Dear Alan,

I am finding this series you are doing on compounds extrememly
helpful. Thank you!

In the first passage for reading from Warder chapter 19 there is an
excellent example of a string of bahubbiihi compounds describing an
external referent (in this case a "man"):

addasa purisa.m kaa.la.m lohit-akkha.m apanaddha-kalaapa.m
kumuda-maali.m alla-vattha.m alla-kesa.m

he saw / man / black / red-eyed / tied-quiver /
white-waterlily-garland / wet-clothes / wet-hair

He saw a black, red-eyed man, with a quiver attached, a garland of
white water-lilies, wet clothes and wet hair.

With metta, John

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, "alanmcclure3" <alanmcclure3@...> wrote:
> 3) Bahubbiihi compounds:
>
> Bahubbiihi compounds are adjectival compounds whose posterior words
> are always nouns. These compounds also always have an exocentric
> focus. This means that they refer to an outside object and must be
> understood in relation to that object in order to be fully
comprehensible.
>
> One example of an English sentence using a compound of this type is:
>
> "Hey big-mouth, get over here!"
>
> "Big-mouth" in this case obviously does not literally refer to a
> "big-mouth" that someone is calling, but to a person who HAS a
> "big-mouth," or more specifically, a person who talks too much or too
> loudly. The referent in this case is a person, and thus even though
> "big-mouth" is a noun, it is qualifying the referent which is a person
> and is hence acting as an adjective.
>
> Thus, this compound "big-mouth" is an adjective qualifying a person,
> and must be understood as such since it functions as a noun in the
> sentence. To gloss the term "big-mouth" as literally referring to a
> big mouth would be a mistake and the resulting translation would be
> quite incorrect.
>
> One may note that "big-mouth" is in fact formed just like a
> kammadhaaraya compound and the only thing that makes it a bahubbiihi
> is the context. As a bahubbiihi it is acting as an adjective of the
> referent that is not included in the compound itself. If we were
> indeed speaking of a big mouth such as in the phrase: "wow, look at
> that big-mouth" and we literally meant that there was a really big
> mouth that were looking at, then it would simply be a kammadhaaraya in
> the form of (adj+substantive).
>
> This rule applies to other bahubbihi compounds which may be formed as
> tappurisa compounds (or the other types of compounds for that matter)
> such as "baby-face" where the case relation is genitive between the
> members, i.e., "face of a baby," yet if we were to speak to an adult
> thusly: "Hey baby-face, get over here!" then this compound that is
> formed as a tappurisa would be used as a bahubbiihi compound and thus
> would function as an adjective related to the referent which is not
> specifically mentioned here(the adult). In sentences with bahubbiihi
> compounds, however, the referent may be either stated or implict.
>
> An example of a bahubbihi in Paa.li would be in the following phrase:
>
> "ka.nhadanta.m passaami" = I see "black-tooth."
>
> In this case, black-tooth is not a black tooth that someone sees, but
> a person whose single tooth (or perhaps plural) is black (or very
> dark) and is therefore referred to as "black-tooth." If we wanted to
> really specify the referent, we would have to translate this as: "I
> see [the person] who has the black tooth(/teeth)."
>
> Thus, because "black-tooth" refers to a non-present referent in this
> sentence, it is adjectival and a bahubbiihi. Additionally, as
> explained above, we can see that this bahubbiihi is formed as a
> kammadhaaraya type 1 as explained above, i.e. adj+substantive.