdon Maybe something to do with moving away from Latin syntax.

Matt E. Эллен

yes... that feels sort of unanswerable. why don't we use the plural? well... we never used it, so we don't

Anonymous

Mar 26, 2016 12:31

Not actually true, though. We use plural nouns in attributive position quite often these days.

Anonymous

English syntax was never like Latin syntax.

terdon

I think it has something to do with the fact that "tree felling" is taken together. An "adjective phrase" perhaps?

Anonymous

Still, most of the time, attributive nouns are unmarked for number.

Matt E. Эллен

@snailboat do you mean like "lawns management"?

which could equally be "lawn management"?

Lawrence

@snailboat Ok, just a wild guess. I was thinking of pluralisations like governor general -> governors general.

terdon

Mar 26, 2016 12:33

@MattE.Эллен Ewww. Is that a thing? I'd have said "lawn management"

Anonymous

(They don't become adjectives in attributive position because they don't take on any traits that adjectives have. They're still morphologically and functionally like other nouns.)

terdon

@Lawrence But still governor naming even if many are being named.

@snailboat But the noun here, is the noun phrase, "tree felling", right?

Matt E. Эллен

@terdon I don't know. I was thinking of "greens manager", which would never be "green manager" (where greens are large patches of grass)

but then I thought that would be really ambiguous, so I opted for lawns

terdon

True. I'm not sure if that's because of the inherent ambiguity in green manager though. Plant manager would never be plural.

Lawrence

@terdon Yes, definitely. I wasn't arguing for the trees frogs or trees diseases examples. Consider my original comment to have gone off on a tangent.

Anonymous

Mar 26, 2016 12:36

@MattE.Эллен The Parks Department, Nixon's enemies list, the heavy chemicals industry, a soft drinks manufacturer

terdon

Hmm

Matt E. Эллен

@snailboat ah!

terdon

I would also accept a soft drink manufacturer if they only made one type of soft drink. The plural suggests they make many.

Anonymous

Yes, it's a plural of kind.

Anonymous

The language is changing, and attributive plurals are becoming more common.

terdon

Mar 26, 2016 12:38

And what are attributive plurals when they're at home?

> A noun that modifies another noun attributively and that is optional (that is, it can be removed without affecting the grammar of the sentence); a noun used as an adjective.
For example, in the compound noun "chicken soup", the attributive noun "chicken" modifies the noun "soup".

Matt E. Эллен

noun-adjuncts that end in s

terdon

Thank you Google.

Lawrence

@terdon Consider hand-wringing - you can't actually do it with one hand, right?

Anonymous

in ELL's Cabin, Oct 2 '15 at 23:30, by snailboat

An Arts degree? A customs officer? A goods train? A soft drinks manufacturer? An appointments officer?

terdon

@Lawrence Heh, no. But that's even worse.

Lawrence

Mar 26, 2016 12:40

Worse?

Anonymous

Examples from Quirk et al 1985.

Lawrence

@snailboat Leaving the Arts degree and the manufacturer aside, the meanings of custom officer and a good train are completely different from the versions with plurals.

terdon

@Lawrence Worse in that since a single hand can't wring itself, it makes even less sense that we don't say hands wringing.

Matt E. Эллен

or coffees shop

Anonymous

It's somewhat incoherent to call a noun derived from the -ing form of a verb a gerund, since gerund is used to refer to the verb form used in a clause functionally similar to a noun phrase, and this form is demonstrably not a noun form.

terdon

Mar 26, 2016 12:42

@MattE.Эллен Grocer's apostrophe? :P

Lawrence

@MattE.Эллен That's what I was trying to get at with the Latin syntax reference - how does the Latin differ between a shop selling one kind of coffee and a shop selling many kinds of coffee?

Matt E. Эллен

@terdon does starbucks only sell one coffee?

Anonymous

> He was expelled for [the wanton killing of the birds].

Anonymous

Killing is clearly a noun form. It takes a determiner, adjectival but not adverbial modification, and takes an of-PP as a complement rather than a direct object. It heads a noun phrase.

Anonymous

> He was expelled for [wantonly killing the birds].

Mitch

Mar 26, 2016 12:45

Singular if referring to a generic. Plural if specific set of more than one?

