Compound Nouns in Romance Languages

[Terra]

Forming compound nouns in a romance language (or French, at least) seems to be different from in English because they are more head-first than English is.

Examples:
1) railroad - chemin de fer
2) windmill - molin de vent
3) potato - pomme de terre
(Btw, is "étoile de mer" (starfish) a compound word as well?)

Is this process of "<noun> de <noun>" still productive though? If learned words for subjects like "biologie", "zooologie", "ornithologie", etc suddenly disappeared, what compound words would they be replaced with? (I'm thinking of http://anglish.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Lores here.)

Also, how do other languages with head-first tendencies form compound words?

[Ser]

I guess they would say "la science de la vie"/"ciencia de la vida", "la science des animaux"/"ciencia de los animales". The construction is very productive.

Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)
Syndrome d'immunodéficience acquise (SIDA)
Síndrome de inmunodeficiencia adquirida (SIDA)

I don't know if you should consider terms like these to be compound nouns though.




In Written Arabic, a language that is quite strongly head-initial (unlike Romance languages, there's no adjectives that prefer to go before nouns) and that is not fond of compounds (although a few exist), this is often done by stacking nouns one after another, a process the native grammatical tradition calls "إضافة ’iḍāfa" (literally: addition). The head noun goes first in a construct case* and the modifiers follow it in a genitive case.*

*Cases in written Arabic are laid out in a 3x3 grid, with the Nominative, Accusative and Genitive in one axis; and the Definite, Indefinite and Construct/Annexated in the other.

The first three are used according to the sintax: the subject of the main sentence is Nom., the direct object is Acc., the subject of a subordinate sentence is Acc., etc.

The other three deal with being definite ("the thing"), indefinite ("a thing"), or the first noun of this very construction, (a/the thing of...).

For example, the names of sciences often start with علم /ʕilm/ + the object of study. "Biology" is

علم الأحياء
/ʕilmu lʔaħjaːʔi/
science.CONS.NOM living.beings.DEF.GEN,

"the science of [the] living beings". "Zoology" is

علم الحيوان
/ʕilmu lħajawaːni/
science.CONS.NOM animal.DEF.GEN,

"the science of the animal".

متلازمة العوز المناعي المكتسب
/mutalaːzimatu lʕawazi lmanaːʕijːi lmuktasabi/
syndrome.CONS.NOM deficiency.DEF.GEN immunological.DEF.GEN acquired.DEF.GEN

>"The syndrome of the [acquired immunological deficiency]."

[LoneWolf]

Well my Irish is getting quite rusty but I'll try to help you here anyways.

In Irish there is no need for a connecting preposition as in French. Instead you just stack up the nouns and use the Genitive case plus the article followed by the appropriate initial consonant mutation (the latter depending on gender and number). Because the case system in Irish is quite decrepit, occasionally the genitive will be identical to the nominative.

Fear an tí
man the-GEN house-GEN.
'man of the house' but litterally reads 'man the house' with house in the genitive.

Teach an phobail
House the-GEN community-GEN.
This translates in English as 'house of the community' but means simply 'church'

Interestingly Irish uses attributive adjectives in the same way eg.: an capall álainn 'the beautifull horse' but reads as 'the horse beautifull'. However similarly to French some few adjectives get placed before (prefixed) to the noun eg.: an droch-chapall, "the bad horse". In French, some adjectives must always come before the noun they qualify eg.: 'une grande table' but compare 'une table ronde' where the adjective comes after the noun 'table' which it is qualifying.

[Viktor77]

I've always considered direct compound stacking to be a benefit of Germanic languages. It's a very productive system which allows for easy and efficient word creation. The system in Romance languages is terrible and hardly efficient. I don't know where Renacido gets off saying X de X is productive, especially versus XX. The Romance process requires prepostions and articles and occasionally, plurals. The Germanic system is just stack stack stack.

[LoneWolf]

I've always considered direct compound stacking to be a benefit of Germanic languages. It's a very productive system which allows for easy and efficient word creation. The system in Romance languages is terrible and hardly efficient. I don't know where Renacido gets off saying X de X is productive, especially versus XX. The Romance process requires prepostions and articles and occasionally, plurals. The Germanic system is just stack stack stack.

As a native speaker of French I'd kind of have to agree with Viktor77. What you guys are calling compounding in French via the preposition "de" is not nearly as productive a process as that which is found for instance in Germanic as well as Uralic languages. I'd say the same thing holds good for Irish in which the constructions I illustrated above are used mostly for strictly genitive purposes and not purely speaking for accross the board compounding.

