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Message |
keesan
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Off with its head!
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May 9 19:33 UTC 2002 |
The English language has the odd habit of shortening adjective-noun phrases
by omitting the noun. Vacuum (cleaner). Microwave (oven). Summit (meeting).
For the benefit of our visitors from other languages, or just for fun, please
list more of these shortened phrases.
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| 26 responses total. |
flem
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response 1 of 26:
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May 9 19:37 UTC 2002 |
iwbg iwbg
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rcurl
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response 2 of 26:
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May 9 19:56 UTC 2002 |
(people like you are why I left academia)
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gull
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response 3 of 26:
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May 9 20:03 UTC 2002 |
Sometimes it goes the other way. (Phonograph) record.
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brighn
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response 4 of 26:
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May 9 20:25 UTC 2002 |
Those aren't adjective-noun phrases, they're noun-noun phrases (as is gull's
example).
I'm more interested by the phenomenon that there are only a few natural
two-syllable words ending in -o (lotto, bingo), but a huge number of clipped
words ending in -o (photo, porno, psycho, sado, pseudo, zoo), as well as a
few slang words (wacko, weirdo, dumbo).
*shrug* Or maybe not. =}
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jp2
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response 5 of 26:
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May 9 23:27 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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oval
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response 6 of 26:
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May 10 00:08 UTC 2002 |
stupid (fucker)
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jazz
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response 7 of 26:
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May 10 00:11 UTC 2002 |
Oral (roberts)
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brighn
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response 8 of 26:
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May 10 03:03 UTC 2002 |
mother(fucker), too
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keesan
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response 9 of 26:
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May 10 03:09 UTC 2002 |
retro (retroactive, retrospective?) art deco(ratif?) auto(mobile)
The phrases made from two nouns are using the first one as an adjective.
Television (receiver). Radio (apparatus).
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other
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response 10 of 26:
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May 10 04:05 UTC 2002 |
It's a specifier, not a descriptive.
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senna
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response 11 of 26:
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May 10 04:20 UTC 2002 |
Lotto is used as a shortform for lottery, is it not?
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brighn
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response 12 of 26:
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May 10 04:34 UTC 2002 |
#11> 'spossible
#9> I disagree, they're noun + noun phrases. ;}
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oval
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response 13 of 26:
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May 10 08:53 UTC 2002 |
bull (shit)
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keesan
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response 14 of 26:
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May 10 12:17 UTC 2002 |
grocery (store), laundry (? a place that washes it), final (exam) - definitely
an adjective, application (program) - any other truncated computer phrases?,
laptop (computer), desktop (?)
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happyboy
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response 15 of 26:
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May 10 13:59 UTC 2002 |
het (erosexual)
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brighn
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response 16 of 26:
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May 10 14:51 UTC 2002 |
But, following my pattern: hetero and homo.
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jazz
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response 17 of 26:
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May 10 16:07 UTC 2002 |
Shortened words are different than dropped nouns, right?
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brighn
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response 18 of 26:
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May 10 17:18 UTC 2002 |
Depends on your morphological theory... =>
If you classify things as morphological units based on their semantic
completeness, then no, a clipping and a dropped noun are roughly the same
thing, linguistically. Multiword phrases would qualify as single morphological
units.
If you classify things as morphological units based on their semantic
completeness AND their word count (i.e., all morphological units must be
smaller than or the same size as a word), then yes, they're different.
Most laymen tend to think in the latter terms, but the former is more
linguistically sound, IMHO.
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jazz
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response 19 of 26:
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May 10 17:28 UTC 2002 |
Jeez, who peed in your coffee this morning?
I do believe there's a difference in that the dropped portion of a
clipping doesn't necessarily have the same role as the dropped portion of
a dropped noun phrase.
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rcurl
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response 20 of 26:
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May 10 18:26 UTC 2002 |
Noun phrases can be much more complex than used here. See
http://papyr.com/hypertextbooks/engl_126/ph_noun.htm
The type of noun phrase offered in #0 are those in which the head has
been dropped in favor of just the premodifier, and yet retaining the
same meaning. A lot of examples given later do not have this property.
In fact, there are many noun phrases in which dropping the head changes
the meaning entirely. For example, "paper tiger" cannot be shortened to
just "paper" and retain the same meaning. Other examples are phone book,
apple pie, and stone age. In all of these the modifier restricts the head
but still requires the head. In laundry room it does not, the modifier
alone coming into use for the phrase.
It wasn't initially clear to me what the difference is between those in
which the head can be dropped and those in which it cannot. I have now
concluded it is often because the examples in #0 are *redundancies*. That
is, laundry originally meant the place where laundry was done, so laundry
room is redundant. Grocery store is the same: grocery came first and store
is redundant. "Radio" is an invented word and it is redundant to add
"apparatus".
Final exam doesn't follow this, but here it is a case of clipping a phrase
that had a single meaning in a special environment - a school. To a radio
engineer, however, a final is the last stage in an amplifier. The term
"final stage" is clipped to just "final".
In other noun phrases, the premodifier was introduced later to restrict
the head, as in apple pie. In this and other similar examples there is no
redundancy.
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brighn
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response 21 of 26:
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May 10 23:27 UTC 2002 |
John> What Rane said. ;} The point is, with clipping, the meaning isn't
obvious from the remnant, and is the result of conventional usage.
"Automobile" and "final exam" can both be clipped (to auto and final,
respectively), and both require some degree of context to be sure of the
meaning ("auto" *usually* means car, but "putting something on auto" would
mean "automatic," for instance).
And nobody peed in my coffee. I don't drink coffee. I hadn't meant to sound
harsh or annoyed, I certainly wasn't feeling that way.
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jazz
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response 22 of 26:
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May 11 00:12 UTC 2002 |
I understand your point, but do you mine?
If there weren't a difference, would it be possible to reasonably
discuss whether or not the difference were significant?
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brighn
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response 23 of 26:
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May 11 00:42 UTC 2002 |
I'll accept that there's a difference, I'm jus tnot sure how important it is.
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keesan
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response 24 of 26:
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May 11 02:51 UTC 2002 |
(tele)phone but not (tele)vision or (tele)type.
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