Anonymous

Killing is clearly a verb form. It does not take a determiner, it takes adverbial but not adjectival modification, and it takes the complementation the verb kill regularly takes. It appears in a clause, not a noun phrase, but that clause has a functional distribution similar to that of a noun phrase.

Mitch

Also possessives don't count

Matt E. Эллен

terdon

@snailboat I think it is the the that makes the difference there: wanton killings of birds works fine and the wanton killings of birds only slightly less so.

Anonymous

We can't call both of these things "gerunds" when their grammatical status is completely different.

terdon

Mar 26, 2016 12:46

@MattE.Эллен :)

Mitch

@MattE.Эллен oh you

Anonymous

@terdon Well, everything I pointed out matters.

Mitch

(Beat me to it)

Anonymous

> *He was expelled for wantonly killing of the birds.

Mitch

Kids are bastards

Anonymous

Mar 26, 2016 12:48

So in your question, if felling is a noun and tree is an attributive noun (and therefore is usually unmarked for number), felling isn't a gerund, it's a noun derived from a gerund.

Anonymous

A deverbal noun.

Mitch

"Bullfighting is institutionalized animal torture by adults"

terdon

@snailboat OK. I have removed all mention of gerund from my question though.

Anonymous

I see. I didn't realize you'd edited it.

Anonymous

I was typing on my phone a few minutes ago. I've just gotten on my laptop :-)

Lawrence

Mar 26, 2016 12:49

@snailboat I wish I could +1 this.

Damkerng T.

Ah, everyone is here. :-)

terdon

@snailboat No worries. I was pretty sure my original title was making a bad job of describing the question.

@Lawrence You can star it

Damkerng T.

@terdon Thanks for the feedback on the main site! (About their first languages.)

Matt E. Эллен

@Lawrence I don't know.

terdon

@DamkerngT. I speak 4 languages well enough to know whether this sort of thing would work there and none of them have the tree felling construct. Only the felling of trees. Granted, those languages are all IE (English, Spanish, French and Greek) but all are also western.

@Lawrence We'll have to ask @Cerberus probably.

Damkerng T.

Mar 26, 2016 12:54

@terdon nods -- This is very interesting!

TRomano

Shooting from the hip, I think it has to do with how compound nouns are formed in Germanic languages.

terdon

@TRomano Does German have a similar construct?

TRomano

noun noun, yes

terdon

I guess it would given its propensity for longwordformationtricks.

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch bastard kids, but not bastards kids

TRomano

Mar 26, 2016 12:55

It's recursive

hence the possibility for length

Lawrence

@terdon That has a different effect. I want to acknowledge the worth of that message, not necessarily display it on a global list. Thanks for your suggestion, though. I realise that chat is a different environment.

TRomano

contactlenscleaningsolution

terdon

@Lawrence Yeah, it's just the closest equivalent. And starring is very often used to signify agreement, just like upvotes.

Lawrence

@terdon Ok, a star it gets :) .

terdon

@TRomano and would the german version be tree felling or trees felling? Or trees frogs for that matter?

TRomano

Mar 26, 2016 12:58

Laubfrosch

is treefrog (singularsingular)

Lawrence

@terdon The reason for the singular in the English version is answered by that starred comment by snailboat.

"unmarked for number"

terdon

@Lawrence How? The comment explains that felling is not a gerund, not why tree is singular.

Matt E. Эллен

usually

TRomano

That's not the reason, that's a description.

Why is it unmarked for number?

Mitch

@MattE.Эллен depends on how many bastards

Lawrence

Mar 26, 2016 13:00

@TRomano In trying to explain English constructs, description and reason are pretty close.

Matt E. Эллен

like you can say trees management but not bastards kids

TRomano

Not close enough

Anonymous

Maybe try tests for compoundhood, like coordination. Television screens and computer screens can be coordinated as [television and computer] screens, but ice cream and custard cream can't be coordinated as *[ice and custard] cream. This is one test to determine that ice cream is a compound and television screen is not.

Anonymous

That is to say, television and screen are both syntactic constituents, but ice and cream are not.

Mitch

'Bastard' is just blaming the victim. Why isn't there a bad name for the parents?

