David Fertig: Noun Compounding Question (reply to Carson Schutze)

[Martha McGinnis]

Carson wrote:
> I believe what they intended this to mean was that nouns that take -s in
> the plural never take (any sort of) -s in compounds. If that's right,
> then not only are there nouns with non-s plurals that take -s in
> compounds, but there are no nouns with -s plurals that do so.
>
> I think that would answer Alec's question, but it of course raises a new
> analytic one, namely, what would prevent the *linking* -s from combining
> with these nouns? Why should linking -s care what a noun's plural looks
> like, especially since linking -s can appear following another plural
> "affix" (in traditional terms), e.g.

    It's certainly true that German nouns with -s plurals never take linking
-s, but I think the correct generalization is that nouns with -s plurals
never take _ANY_ linking element. If this is true, then I think Carson may
have answered his own question ("what would prevent the *linking* -s from
combining with these nouns?") in his last message when he refered to the
Pinker/Clahsen idea that non-canonical nouns (or verbs, etc.) cannot have
stem allomorphy (or cannot be "irregular" in Pinker/Clahsen terminology).
(For those who do not know German: -s is a very unGerman plural suffix
and--as Clahsen shows--is largely restricted to nouns that are in some way
"non-canonical", such as loan words, proper names, non-nouns used as nouns,
etc. Clahsen and his colleagues have been so interested in the German -s
plural precisely because it is a default, regular affix with quite low type
frequency.)

    David

David Fertig, Associate Professor of German
Dept. of Modern Languages and Literatures
910 Clemens Hall
University at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY 14260
fertig at acsu.buffalo.edu
Tel: (716)-645-2191 x1202
Fax: (716)-645-5981