13.2621, Sum: Corporate Noun-Phrase Reversal

[LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List:  Vol-13-2621. Mon Oct 14 2002. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 13.2621, Sum: Corporate Noun-Phrase Reversal

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1)
Date:  Wed, 09 Oct 2002 15:56:13 +0000
From:  "Dan Stowell" <danstowell at operamail.com>
Subject:  Re: "Corporate Noun-Phrase Reversal"

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Wed, 09 Oct 2002 15:56:13 +0000
From:  "Dan Stowell" <danstowell at operamail.com>
Subject:  Re: "Corporate Noun-Phrase Reversal"

Dear LinguistList,

Thanks to all who responded to my question (Linguist 13.2209).
Many people have pointed out other occurrences: Team USA, Tate Britain
and Tate Modern, BankAmerica, a hand-written sign in a Brussels
clothing shop advertising 'shoe foot' (football shoes?). I also
reproduce an email from Andrew Wilcox below, in case it's of interest.

Best,
Dan Stowell
University College London, UK


A precursor / early example of corporate noun phrase reversal in
English- car names? If the marque is the head of the noun phrase, the
model is the post-placed modfier. Typically, both can stand as NP
heads (a Jaguar, my Escort) but I have an intuition that people more
frequently refer to cars by marque than by model - a very quick corpus
check at least does not contradict the intuition. Counting 120
concordance lines for "drives/drive/drove a", I got:

model (e.g. a Cavalier) 4 instances
marque (e.g. a Ford) 12 instances
marque + model (e.g. BMW 320i) 10 instances

So it could be that marque is more prominent in cognition, and is the
NP head where marque and model are both specified. One might also
argue that the model must be the modifier as there is no such thing
as, say, a Mercedes Elantra or a Ford Astra.

As for "why?" - internationalisation seems a good place to start. Did
the word order in car names in English begin with imports of French
vehicles in the 1890s? (I don't know, it's just an idea.) Modern Greek
is ADJ-NOUN, but pizzerias in Greece are Pizza + name, e.g. Pizza
Roma, Pizza Udine, following Romance/Italian order.

Andrew Wilcox
Angelochori GR57109
Thessaloniki

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