Matt E. Эллен

Mar 26, 2016 13:02

maybe it's related to how long ago the noun got adjectivised. bastard has been an adjective for ages, but tree hasn't

Lawrence

@TRomano Because the number isn't important - the attributive noun tells you what kind of (um) other noun the other noun is, not how many. E.g. it's tree felling, not something-else felling.

Mitch

Wait...there is

terdon

@TRomano Ah, but I have the feeling that compound words are different. For example, in Greek, compound forms would take the singular ("treeplanting"—δενδροφύτευση, but we'd say _trees planting_—kinda, declensions come into play here).

Mitch

Bastards parents

terdon

@snailboat Yes, indeed. Good point.

Damkerng T.

Mar 26, 2016 13:03

Is enemies hunting acceptable?

terdon

@MattE.Эллен I'm pretty sure that tree frogs have been a thing for quite a while.

@DamkerngT. No. It means that the enemies are hunting, not that you're hunting enemies.

Matt E. Эллен

@terdon which is why you can't have trees frogs

Mitch

Ugh, tree frogs, the little bastards

Matt E. Эллен

but you can have trees management

terdon

@MattE.Эллен frogs made out of hair? :P

Anonymous

Mar 26, 2016 13:04

@MattE.Эллен Particularly in British English, I think.

Mitch

Can you? That sounds BrE to me.

terdon

Yes, trees management doesn't scan for me either.

Mitch

@snailboat jinx

@terdon sounds like modern art

TRomano

@terdon: I'm reluctant to bring non-Germanic languages into the picture. Not sure whether than shines light or casts shadows.

that

not than

Mitch

You can edit

Lawrence

Mar 26, 2016 13:06

@MattE.Эллен When do you find trees management?

Mitch

See?

Matt E. Эллен

@Lawrence it's an example. like "parks management"

parks and recreations department

TRomano

Thanks, Mitch

terdon

Well, the difference here with Greek is that the Greek form would be something like "tree's planting". To make the compound form you'd use the genitive.

Lawrence

@MattE.Эллен Well, the singular would be rather insulting to management.

Anonymous

Mar 26, 2016 13:07

@Lawrence Probably around the second half of the twentieth century.

Mitch

I think you've established that there's no rule. You have to learn every single one

terdon

Dammit. I hate it when that happens.

Matt E. Эллен

@Lawrence :D no moreso than if you were managing a single tree

Lawrence

@MattE.Эллен Might be a particularly precious tree.

Matt E. Эллен

Yggdrasil!

terdon

Mar 26, 2016 13:09

:)

TRomano

Johnny Appleseed was good at treeplanting, not at treesplanting.

terdon

Indeed. But English doesn't have declensions. The compound form in Greek would be closer to tree'splanting

TRomano

He was good at the planting of trees

declensions only vestigially

Lawrence

In some countries, he could get pulled up for littering. :P

Matt E. Эллен

and it's called mansplaining, not mensplaining

Anonymous

Mar 26, 2016 13:12

N-N compounds also tend to have stress on the first element.

terdon

@MattE.Эллен And yet it's menstruation :P

Damkerng T.

I don't know why it's huntsman or swordsman, but if it's the way it is, it's the way it is.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. hunt's man

Anonymous

The first element there was originally genitive.

terdon

@DamkerngT. Yes, but those can be pluralized, one huntsman many huntsmen

@snailboat Really?

Anonymous

Mar 26, 2016 13:14

Yeah, it wasn't a plural.

terdon

Yes, that makes sense now that I think about it.

Lawrence

What about swordsman, then? And nothing about the sword choosing the man, please.

terdon

Man of the sword -> sword's man -> swordsman ?

Matt E. Эллен

@terdon :p

Lawrence

@terdon That first transition changes the meaning of of, doesn't it?

Damkerng T.

Mar 26, 2016 13:16

@terdon Ahh... I was wondering, how many swords would a swordsman know how to use? :-)

terdon

@Lawrence I think so, yes. Not really sure.

Lawrence

Maybe swordman just sounded odd to the person who coined the term.

Anonymous

Both of and 's express a very wide range of semantic relationships. Dozens.

Anonymous

Well, swordman is the older word.

terdon

Oh? It existed?

