----- Original Message -----
From:
"Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
To: <cybalist@egroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2001 10:08 PM
Subject: Re: [tied]
People of the Rivers - Thought #3
> Many of the processes of
English compounding occur equally
in French,
> probably because of
their long histories together.
Concerning "pickpocket"
> or
"spendthrift", we cannot confidently assert that these
are a directly
>
derived from verbs since there are many examples of
non-compounded
English
> nouns formed out of verbs of this kind. Nouns such as "a
go",
"a try"...
> Need I elaborate further?
No need. I'll do it for you. They
can't be N+N compounds, as these are invariably head-final in English (just try
to imagine *roombed, *baghand or *goerchurch). Besides, nouns like 'go' and
'try' refer to activities; they form compounds in the normal way: hairdo, not
*do-hair. A *pocketpick would only be imaginable in the sense "picking a
pocket".
> Now French. The first component /porte-/ is of
course
derived from the verb
> /porter/ "to wear, hold" as found in
another compound
using the infinitive
> "prêt-à-porter" (translation:
"ready to wear" fashions)
but its function in
> compounds of the sort
"porte-..." can be viewed equally as
a noun meaning
> "holder". There
are many, MANY nouns in French taken
directly from verb
> forms of
various tenses:
>
>
VERB
NOUN
>
---------------------------------------------------
>
dîner "to dine" -> le dîner
"lunch"
> manger "to
eat" -> le manger
"food"
> passé "has
passed" -> le passé
"past"
> pensé "has thought"
-> le pensé "thought"
> à venir "to
come" -> l'avenir
"future"
> sorte "sort, arrange" -> la
sorte "a kind of, a sort"
> voyage
"travel" -> la voyage "voyage,
trip"
> conduit
"conduct" -> la conduite
"behaviour"
>
> The last three words are examples of the kind
of
verb-derived noun similar
> to /porte-/. So, you need to more
adequately justify your
dismissal of the
> /porte-.../ compounds as
simply verb-noun.
The similarity is misleading. The nouns in
your table are formations going back all the way to Latin (conductus, etc.).
There is no *porte 'holder' in French, but there are a number of V+N compounds
(from abbreviated fixed phrases) like tire-bouchon (again, no free word *tire
'tool for drawing out'). Also, there are no conduit+X or manger+X compounds in
French.
> Are you saying that there was a
particular medieval hotel
called "Hôtel
> Dieu" from which this word
derives?? >:) I don't
understand this line of
> reasoning.
...
> Well, so far "cheval-vapeur" is still relevant to
the
discussion as an
> example of a genitive compound where a needed
little word
like "de" is
> absent. Examples like "porte-manteau" are
still not
confidently shown to be
> strictly from the use of the _verb_
/porter/ as opposed to
a verb-derived
> _noun_. Since the plural is not
a grammatical feature of
IndoTyrrhenian
> declension as far as I know,
one need only state "people
river-Gen".
These points are well taken. Look, let's
sum up the French situation. French generally avoids IE-type compounding
(complex nouns of the N+N structure). It does have some trivial dvandva
combinations like chien-loup (pl. chiens-loups) and a great number of V+N
compounds. There is also a small number of N+N compounds presumably reflecting
fossilised phrases with "de" omitted (oeil-de-boeuf, pl. oeils-de-boeuf is
the normal type); hotel-Dieu (pl. hotels-Dieu) and cheval-vapeur (pl.
chevaux-vapeur) belong here. This would explain the anomalous root order and the
"internal" inflection.