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Re parabrisas, paracaídas, etc.:<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:maxwell@ldc.upenn.edu">maxwell@ldc.upenn.edu</a> wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:20080305161150.sfluv97wcgs0os0s@mail.ldc.upenn.edu"
type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap=""><snip> Spanish 'parabrisas' makes sense as a (compound) noun
too, because otherwise, if it were a prepositional phrase, that wouldn't
explain how it could be preceded with a determiner in a noun phrase.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
I was about to say that 'brisas' was plural and 'parabrisas' ambiguous
between singular and plural, hence 'brisas' couldn't be the head in the
same sense that 'shelf' is the head of 'bookshelf' (cf. shelves/
bookshelves); but my Spanish dictionary lists it as 'parabrisa', which
breaks that argument. Oh, well, I can make the same argument from
'paracaidas' "parachute", lit. "for falls". There's also 'parabien'
"congratulations", lit. "for well" ("well" in the sense of "good"),
which acts as a noun without any noun inside. <snip>
</pre>
</blockquote>
fwiw, the dictionary (which dictionary? I never heard it, and my
Pequeño Larrouse sure doesn't have it!)'s listing of _parabrisa_
doesn't break the argument: as you note there are plenty of other
examples where the component noun is invariantly plural but the
compound itself is either singular or plural. It is the standard
pattern where the component noun is a count-noun and not a unique one.
(e.g. a parasol is not a parasoles, because there's only one Sun, and a
skylight is not a tragaluces because luz, in the required sense, is a
mass noun.)<br>
<br>
Note that all of these compounds with 'para' are susceptible to
analysis as having the verb 'para(r)' 'halt/stop s.t.' instead of (or
*besides* the preposition 'para' 'for'. The V + O = S pattern is far
more prevalent than the P + 0 = S one (though forms like sinvergüenza
[without-shame] 'rascal' or anteojos [before-eyes] 'glasses' do occur).
So I would usually gloss parabrisas, paracaídas, parachoques, etc. as
'stops-breezes', 'stops-falls', 'stops-crashes', etc., while not
denying that some may construe them as 'for-breezes', etc. ('Parabién'
is the exception: you are not stopping good when you give someone your
parabienes.) Native-speakers' intuitions run both ways on them, fwtw.<br>
<br>
A somewhat parallel example in English: a 'sawbones' is a singular, not
a plural, doctor. Most English V + O = S nouns have a singular
component noun, however, e.g. spitfire, breakwater, scarecrow (cf.
Spanish espantapájaros), …<br>
<br>
It makes no sense to me to consider the component noun 'head' just
because it happens to be a noun. Rather these are all exocentric
(headless) compounds. As you note, the grammatical features of the
component noun do not necessarily characterize the compound, and the
semantic ones only accidentally and rarely do: parabrisas is masculine
as well as (usually) singular, while brisas is (always) feminine
plural; and a parabrisas certainly is not a kind of breeze. One could
argue that bien is a noun in parabién: there is certainly an
independently-established nominal sense/usage of the word: Lo hice para
el bien de mi familia 'I did it for my family's benefit'. (That
doesn't, to me, mean that you're necessarily wrong to think it could be
the adverb too/instead.)<br>
<br>
You (Mike & David F, and possibly the rest of you too) would
probably enjoy the <a
href="http://www.sil.org/%7Etuggyd/PowerPoints/powerpoints_english.htm">powerpoint</a>
on these wonderful compounds ("Abrelatas y Scarecrow") which I did a
few years ago. (The English-language paper it was drawn from is
available <a href="http://www.um.es/ijes/vol3n2/03-Tuggy.pdf%5C">here</a>
as well.) They are fascinating to me.<br>
<br>
--David Tuggy<br>
<br>
ps. I'm quite proud of that long-postponed possessive marker on the
first sentence above.<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:20080305161150.sfluv97wcgs0os0s@mail.ldc.upenn.edu"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">
</pre>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Anything having to do with recursion, I would think would go under
syntax rather than under morphology.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
Again, I think that's an empirical issue, but this may not be recursion
in the usual sense (as opposed to finite state). Although I guess
that's open to argument...
Mike Maxwell
CASL/ U MD
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</pre>
</blockquote>
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