Anonymous

Mar 26, 2016 13:17

I don't know why swordsman took its place.

terdon

And then you have seaman which is not seasman.

Matt E. Эллен

busman

(that might be BrE, too)

terdon

@MattE.Эллен Oh, busboys grow up, do they?

Anonymous

Yes, and batboys become Batman.

Lawrence

@terdon I just tried looking it up - found this:

thefreedictionary.com/Swordman

Matt E. Эллен

Mar 26, 2016 13:18

@terdon :D at least htey grow old!

terdon

@snailboat Surely they become batmen!

@Lawrence Yup, etymonline offers:

> 1670s, from sword + genitive -s- + man (n.). Earlier was swordman (late 14c.); Old English had sweordfreca in the same sense. Related: Swordsmanship (1765).

Matt E. Эллен

busman's holiday

Noun: busman's holiday ‎(plural busman's holidays)

(idiomatic) A holiday or vacation during which one does something similar to what one does as work.

Mitch

@TRomano Johnny Appleseed was good at treesplaining

@MattE.Эллен who does that?

Lawrence

Well, I suppose snailboat's message that I starred still forms the generic rule for which there are several exceptions.

Mitch

Other than bus drivers?

Matt E. Эллен

Mar 26, 2016 13:21

@Mitch busmen, apparently

@Mitch oh

Mitch

Jinx

Matt E. Эллен

software developers take time off to do hackathons...

Mitch

Oh

Matt E. Эллен

Mitch

Tax preparers take a vacation to do their own

Matt E. Эллен

Mar 26, 2016 13:22

:D

Mitch

@MattE.Эллен ShariaCoke

terdon

@MattE.Эллен Sharia Coke?

Matt E. Эллен

plumbers go on holiday to places that have plumbing...

Lawrence

@MattE.Эллен It's a great job when you get paid to do what you really enjoy.

terdon

Jinx!

Mitch

Mar 26, 2016 13:23

@MattE.Эллен that doesn't sound right

Anonymous

artsman, clansman, cliffsman, cocksman, draughtsman, fraughtsman, guardsman, guildsman, gunsman, groomsman, headsman, huntsman, leadsman, linesman, loresman, marksman, meadsman, mobsman, monthsman, privateersman, sailsman, seedsman, statesman, swordsman, talesman, topsman, townsman, tribesman, wealsman, weeksman

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch maybe get your pipes checked

Mitch

:)

Lawrence

This discussion is going down the drain.

Mitch

Clansmen drive big ok' clans?

Matt E. Эллен

Mar 26, 2016 13:25

woman

Mitch

@Lawrence rimshot

terdon

@snailboat Cocksman, really? I looked it up expecting fowl and found something quite different.

Anonymous

Well, it's an older word than either of us.

Mitch

The tiller man on a crew skiff?

Coxswain?

tchrist

spokesman, kinman, salesman, oarsman, marksman, guardsman, moorsman, hillsman, helmsman, draughtsman, docksman, cragsman, fieldsman, almsman, batsman, cliffsman, dalesman, plainsman, craftsman, gownsman, landsman, moundsman, ombudsman, bondsman, and more.

Mitch

Mar 26, 2016 13:27

Dalesman? That's going too far

tchrist

Lots of land features.

Says the riverman.

Mitch

I can't find my ombud. You know, to keep up my pants

Matt E. Эллен

on the other hand, it could be simply as everyone was saying before, the number you're attributing the nounjective to: a tree frog can only be on one tree at a time, bastard kids are individually bastards, but the parks department departs many parks.

tchrist

woodsman, tidesman, woldsman, islesman, steadsman, passman, palesman, magsman, nagsman, downsman, deathsman, headsman.

Anonymous

Well, the reason I went with "usually unmarked for number" is that I think they aren't specifically singular or plural most of the time.

Anonymous

Mar 26, 2016 13:32

If you have chicken soup, that's not because you used exactly one chicken to make it.

Anonymous

Hmm, what would be a good example?

Anonymous

Well, let's go with Nixon's enemies list, because that's one that, for whatever reason, someone cast in the plural, and it stuck. Most people copied it and used the plural.

Anonymous

Some people objected to it and decided to use enemy instead, but these people are in the minority.

