Alec Marantz: Noun Compounding Question (reply to Rolf Noyer)

[Martha McGinnis]

Rolf's discussion is excellent and helps clarify the situation in German.
I have two further questions for the group:

1.	Has anyone published a comparative Germanic study of the "linking"
morpheme (or non-morpheme) in NN compounds?  I have seen detailed studies
of the situation in Dutch, and just heard that such studies exist for
Norwegian, but I haven't seen any deep comparative work.  Dutch is already
very different from German and English, so there's much material to test
any predictive theories.

2.	No matter how many times I read discussions like Rolf's, I can't
figure out what is meant by:

the compound stem form is always the same as the plural unless it is
linking -s-

(Rolf is denying that this is true, but my problem is understanding what it
would mean for it to be true)

That is, when we see the "-s-" in a German compound, how do we know that in
at least some of the cases this isn't the plural "-s-" (or, given Rolf's
discussion, at least as much the plural -s- as the plural -er- would be
when it appears in compounds).  My understanding, which can't be right, is
that people say that, since -s- occurs with nouns that don't take plural
-s, all -s-'s in compounds, even with nouns that do take plural -s, can't
be the plural -s.  What am I missing (other than any knowledge of German,
which ignorance I'm aware of)?

--Alec
marantz at mit.edu