Novel Nominals in Child English

[William Snyder]

Sue,

Some of the forms you mention are probably novel endocentric root compounds:

"food house" = restaurant
"orange sky light" = the setting sun
"paris building" = the Eiffel tower
"cooking glove" = oven mitt
"baby napkin" = bib

These are grammatically possible for adults as well as children, 
especially when we can't think of the conventional name for a given 
object. For extensive discussion of children's acquisition of this 
particular compounding process, you could look at my book Child 
Language: The Parametric Approach (OUP, 2007), and Eve Clark's book The 
Lexicon in Acquisition (CUP, 1995).

Now, the other three examples you mentioned are different:

"wash hands" = sink
"daddy's read" = newspaper
"witch's ride"= broom

These could conceivably be attempts at an adult-English reduced relative 
("where you wash your hands", "what daddies (?) read", "what witches ride").

Alternatively, at least the first example (and less obviously the other 
two) might be overextensions of a type of exocentric synthetic 
compounding that is not freely available in adult English, but is freely 
available in languages like French and Spanish:

French: "lave-vaisselle" (literally "wash-dishes") = dish-washer
French: "mange-souris" (a novel form, literally "eat-mice") = mouse-eater

English: "pick-pocket" = a person who picks pockets
English: * "eat-mice" (attempted novel form) = mouse-eater

~~~

Good luck with your investigation of this interesting topic!

- William

Prof. William Snyder
Head of Linguistics Department
University of Connecticut

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