Anonymous

But if we say Nixon's enemy list instead, what does the lack of plural marking tell us about number?

tchrist

This is an artifact of writing, not of speech.

terdon

Mar 26, 2016 13:36

@snailboat I think that's what I would say, were I to say it.

tchrist

Perhaps the list is one made up by Nixon's enemies: it's Nixon's enemies' list.

The homophone would drive out the wrong one in speech.

Anonymous

Well, people say an enemies list in politics. President Nixon kept "an enemies list".

Matt E. Эллен

it's always OK to be singular, but if the nounjective could be plural, you can make it plural if you want?

tchrist

Can't have two determiners, but that's slippery to stand on.

Mitch

Nixon just had one list

All enemies

Matt E. Эллен

Mar 26, 2016 13:38

Mcarthy's red list
Mcarthy's reds list

Mitch

Like mossy rocks

tchrist

Keep it clean.

Mitch

The noise tube can be plural or singular

The modifier can be most anything

I'm leaving that autocorrect for posterity. But I mean 'nounjective'

Matt E. Эллен

no, because apples cider is wrong...

Mitch

Idiomatic

terdon

Mar 26, 2016 13:40

@snailboat Ah, but is that a title instead of an adjective?

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch rofl

Anonymous

@MattE.Эллен Unless it's conventionalized, like an Arts degree.

Mitch

Could have gone another way

Anonymous

@terdon I don't see any adjectives.

Mitch

Shut yer noise tube

Matt E. Эллен

Mar 26, 2016 13:41

@snailboat true

Anonymous

You can say an art degree, but it doesn't necessarily mean the same thing.

terdon

@snailboat Um. I'm not entirely sure what I meant myself. Something along the lines that "Enemies list" could be written as a title on top of the enemy list?

tchrist

@snailboat Yes.

terdon

Probably being silly.

tchrist

@MattE.Эллен And inaudible.

Lawrence

Mar 26, 2016 13:42

@snailboat This is supportive of the idea that you use the plural for the attributive noun (as an exception to the norm) when the singular produces an awkward sense. After all, you wouldn't want a list of enemies to be considered/called an enemy.

Matt E. Эллен

@tchrist good point

@Lawrence I think it's more indicative of the difference between "art" and "the arts"

TRomano

Did Nixon have a wishes list?

Lawrence

@MattE.Эллен How did you know I was going to ask what an art degree is?

Matt E. Эллен

@Lawrence mods are granted clairvoyance ;)

Lawrence

@snailboat What's an art degree?

Mitch

Mar 26, 2016 13:45

@TRomano they didn't have Amazon back then

TRomano

Nixon was on my shits list.

Anonymous

@Lawrence an Arts degree (a degree in the humanities) vs. an art degree (a degree in fine art)

terdon

@MattE.Эллен What? Damn, is there a form we need to fill out?

Lawrence

@MattE.Эллен Ok, I deserved that :) . I really was going to ask before you posted.

@snailboat Ah, of course. Thanks.

That reinforces the exception for weird singulars.

tchrist

singular exception ≠ singulars exception

Lawrence

Mar 26, 2016 13:49

Exactly.

Anonymous

Pluralia tantum make interesting examples (or potentially non-examples): a goods train

Anonymous

(I'm an AmE speaker and have never in my life talked about "a goods train".)

Lawrence

Ok, so we have snailboat's general rule with the weird-singulars exception and the genitive-noun exception. Any other exceptions?

TRomano

What's the opposite of pluralia tantum, where the plural is never used? peace(s)train

tchrist

mass nouns

TRomano

Mar 26, 2016 13:52

We need a better word than "mass" for the massless

Anonymous

I don't think I've seen much discussion of singularia tantum before.

Lawrence

@snailboat It would be odd if they occurred singly :) .

But seriously, any other exceptions to snailboat's general rule? We're close to nailing this one.

tchrist

Category:English singularia tantum

» All languages » English language » Lemmas » Nouns » Singularia tantum English nouns that are mostly or exclusively used in the singular form. Category:English uncountable nouns: English nouns that indicate qualities, ideas, unbounded mass or other abstract concepts that cannot be quantified directly by numerals....

terdon

@snailboat I don't think that's a very good example since you could argue that goods is more than the plural of good. Or, rather, that it is the plural but only of the noun form.