[Mecislau]

I don't know where Renacido gets off saying X de X is productive, especially versus XX.

You... don't know what "productive" means in linguistics, I take it.

[linguoboy]

I'd say the same thing holds good for Irish in which the constructions I illustrated above are used mostly for strictly genitive purposes and not purely speaking for accross the board compounding.

I'd disagree. The double definite construction you discuss is primarily non-derivational, but I wouldn't say the same is true of cases where the genitive element is indefinite. Consider:

árachas tíárachas tí "home insurance"
bean tí "housewife"
feabhsúchán tí "home improvement"
luch tí "house mouse"
planda tí "houseplant"
soláthar tithe "housing stock" (tithe is the plural of tí)

And so on. Even if the first noun is made definite, the latter stays indefinite, e.g. "Chomh maith leis an soláthar tithe, caitheadh €200000 sa bhliain 2006." ("With the housing stock as well, €200,000 was spent in the year 2006.") Making both elements definite changes the meaning, i.e. luch an tí is not "the house mouse" but "the house's mouse" (i.e. a specific mouse associated with this particular house).

This construction is extremely productive in contemporary Irish and remains the primary mechanism for deriving new terms even if head-final compounding is growing under the influence of English. (E.g. coire-theach "boiler house", carrchlós "car park", etc.)

[TaylorS]

I've always considered direct compound stacking to be a benefit of Germanic languages. It's a very productive system which allows for easy and efficient word creation. The system in Romance languages is terrible and hardly efficient. I don't know where Renacido gets off saying X de X is productive, especially versus XX. The Romance process requires prepostions and articles and occasionally, plurals. The Germanic system is just stack stack stack.

I find the stacking found in English, German, and other Germanic languages to be much more aesthetically pleasing than "X de X". "bathroom" vs. "cuarto de baño".

[Legion]

"X de X" is completely productive, in fact it's more productive than derivation. I can made up something like "os de bois" (wood bone) (whatever that would mean) much more easily than I would say "os ligneux", "bois calcifié", "ostéoxyle" or whatever.

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

Forming compound nouns in a romance language (or French, at least) seems to be different from in English because they are more head-first than English is.

Examples:
1) railroad - chemin de fer
2) windmill - molin de vent
3) potato - pomme de terre
(Btw, is "étoile de mer" (starfish) a compound word as well?)

Well, first, it should be "moulin à vent". And yes, "étoile de mer" is a compound. We also have "concombre de mer" for the lulz.

Is this process of "<noun> de <noun>" still productive though? If learned words for subjects like "biologie", "zooologie", "ornithologie", etc suddenly disappeared, what compound words would they be replaced with? (I'm thinking of http://anglish.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Lores here.)

As Legion said, "X de X" and "X à X" are still highly productive. "Les sciences de la vie" is actually used at my university to describe the whole pack of fields related to life. However, my own translation would be :

L'étude de la vie, l'étude des animaux, l'étude des oiseaux

My own field would be "L'étude de la ville".

But more generally, French has a tendency to lexicalize phrases, of which "X à/de X" are only a subset. Ever heard of words like "porte-manteaux", "garde-fou", "bouche-bée", "savoir-faire"? They derive from sentences. A recently coined one would be "je-m'en-foutisme" which is actually a whole sentence (je m'en fous, I don't care) that has been nominalized, and then the suffix -isme was applied to it.

But yes, I would say they are highly productive. However, to be seen as well-learned, one would use kitchen-sink grecolatinisms. All to become xyloglottic.

[Terra]

"X de X" is completely productive, in fact it's more productive than derivation.

Is in productive in producing compound words though?

Well, first, it should be "moulin à vent". And yes, "étoile de mer" is a compound.

Thank you.

We also have "concombre de mer" for the lulz.

What about "cheval de mer"? :3

But more generally, French has a tendency to lexicalize phrases, of which "X à/de X" are only a subset. Ever heard of words like "porte-manteaux", "garde-fou", "bouche-bée", "savoir-faire"? They derive from sentences. A recently coined one would be "je-m'en-foutisme" which is actually a whole sentence (je m'en fous, I don't care) that has been nominalized, and then the suffix -isme was applied to it.

Interesting.

All to become xyloglottic.

A shame; Compound words are beautiful!

