Noun compounds
Sally Greene and Languagehat are now kvetching about noun compounds and their increasing use in English prose. I, for one, welcome our new word formation overlords. Many languages of which I'm fond don't have adjectives at all, or have only a very small closed class of adjectives. However, being free and easy with compounds, they never want for expressive power. I'm happy to see that English is coming around!
posted by David Mortensen @ 3:12 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Why noun when you can verb? Why compound when you can incorporate?? Long live polysynthesis! :)
Nothing says English quite like 'whaleroad' etc. Beowulf would be proud (even though he probably didn't speak Old English).
To paraphrase Kronecker, "God made body-part incorporation; all else is the work of man."
hronrāde, mallrat... it's all the same.
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