nomconjobjs: some factors

[Robin Hamilton]

Tom Zurinskas wrote:

> So if "nomconjobjs" is not a word, and not an acronym, what would you call
> it?  A morphnym? klugeword? nerdwerd? visonym or sightword? (because you
> can't pronounce it). And as such should it for plurals have an 's or s
> added ?

It's a sign [sic], not quite bricolage but on the edge of it, constructed
from fragments of other signs.  Obvious, surely?  Turtles all the way down.

> To me it's just terrible coinage, a coinboing (to coin a terrible coinage
> word).  If nomconjobj applies only to words that are given the nominative
> case after prepositions, then "prepnoms" might apply.

To others of us, it is a thing of strange and surpassing beauty,
illustrating one of the pronounced ethnolinguistic markers of ADS-l, the
employment of a range of (co-)textual markers, from acronyms to smileys, an
understanding of which is assumed to be held in common by the participants
on the list.

> But it's interesting to hear that you think that a word that can't be
> pronounced is not a word.  I think so too.

I in turn can think of more than several concrete poets who'd sigh with
weary familiarity over that last sentence..  To the effect of, "Been there,
done that, bought the t-shirt."  I think I first consciously encountered
this as a real rather than abstract problem in 1966, but then, Glasgow was
notoriously behind the times when it came to issues like this.

It just goes to show (you can't be too careful).

Robin

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