@Viktor
"productive" in linguistics means that the process is still alive. For example: The method of forming plurals of nouns with -n and past tenses of verbs with ablaut was once productive in English, but it is no longer. We're left with vestiges of it yes, but people recognize them as irregularities, and will opt to form new words and their derivations with the productive (for now) methods of affixing -s and -ed respectively.

-----

Thank you for all the responses!

[linguoboy]

"X de X" is completely productive, in fact it's more productive than derivation.

Is in productive in producing compound words though?

What's your definition of "compound word".

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

"X de X" is completely productive, in fact it's more productive than derivation.

Is in productive in producing compound words though?

It is still productive to create lexicalized items, that is, compound words.

Train à grande vitesse is a recent one.
Collège d'enseignement général et d'enseignement professionnel is one from the sixties.

[Ser]

Continuing on Spanish compounds...

Another process that is productive in Spanish, even if simply not that commonly used by speakers, is compounding a verb in the 3P.SING.PRES with a noun in the plural, similar to "porte-manteaux" in French. These words always have masculine gender.

un buscapiés
busca-piés
s/he.searches-feet
(a kind of firecracker)

un matamoscas
mata-moscas
s/he.kills-flies
a flyswatter



You can also find compounds of the form X Y (Viktor77 shut up, we also have some of this form ), where you mean that X is rather like/can also serve as Y:

un coche bomba
a car bomb

un sofá cama (which I pronounce /so.fa.ˈka.ma/, not */so.ˈfa ˈka.ma/)
a sofa bed

el Hombre Araña
Spiderman (the Marvel hero)

Interestingly, when this relation is not too metaphoric, the second noun tends to behave like an adjective. (A sofa is not quite a bed, but a sofa bed is a sofa that may also serve as a bed.)

unas empresas líderes
some "leader companies"
some leading companies

The RAE's Diccionario panhispánico de dudas mentions that when they're not lexicalized, but rather the writer used this X Y construction productively, they tend to be written with a hyphen:

a) Para crear compuestos ocasionales mediante la unión de dos sustantivos, de los cuales el segundo actúa, en aposición, como modificador del primero, formando ambos un concepto unitario: «Los dos nuevos edificios eran “viviendas-puente” [...]. Servían para alojar durante dos años —el tiempo que tardaba la Administración en hacer casas nuevas— a las familias que perdían sus pisos por grietas» (País^@ [Esp.] 7.3.00). Este tipo de compuestos puede escribirse también sin guion, con espacio intermedio. Esto ocurre cuando la aparición conjunta de ambos sustantivos se generaliza en el uso y el concepto unitario que ambos designan pasa a formar parte del léxico asentado; así ha sucedido con expresiones como sofá cama, ciudad dormitorio, hombre rana, etc., que el Diccionario académico recoge sin guion.

Then they mention that the construction can be used productively "to establish a relation between concepts, which may be fixed":

b) Para establecer relaciones entre conceptos, que pueden ser fijas (kilómetros-hora, calidad-precio, coste-beneficio),

or well, which may be circumstantial, their example: conversations between the gov. and syndicates

o bien circunstanciales (conversaciones Gobierno-sindicatos).

There is also instances of compound nouns created from phrases:

un sabelotodo
un sabe-lo-todo
a he.knows-it-all
a know-it-all

un correveidile
un corre-ve-y-di-le
a run.IMPERATIVE-see.IMPERATIVE-and-tell.IMPERATIVE-him/her
a gossipy person

unos dizques
unos diz-que-s
some he.says-that-PLURAL
some rumours

A recently coined one would be "je-m'en-foutisme" which is actually a whole sentence (je m'en fous, I don't care) that has been nominalized, and then the suffix -isme was applied to it.

Hey, we also have that in Spanish! I can't think of an example in Standard(-ish) Spanish right now, but incidentally we have "valeverguismo" in Salvadorian Spanish. (In El Salvador "me vale verga" is our equivalent for "j'm'en fous".

[LoneWolf]

I'd say the same thing holds good for Irish in which the constructions I illustrated above are used mostly for strictly genitive purposes and not purely speaking for accross the board compounding.

