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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Thanks Max,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>You have answered the main question. In a
dictionary, you would label a fixed expression as a compound noun. I think I
will follow your advice.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Once the part of speech we call "compound noun" is
included in the grammar, we get the problem of distinguishing between
compound nouns and </FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2>noun phrases. You
mentioned two tests for compound nouns.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>One test is a syntactic test, "<FONT
face="Times New Roman" size=3>a compound noun can appear anywhere in syntax that
a <BR>plain noun might appear (assuming semantic
compatibility)"</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Another test is a semantic test, "</FONT>one writes
lexical entries in a dictionary for compound nouns <BR>if they are not
compositional, that is, if you can't figure out their meaning from the meaning
of the two parts"</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>My example of 'hot dog' is ambiguous because the
same construction has two different referents. The food item passes both the
tests, so that sense of hot dog is a compound noun.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>With respect, your example of 'gun rack' does not
pass the semantic test because I can figure out what the expression means from
the two component parts. In fact I think there is a significant proportion
of compound nouns that fail the semantic test because they were originally
constructed from words that obviously referred to the item in question. Brown
trout, elm beetle, hitchhiker, member of parliament, dishwasher, fireplace;
these are intuitively compound nouns in my mind, but if I had never heard of
them, I could discern the approximate meaning from the component
pieces.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Perhaps a compound noun is a simple noun
construction (typically two or three words) that is commonly used as a fixed
expression, to consistently refer to a specific referent and which appears in
the syntax anywhere a simple noun might appear (assuming semantic
compatibility). Although the syntactic evidence for adopting this part of
speech is weak, the correlation between the word group and the referent is
strong, leading to a strong intuitive argument for the 'reality' of this
linguistic phenomenon.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>What do you think?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Regards,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Greg</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=maxwell@ldc.upenn.edu href="mailto:maxwell@ldc.upenn.edu">Mike
Maxwell</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A
title=lexicographylist@yahoogroups.com
href="mailto:lexicographylist@yahoogroups.com">lexicographylist@yahoogroups.com</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, May 24, 2006 11:35
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Lexicog] Nouns</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><FONT
face=Arial size=2></FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><FONT face=Arial
size=2></FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><FONT face=Arial
size=2></FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><FONT face=Arial
size=2></FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><BR></DIV>Greg and Heather Mellow
wrote:<BR>> According to my "old fashioned" training, a noun is a plain
word <BR>> (whatever that might mean) and a noun phrase is the noun
together with <BR>> any combination of modifiers that lump together with
the noun. (The <BR>> secret of what defined a noun was never revealed to
us.)<BR><BR>There are those linguists who claim that there is no universal
<BR>distinction between nouns and verbs. While many languages lack
<BR>adjectives and other parts of speech that traditional grammars include
<BR>(and may include other POSs that traditional grammars lack, such as
<BR>postpositions), my personal opinion is that the distinction between noun
<BR>and verb is fairly clear in most--probably all--languages. You find
<BR>clear cases (words for concepts like "dog", "house", "run", "throw"),
<BR>then find the language-particular morphosyntactic ways these are
<BR>distinguished. But I digress (and I could digress a lot
more...)<BR><BR>> The point is though, that combinations of words were
thought to be noun <BR>> phrases.<BR>> <BR>> Thus 'big dog' and
'hot dog' are both noun phrases.<BR>><BR>> An alternative view is that
there are things which we might call complex <BR>> nouns. In this view 'hot
dog' is a complex noun.<BR><BR>"big dog" is perhaps an NP, although in English
you would normally get a <BR>determiner ("a", "the", "this"...). "Hot
dog" is actually ambiguous; if <BR>my dog lays out in the sun too long, he
might be "a hot dog". But the <BR>food item is arguably a compound noun,
along with things like "pickup <BR>truck", "gun rack", "redneck".<BR><BR>In
addition to a determiner and pre-modifying adjectives, English NPs <BR>may
have lots of other internal parts, such as prepositional phrase <BR>modifiers
("the gun on that gun rack"), relative clauses ("the gun <BR>that's in my
gunrack"), possessive NPs acting as determiners ("my <BR>pappy's corn
squeezins") etc. But all these components are optional <BR>except for
the head noun (e.g. "grits" can be an NP, in addition to <BR>being a noun, in
a sentence like "Grits is good").<BR><BR>BTW, in English things we call
compound nouns often are not made up of <BR>two nouns (like "gun rack" is),
but rather of an adjective + noun ("hot <BR>dog", "blackboard").<BR><BR>>
So when label the part of speech for 'hot dog' in my dictionary, should
<BR>> I put n.phr or n ? <BR><BR>I would not think of the compound noun
"hot dog" as an NP, but rather as <BR>a compound noun. A "compound noun"
would be a sub-type of "noun", in <BR>the sense that a compound noun can
appear anywhere in syntax that a <BR>plain noun might appear (assuming
semantic compatibility).<BR><BR>Typically one writes lexical entries in a
dictionary for compound nouns <BR>if they are not compositional, that is, if
you can't figure out their <BR>meaning from the meaning of the two
parts. So "hot dog" would be listed <BR>as a kind of food, but
"hitchhiker story" would not be, because if you <BR>know what a hitchhiker is,
and you know what a story is, you can figure <BR>out that the compound is a
story by or about a hitchhiker.<BR><BR>As for the label, I would probably
label "hot dog" as a compound noun, <BR>simply because it's more descriptive
than calling it a noun.<BR>-- <BR><BR> Mike
Maxwell<BR> CASL/ University of Maryland<BR>
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