how to deal with compounds?

[Monica Macaulay]

Hi,

Here's a question that we've been struggling with, that I'd love some  
input and advice on.  (As always, we will ask the community, but  
until we can do that I thought it would help to get some linguists'  
input to clarify our thinking.)  I'm trying to figure out how to  
graphically represent compounds in Menominee - just as in English,  
they could be written as one word, hyphenated, or written as two words.

Our first observation is that Bloomfield makes a distinction between  
"loose" and "stem" compounds in his grammar of Menominee, and writes  
all of them with a hyphen between the two members (this from his  
chapter 13).  Here's some info on his classification:

	Loose compounds:  order is fixed, combinations are limited, most of  
the particles occur only in these combinations.  Other words can  
intervene (e.g. taeh 'and', etc.)  His subcategories (using colon for  
vowel length; <ae> for his epsilon):
		* preN-(prefix)-N (e.g. oske:h-mahkae:senan 'new shoes'
		* particle-demonstrative (e.g. e:h-ayom 'this one here')
		* postverbal -aeh (e.g. pianon-aeh 'come then' - "postponed command")
		* particle compounds (e.g. ta:q-nakah 'in what direction is it?')

	Stem compounds:  take prefixes (outside compound - cf. prenoun-N  
above), initial change, inflectional suffixes; differ from simple  
words because each member is treated like a separate word in terms of  
internal combination (morphophonemics).
		* N-N (e.g. ase:kan-wiahkwan 'straw hat')
		* V-N (e.g. me:ka:hkow-enae:niw 'fighter man:  prize fighter')
		* particle-N (e.g. kaeqc-enae:niw 'old man')
		--> this confuses us, since kaeqc- is listed as a prenoun in the  
Lexicon; we need to see what would happen if you put a prefix on it
		* N-pronoun (e.g. enae:niw-aya:h 'one of the male sex')
		* (prefix)-preverb-V (e.g. keke:s-nae:wa:q 'have you seen him?')

Bloomfield says that stem compounds have "open juncture" (i.e. like  
words in a phrase) but does not mention juncture in the loose  
compounds.  We think they also have open juncture.

I think we have a number of different kinds of things here, but as  
always we have to figure out how to separate our linguistic analysis  
from what we put in the dictionary; the latter has to be the thing  
that is most useful to speakers and learners (and, we hope, without  
confusing linguists in the process).

At one point I wanted a single principle for all kinds of compounds,  
and just assumed that we would define 'compound' the same way that  
Bloomfield does.  But now I'm realizing that that's too simplistic.  
In some cases I think we have to write them the way they've "always"  
been written; i.e. the way people are used to them.  In other cases  
there isn't a set way to write them and there are various factors  
that we could consider.  So here's a sample:

	Write with hyphen:
		* preN-N, preV-V [tradition]
		* compounds involving "little words" (particles, pronouns; so e.g.  
e:h-ayom, pianon-aeh) [sort of for tradition; also because the little  
words are bound]

	Not sure how to write:
		* compound composed of two lexical categories, e.g. NN or VN [here,  
my gut reaction is to write them without a hyphen, but Marianne (my  
cocompiler) thinks they should have them.  An argument in favor of  
having them, which I confess I came up with even though I don't like  
the conclusion, is that it would give the reader a visual clue that  
the two words form a unit, aiding in parsing.  This would be  
especially useful for the ones with verbs.]
		* particle compounds [these are similar to the above because,  
again, the particles *can* stand alone.]

So, what do you (y'all) think?  How are you handling this in your  
dictionaries?

- Monica


Monica Macaulay
Department of Linguistics
University of Wisconsin
1168 Van Hise Hall; 1220 Linden Drive
Madison, WI  53706
phone (608) 262-2292; fax (608) 265-3193
http://ling.wisc.edu/~macaulay/monica.html