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51-571: Eastmain is a compounding of the river's former name East Main, which was taken from the former Hudson's Bay Company outpost at its mouth. This post controlled company trading operations in the East Main District on the eastern side of James Bay . Since the late 1980s, most of the waters of the Eastmain River have been diverted and flow northwards through the Opinaca Reservoir , with

102-409: A compound is a lexeme (less precisely, a word or sign ) that consists of more than one stem . Compounding , composition or nominal composition is the process of word formation that creates compound lexemes. Compounding occurs when two or more words or signs are joined to make a longer word or sign. Consequently, a compound is a unit composed of more than one stem, forming words or signs. If

153-514: A synthetic language , the relationship between the elements of a compound may be marked with a case or other morpheme . For example, the German compound Kapitänspatent consists of the lexemes Kapitän (sea captain) and Patent (license) joined by an -s- (originally a genitive case suffix); and similarly, the Latin lexeme paterfamilias contains the archaic genitive form familias of

204-447: A compound noun such as place name begins as spaced in most attestations and then becomes hyphenated as place-name and eventually solid as placename , or the spaced compound noun file name directly becomes solid as filename without being hyphenated. German, a fellow West Germanic language , has a somewhat different orthography , whereby compound nouns are virtually always required to be solid or at least hyphenated; even

255-449: A compound noun, resulting in a pleonasm . One example is the English word pathway . In Arabic , there are two distinct criteria unique to Arabic, or potentially Semitic languages in general. The initial criterion involves whether the possessive marker li-/la ‘for/of’ appears or is absent when the first element is definite. The second criterion deals with the appearance/absence of

306-417: A constituent the shorter NP his constituents . In some theories of grammar, noun phrases with determiners are analyzed as having the determiner as the head of the phrase, see for instance Chomsky (1995) and Hudson (1990) . Some examples of noun phrases are underlined in the sentences below. The head noun appears in bold. Noun phrases can be identified by the possibility of pronoun substitution, as

357-426: A formal head, and its meaning often cannot be transparently guessed from its constituent parts. For example, the English compound white-collar is neither a kind of collar nor a white thing. In an exocentric compound, the word class is determined lexically, disregarding the class of the constituents. For example, a must-have is not a verb but a noun. The meaning of this type of compound can be glossed as "(one) whose B

408-517: A gradual scale (such as a mix of colours). Appositional compounds are lexemes that have two (contrary or simultaneous) attributes that classify the compound. All natural languages have compound nouns. The positioning of the words (i.e. the most common order of constituents in phrases where nouns are modified by adjectives, by possessors, by other nouns, etc.) varies according to the language. While Germanic languages, for example, are left-branching when it comes to noun phrases (the modifiers come before

459-458: A hierarchy of functional projections. Dependency grammars , in contrast, since the basic architecture of dependency places a major limitation on the amount of structure that the theory can assume, produce simple, relatively flat structures for noun phrases. The representation also depends on whether the noun or the determiner is taken to be the head of the phrase (see the discussion of the DP hypothesis in

510-534: A member of the Germanic family of languages, English is unusual in that even simple compounds made since the 18th century tend to be written in separate parts. This would be an error in other Germanic languages such as Norwegian , Swedish , Danish , German , and Dutch . However, this is merely an orthographic convention: as in other Germanic languages, arbitrary noun phrases , for example "girl scout troop", "city council member", and "cellar door", can be made up on

561-400: A more complex phrase. For simplicity, only dependency-based trees are given. The first tree is based on the traditional assumption that nouns, rather than determiners, are the heads of phrases. The head noun picture has the four dependents the , old , of Fred , and that I found in the drawer . The tree shows how the lighter dependents appear as pre-dependents (preceding their head) and

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612-421: A noun (the head of the phrase) together with zero or more dependents of various types. (These dependents, since they modify a noun, are called adnominal .) The chief types of these dependents are: The allowability, form and position of these elements depend on the syntax of the language in question. In English, determiners, adjectives (and some adjective phrases) and noun modifiers precede the head noun, whereas

663-404: A noun phrase can also function as an adjunct of the main clause predicate, thus taking on an adverbial function, e.g. In some languages, including English, noun phrases are required to be "completed" with a determiner in many contexts, and thus a distinction is made in syntactic analysis between phrases that have received their required determiner (such as the big house ), and those in which

