Agglutination and Compound Words

[Jipí]

FWIW, I find it funny that the OP chose Handschuh 'glove' as an 'extreme' example of compounding. What's so odd about hand-shoe, besides the fact that gloves are often more like socks? Should we instead call them, idk, *Glofen (or *Glaufen, whatever)?

[Rui]

FWIW, I find it funny that the OP chose Handschuh 'glove' as an 'extreme' example of compounding. What's so odd about hand-shoe, besides the fact that gloves are often more like socks? Should we instead call them, idk, *Glofen?

Ha, yeah, you could come up with a more extreme example by making "schuh" a compound word rather than its own morpheme

[Bob Johnson]

What's so odd about hand-shoe, besides the fact that gloves are often more like socks?

It's like footfingers.

Also: seems PGmc *galofo, so... dunno.

[Astraios]

What's so odd about hand-shoe, besides the fact that gloves are often more like socks?

It's like footfingers.

Which is exactly how you say 'toes' in Hebrew.

[Mr. Z]

What's so odd about hand-shoe, besides the fact that gloves are often more like socks?

It's like footfingers.

Which is exactly how you say 'toes' in Hebrew.

But Hebrew has a word for that as well.

[Jipí]

Also: seems PGmc *galofo, so... dunno.

*ga-lofo would likely turn out as Glo(f)f(e), I think. However, the root vowel would stay |o|, since MHG /ɔ, oː/ don't change, AFAICT. When I wrote <au> above I was confusing it with /uː/, which indeed becomes /aʊ/. How the whole thing is pluralized would probably depend on the declension of nouns in -o in OHG then, which I don't know. To be honest, I don't know anything about the development of the different pluralization patterns in German. If it's a monosyllabic word with an umlautable vowel it wouldn't be odd to have an umlaut plural, though.

[Astraios]

But Hebrew has a word for that as well.

Other than אצבע ברגל?

[Matt]

Obviously though this is a really extreme example, most words are nowhere near that long (and yes, in spite of the hyphens of the standard orthography, that's all one word, since it begins with a person-marking proclitic and ends with an inflectional suffix)

Oh man, I was all set to post a long Seneca word and now it seems short by comparison. The Seneca word for `door' is incorporated into the verb `open' and then nominalized to yield the word for `key' (`it-opens-doors', I guess). The word for `key' can then be incorporated into the verb `turn', giving this:

ʔoʔkehotɔkwaʔshǽkaha:thoʔ
ʔoʔke-ho-tɔ-kwa-ʔshǽ-kahat-ho-ʔ
pronom.-door-close-oppositive-nominalizer-turn-causative-aspect.suffix

(I'm not sure about the specific gloss of the pronominal prefixes).

Noun incorporated into verb, nominalized, then incorporated into another verb. Iroquoian is awesome.

That is awesome. Not only do they derive "key" from other words, but even "close" is just "opposite-of-open".

You know, I hadn't even noticed that.

[Mr. Z]

But Hebrew has a word for that as well.

Other than אצבע ברגל?

There's בהונות/בהונות רגליים.

[Astraios]

There's בהונות/בהונות רגליים.

Is it common? I've never heard of it.

[Terra]

FWIW, I find it funny that the OP chose Handschuh 'glove' as an 'extreme' example of compounding. What's so odd about hand-shoe, besides the fact that gloves are often more like socks? Should we instead call them, idk, *Glofen (or *Glaufen, whatever)?

*Mittens* are more like socks actually. Gloves usually have finger holes. And, yes.

The topic of this thread has always seemed like "Hey do any languages have compound words that English doesn't?" to me, and to have nothing to do with agglutination.

Doesn't the formation of compound words count as agglutination? But yeah, I'm more interested in compound words than affixes for case, number, etc. Sorry.

[Jipí]

*Mittens* are more like socks actually. Gloves usually have finger holes.

Shoes don't usually have toes either, though. Some socks do. OK, and I've seen at least one runner last week who wore running shoes with toes and I was like WTF.

[Mr. Z]

There's בהונות/בהונות רגליים.

Is it common? I've never heard of it.

It's not very common in the spoken language, but I believe it is used in writing, and by some people.