@Lawrence How so? As far as I can tell, all we've come up with is that attributive nouns are singular by default because they're singular by default.

Anonymous

@terdon Well, it's interesting. Pluralia tantum are words that (at least usually) appear only in the plural. So how do these words behave in attributive position?

Anonymous

Mar 26, 2016 13:58

On the one hand, goods seems to stay in the plural-marked form goods. People don't say a good train (with the meaning 'a goods train').

Anonymous

But on the other hand, a trouser press is more usual than a trousers press, isn't it?

TRomano

Best In Show Nuts Scene

►

Anonymous

So there's some variation.

Anonymous

scissor kick

Anonymous

The tendency to leave plural marking off of attributive nouns is so strong that we do so with some words that normally appear only in the plural!

terdon

Mar 26, 2016 13:59

@snailboat Yes, but that's the general case. Goods is the exception and I would argue that since good doesn't really exist as a singular form of goods, goods train is the only possible choice.

@snailboat Ah! Nice one!

Anonymous

And that tendency makes the nouns morphologically more like adjectives, since adjectives never bear plural marking.

Anonymous

So if you look at the language more historically, saying a noun in that position is "used as an adjective" actually makes a bit more sense than it does today.

Anonymous

But in the last, what is it, 70 years? It's been changing.

Anonymous

I don't have all the answers.

Lawrence

@terdon True. But first, we needed to establish that they are singular by default - that's what's (close to being) nailed. We can now ask why.

Anonymous

Mar 26, 2016 14:03

The plural attributive in contemporary English (1962) describes examples from the 40s.

terdon

@Lawrence Oh. I thought that was pretty clear. It was the premise I started with, anyway. It is certainly the case for things like lawn mowing or tree felling etc. Which seem slightly different from tree frogs and chicken soup. Still, different or not, we've only been able to come up with a few exceptions to the singular rule for either.

Anonymous

@terdon There are a bunch of different semantic relationships that N1 can bear to N2 in a N-N compound/phrase.

terdon

@snailboat And tree and frogs have one while chicken and soup have another?

Anonymous

But the semantic relationships don't necessarily line up with the grammar.

Anonymous

So you might find that two things seem different because they're different in meaning, but have the same grammar; or that they're different grammatically, but they have the same sort of semantic relationship.

terdon

Mar 26, 2016 14:08

Right.

Anonymous

But we never did decide that tree was actually an attributive noun in tree felling.

Anonymous

We just talked about if it was.

Anonymous

It could be a pre-head complement licensed by the head noun.

Matt E. Эллен

what's the difference?

terdon

@snailboat Could you explain that to the gramar illiterate?

Anonymous

Mar 26, 2016 14:15

Complements are licensed by their heads. In a flower seller, the deverbal noun seller licenses flower as a complement, just as in She sells flowers, sells licenses flowers as a complement (specifically a direct object).

Anonymous

And there's a correspondence between the two.

Anonymous

They have the same semantic relationship, but nouns don't take direct objects (or indeed objects of any kind), so they take them as pre-head complements instead.

Cerberus

@snailboat Isn't this only semantic?

Anonymous

You can call that a kind of attributive noun if you like, but it's different from the other sort.

Cerberus

In flower seller, the head is seller, so it is flower that is dependent, not seller.

Oh, wait, I mislooked.

That was exactly what you were saying.

I thought you were saying that seller was the complement, but you weren't.

Anonymous

Mar 26, 2016 14:18

Ah, I'm sorry, I might not be communicating very well :-)

Cerberus

No, it was my fault.

You were perfectly clear.

Matt E. Эллен

@snailboat what's the other sort?

Anonymous

I was trying to establish a distinction between complements (which are licensed by their heads) and modifiers (which are not).

Cerberus

@terdon Hmm what was this about Latin syntax?

I read parts of the transcript but it wasn't clear.

Anonymous

But maybe it would be better to characterize these both as specific types of attributive nouns.

Anonymous

Mar 26, 2016 14:21

They both have the same historical tendency to be unmarked for number.

Cerberus

Is that the same distinction as that between complements and satellites/adjuncts?

terdon

2 hours ago, by Lawrence

@MattE.Эллен That's what I was trying to get at with the Latin syntax reference - how does the Latin differ between a shop selling one kind of coffee and a shop selling many kinds of coffee?