I'd disagree. The double definite construction you discuss is primarily non-derivational, but I wouldn't say the same is true of cases where the genitive element is indefinite. Consider:

árachas tíárachas tí "home insurance"
bean tí "housewife"
feabhsúchán tí "home improvement"
luch tí "house mouse"
planda tí "houseplant"
soláthar tithe "housing stock" (tithe is the plural of tí)

And so on. Even if the first noun is made definite, the latter stays indefinite, e.g. "Chomh maith leis an soláthar tithe, caitheadh €200000 sa bhliain 2006." ("With the housing stock as well, €200,000 was spent in the year 2006.") Making both elements definite changes the meaning, i.e. luch an tí is not "the house mouse" but "the house's mouse" (i.e. a specific mouse associated with this particular house).

This construction is extremely productive in contemporary Irish and remains the primary mechanism for deriving new terms even if head-final compounding is growing under the influence of English. (E.g. coire-theach "boiler house", carrchlós "car park", etc.)

Well to be honest linguoboy, my knowledge of Irish is rather limited . Perhaps I should have hinted at this in the beginning. So I trust you're probably right about it all. It’s just that to the little of my knowledge, it didn't appear to me to be in any respect nearly as productive, or should I say as "common" a process for coining new words as that which is seen in say, Finnish, German or some polysynthetic langs.

Basically it had appeared to me (wrongly!) that the situation in Irish resembled that which is seen in my native language, French. The construction using 'de' is indeed quite commonly used for compounding (along with the preposition à) but not to the same extent or at least not in the same way as for instance observed Finnish or German. While it is true in French I can say things like ‘un mur de bois de sapin de l’est de la Côte du Québec’ these are only on the *spot* compounds used freely especially in spoken context and highly prone to variation. Moreover and more importantly, such constructions hardly ever figure as actual fixed lexical items in French. In contrast, in German there are a shit load of these fixed lexical compounds. In German it’s actually a "commonly" used device to coin new words and Germans have no trouble stacking up four or five words to make a new one. Can the same thing be said of French?And from there I dunno what to say more… Perhaps I’m again wrong about it all or maybe there is some kind of nuance to be made here. Enlighten me please if you will !

[Ser]

The construction using 'de' is indeed quite commonly used for compounding (along with the preposition à) but not to the same extent or at least not in the same way as for instance observed Finnish or German. While it is true in French I can say things like ‘un mur de bois de sapin de l’est de la Côte du Québec’ these are only on the *spot* compounds used freely especially in spoken context and highly prone to variation. Moreover and more importantly, such constructions hardly ever figure as actual fixed lexical items in French. In contrast, in German there are a shit load of these fixed lexical compounds. In German it’s actually a "commonly" used device to coin new words and Germans have no trouble stacking up four or five words to make a new one. Can the same thing be said of French?

What do you say about your fellow countryman's example though? Collège d'enseignement général et d'enseignement professionnel seems to me like a lexical item not prone to variation and coined using a productive construction.

[LoneWolf]

The construction using 'de' is indeed quite commonly used for compounding (along with the preposition à) but not to the same extent or at least not in the same way as for instance observed Finnish or German. While it is true in French I can say things like ‘un mur de bois de sapin de l’est de la Côte du Québec’ these are only on the *spot* compounds used freely especially in spoken context and highly prone to variation. Moreover and more importantly, such constructions hardly ever figure as actual fixed lexical items in French. In contrast, in German there are a shit load of these fixed lexical compounds. In German it’s actually a "commonly" used device to coin new words and Germans have no trouble stacking up four or five words to make a new one. Can the same thing be said of French?

What do you say about your fellow countryman's example though? Collège d'enseignement général et d'enseignement professionnel seems to me like a lexical item not prone to variation and coined using a productive construction.

It is indeed. It's a perfect example that such a thing *does* exist in French, I never said that it didn't. I simply said that those kinds of constructions to build new fixed lexical items are not as commonly used in French as in other languages. As I'll repeat, I may very well be wrong. My knowledge is limited to the two languages I speak natively and what I,ve read and studied about other langs.

[Viktor77]

A recently coined one would be "je-m'en-foutisme" which is actually a whole sentence (je m'en fous, I don't care) that has been nominalized, and then the suffix -isme was applied to it.

Hey, we also have that in Spanish! I can't think of an example in Standard(-ish) Spanish right now, but incidentally we have "valeverguismo" in Salvadorian Spanish. (In El Salvador "me vale verga" is our equivalent for "j'm'en fous".

This seems to be quite common in both Germanic and Romance languages. In French there is say, un qu'en-dira-t-on, and in English we have say, never-the-less or nevertheless.