714-452: A noun, but by the determiner (which may be null), and they are thus called determiner phrases (DP) instead of noun phrases. (In some accounts that take this approach, the constituent lacking the determiner – that called N-bar above – may be referred to as a noun phrase.) This analysis of noun phrases is widely referred to as the DP hypothesis . It has been the preferred analysis of noun phrases in

765-498: A single word (such as a noun or pronoun) would not be referred to as a phrase. However, many modern schools of syntax – especially those that have been influenced by X-bar theory – make no such restriction. Here many single words are judged to be phrases based on a desire for theory-internal consistency. A phrase is deemed to be a word or a combination of words that appears in a set syntactic position, for instance in subject position or object position. On this understanding of phrases,

816-624: A surface area of about 950 square kilometres (370 sq mi), and into the Robert-Bourassa Reservoir of Hydro-Québec 's La Grande Complex . The remainder of the Eastmain River contains only about 10 percent of the volume of its former flow, and is now subject to freeze-up in winter (see photo). These changes have affected the Cree and Inuit peoples who live along the Eastmain River and James Bay coast, making it more difficult for them to travel in winter and reducing their access to fish in

867-484: Is A", where B is the second element of the compound and A the first. A bahuvrihi compound is one whose nature is expressed by neither of the words: thus a white-collar person is neither white nor a collar (the collar's colour is a metonym for socioeconomic status). Other English examples include barefoot . Copulative compounds ( dvandva in the Sanskrit tradition) are compounds with two semantic heads, for example in

918-454: Is a phrase that usually has a noun or pronoun as its head , and has the same grammatical functions as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically , and they may be the most frequently occurring phrase type. Noun phrases often function as verb subjects and objects , as predicative expressions , and as complements of prepositions . One NP can be embedded inside another NP; for instance, some of his constituents has as

969-661: Is actually morphological derivation . Some languages easily form compounds from what in other languages would be a multi-word expression. This can result in unusually long words, a phenomenon known in German (which is one such language) as Bandwurmwörter ("tapeworm words"). Compounding extends beyond spoken languages to include Sign languages as well, where compounds are also created by combining two or more sign stems. So-called " classical compounds " are compounds derived from classical Latin or ancient Greek roots . Compound formation rules vary widely across language types. In

1020-405: Is another type of verb–noun (or noun–verb) compound, in which an argument of the verb is incorporated into the verb, which is then usually turned into a gerund , such as breastfeeding , finger-pointing , etc. The noun is often an instrumental complement. From these gerunds new verbs can be made: (a mother) breastfeeds (a child) and from them new compounds mother-child breastfeeding , etc. In

1071-450: Is illustrated in the examples below. A string of words that can be replaced by a single pronoun without rendering the sentence grammatically unacceptable is a noun phrase. As to whether the string must contain at least two words, see the following section. Traditionally, a phrase is understood to contain two or more words . The traditional progression in the size of syntactic units is word < phrase < clause , and in this approach

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1122-401: Is more important than generosity . This same conception can be found in subsequent grammars, such as 1878's A Tamil Grammar or 1882's Murby's English grammar and analysis , where the conception of an X phrase is a phrase that can stand in for X. By 1912, the concept of a noun phrase as being based around a noun can be found, for example, "an adverbial noun phrases is a group of words of which

1173-589: Is the longest word in Finnish, but evidence of its actual use is scant and anecdotal at best. Compounds can be rather long when translating technical documents from English to some other language, since the lengths of the words are theoretically unlimited, especially in chemical terminology. For example, when translating an English technical document to Swedish, the term "Motion estimation search range settings" can be directly translated to rörelse­uppskattnings­sökintervalls­inställningar , though in reality,

1224-469: The minimalist program from its start (since the early 1990s), though the arguments in its favor tend to be theory-internal. By taking the determiner, a function word, to be head over the noun, a structure is established that is analogous to the structure of the finite clause , with a complementizer . Apart from the minimalist program, however, the DP hypothesis is rejected by most other modern theories of syntax and grammar, in part because these theories lack

1275-792: The Australian Aboriginal language Jingulu , a Pama–Nyungan language , it is claimed that all verbs are V+N compounds, such as "do a sleep", or "run a dive", and the language has only three basic verbs: do , make , and run . A special kind of compounding is incorporation , of which noun incorporation into a verbal root (as in English backstabbing , breastfeed , etc.) is most prevalent (see below). Verb–verb compounds are sequences of more than one verb acting together to determine clause structure. They have two types: trɔ turn dzo leave trