[Lexicog] Spanish V + O = S compounds (was Re: Lexical Relations vs. Etymology)

[Michael Nicholas]

Dear David, 
  I was once told by a French lexicographer that the modern objects in Spanish which are identified by  the "para" initial component are but "calques" from the French. I was also told that if there is a Spanish construction that is visually the same it will attract "calques" 
  I think compounds in Spanish - when they refer to objects that are imported tend to go through the stages of: noun plus adjective (non compound) verb - third person singular - plus noun and finally evolve into noun plus noun. This can be seen modern terms So: techo solar, guarda coches,  delantero centro and even - in popular speech - Plaza Castilla

David Tuggy <david_tuggy at sil.org> escribió:
          Re parabrisas, paracaídas, etc.:

maxwell at ldc.upenn.edu wrote:     
<snip> Spanish 'parabrisas' makes sense as a (compound) noun  too, because otherwise, if it were a prepositional phrase, that wouldn't  explain how it could be preceded with a determiner in a noun phrase.      

  I was about to say that 'brisas' was plural and 'parabrisas' ambiguous   between singular and plural, hence 'brisas' couldn't be the head in the   same sense that 'shelf' is the head of 'bookshelf' (cf. shelves/   bookshelves); but my Spanish dictionary lists it as 'parabrisa', which   breaks that argument.  Oh, well, I can make the same argument from   'paracaidas' "parachute", lit. "for falls".  There's also 'parabien'   "congratulations", lit. "for well" ("well" in the sense of "good"),   which acts as a noun without any noun inside. <snip>    
fwiw, the dictionary (which dictionary? I never heard it, and my Pequeño Larrouse sure doesn't have it!)'s listing of _parabrisa_ doesn't break the argument: as you note there are plenty of other examples where the component noun is invariantly plural but the compound itself is either singular or plural. It is the standard pattern where the component noun is a count-noun and not a unique one. (e.g. a parasol is not a parasoles, because there's only one Sun, and a skylight is not a tragaluces because luz, in the required sense, is a mass noun.)

Note that all of these compounds with 'para' are susceptible to analysis as having the verb 'para(r)'  'halt/stop s.t.' instead of (or *besides* the preposition 'para' 'for'. The V + O = S pattern is far more prevalent than the P + 0 = S one (though forms like sinvergüenza [without-shame] 'rascal' or anteojos [before-eyes] 'glasses' do occur). So I would usually gloss parabrisas, paracaídas, parachoques, etc. as 'stops-breezes', 'stops-falls', 'stops-crashes', etc., while not denying that some may construe them as 'for-breezes', etc.  ('Parabién' is the exception: you are not stopping good when you give someone your parabienes.) Native-speakers' intuitions run both ways on them, fwtw.

A somewhat parallel example in English: a 'sawbones' is a singular, not a plural, doctor. Most English V + O = S nouns have a singular component noun, however, e.g. spitfire, breakwater, scarecrow (cf. Spanish espantapájaros), 


It makes no sense to me to consider the component noun 'head' just because it happens to be a noun. Rather these are all exocentric (headless) compounds. As you note, the grammatical features of the component noun do not necessarily characterize the compound, and the semantic ones only accidentally and rarely do: parabrisas is masculine as well as (usually) singular, while brisas is (always) feminine plural; and a parabrisas certainly is not a kind of breeze. One could argue that bien is a noun in parabién: there is certainly an independently-established nominal sense/usage of the word: Lo hice para el bien de mi familia 'I did it for my family's benefit'. (That doesn't, to me, mean that you're necessarily wrong to think it could be the adverb too/instead.)

You (Mike & David F, and possibly the rest of you too) would probably enjoy the powerpoint on these wonderful compounds ("Abrelatas y Scarecrow") which I did a few years ago. (The English-language paper it was drawn from is available here as well.) They are fascinating to me.

--David Tuggy

ps. I'm quite proud of that long-postponed possessive marker on the first sentence above.


  
  

  
Anything having to do with recursion, I would think would go under   syntax rather than under morphology.      


                           

       
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