Anonymous

@Cerberus Yes, that is what I meant.

Cerberus

OK, well, I've always found that distinction to be somewhat fluid and vague.

Matt E. Эллен

@snailboat are train robber and cat burglar of the other sort?

Anonymous

Mar 26, 2016 14:22

I have to admit it's sometimes blurry at best.

Cerberus

The idea is that the complement is required whereas the adjunct is not.

terdon

@MattE.Эллен The two are not of the same class. At least, they shouldn't be. A train robber robs trains but a cat burglar doesn't burgle cats.

Cerberus

By the way, I would say "modifier" doesn't mean it isn't a complement? It can be either a complement or not.

Lawrence

@terdon In my layman's understanding, in an "N1 N2" construct, N1 needs to describe the essence of the restriction on the nouns that could be instances of N2. The 'base case' for nouns is usually the singular, but in the exceptions, the plural form expresses the essence better, e.g. with less possibility of confusion. So by default, attributive nouns are singular.

Matt E. Эллен

ah, so an Android phone is an adjunct, but an apple pie is a complement?

Anonymous

Mar 26, 2016 14:23

Well, some linguists do use modifier and complement exclusively. I was using H&P's terminology there.

Anonymous

They divide dependents (inside a noun phrase) into complements, modifiers, and determiners.

Cerberus

@terdon If you transform he robs trains → train robber, you lose some information: in the clause, it is clear that trains is the object of rob; but in the noun group train robber, the semantic relation between train and robber is not specified.

terdon

@Lawrence Agreed. Which brings us back to the original question: why are they singular even when referring to multiple items?

Cerberus

However, context tells us what the semantic relation must be.

Anonymous

Well, if you want to know why, you should look back to the history of the language, back before nouns like this were ever marked as plural.

Lawrence

Mar 26, 2016 14:26

@terdon Sorry, that was my best shot at explaining. The experts are here now (just saw that tank engine cartoon, but never mind), so let's hope they answer more precisely.

Cerberus

@terdon Suppose the evil-looking brownish train were headed for a train station where he was going to rob people. Would you call him a train robber?

Anonymous

TRomano suggested looking at treating them as noun-noun compounds. (I'm paraphrasing slightly, but you can see his messages if you scroll back.)

terdon

@Cerberus OK, but I still think that cat burglar is different.

Anonymous

And looking at the way compounding worked historically in Germanic.

terdon

@Cerberus I might, yes. Just as I would call a robber from Holland a Dutch robber.

But that is yet another form, isn't it?

Or, rather, the same form as cat burglar but not the same as chicken soup.

Anonymous

Mar 26, 2016 14:28

You might be able to distinguish a train robber (who robs trains) from a train robber (a robber that is a train) by stress / prosody in speech.

Anonymous

Although they look the same in writing.

Cerberus

@terdon The fact you might do so proves that the semantic relation is not specified in train robber: you fill it in based on context.

terdon

@Cerberus No argument there.

Cerberus

So my position is that this applies to all pairs of nouns: the relation between them is not specified.

Many different relations are possible.

Like agent-patient (a train robber as someone who robs trains), or ehh specification-person (a train robber as in the evil train).

Anonymous

That's true in general, but a lexicalized compound like ice cream might be distinguishable grammatically from a productive phrase made from ice + cream.

Cerberus

Mar 26, 2016 14:31

@snailboat Well, fixed compounds can acquire special meanings, that is true.

@terdon Don't you think a cat burglar is like a train robber as in the evil train?

The first noun explains what kind of robber/burglar it is.

Except that cat is used in a semantically different way, in that it is metaphoric, right?

@terdon How would you explain the semantic roles of chicken and soup in chicken soup?

Material-thing?

Part-whole?

terdon

@Cerberus Yes, but not the same as a train robber as in a person robbing trains.

@Cerberus I'll leave that to the experts.

Lawrence

@Cerberus Can it be called specific-generic? I.e. a specific type of the (generic) soup - chicken soup as opposed to tomato soup.

Cerberus

@terdon Agreed: there the semantic relation is patient-agent. Or theme-agent.

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