|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 1,475
veteran
|
veteran
Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 1,475 |
Can you give us some other examples of these last two compounds so we can detect a pattern? Do the possessive compounds have to be hyphenated, for example? Since the copulative compound is a simple word, such as pair, could the possessive compound also be a simple word such as bushel?
I'm at work now, so am away from my reference library, but an example of dvandva would be: Ramasitau. Rama is one of the incarnations of Vishnu, and the eponymous hero of the Ramayana. His wife's name is Sita. Ramasitau means in Sanskrit Rama and Sita (together as husband and wife). An aside is that the ending -au is the dual (not plural) nominative. I can't think of an English example, but in Sanskrit, you can put two nouns together into a compound word. No 'and' or 'or' conjunction necessary. Bahuvrihi is an example of itself. It can be used as an adjective meaning 'possessing a lot of rice' hence rich. You could say something like Jheem bahuvrihi meaning Jheem who possesses a lot of rice. Not that Jheem is a noun and bahuvrihi is an compound adjective in this example.
I was saying that most collocations are compounds. Whether the compound has a space like crystal clear, a hyphen like high-fiber, or nothing like honeymoon. (I'd argue that that's just an orthographic convention in English.) And dvandva and bahuvrihi are just linguistic terms that Indian grammarians came up with, but which linguists still use for languages other than Sanskrit.
Hope this helps.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 1,475
veteran
|
|
veteran
Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 1,475 |
the 'head' of the compound (e.g., driver in 'truck driver,' the head usually being the last word in the compound
The head of a phrase usually determines what the syntactic category of the phrase as a whole will be. So, truck driver can simply be replaced by a noun: The truck driver swerved to miss the jackrabbit. / The woman swerved to miss the jackrabbit.
There's also a problem with parsing compunds that is well known and studied. Ancient history teacher. Does it mean a teacher of ancient history or an ancient teacher of history?
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 1,475
veteran
|
|
veteran
Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 1,475 |
Exocentric compounds are what I was calling bahuvrihi.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065 |
I always understood that collocation was the force that made some combinations idiomatic and not others. For example, you might break off your engagement, rather than cancel it or withdraw from it, or you might spend too much time on AWAD rather than use too much time on AWAD.
Bingley
Bingley
|
|
|
|
Forums16
Topics13,913
Posts229,345
Members9,182
| |
Most Online3,341
Dec 9th, 2011
|
|
|
1 members (wofahulicodoc),
889
guests, and
1
robot. |
|
Key:
Admin,
Global Mod,
Mod
|
|
|
|
|
|
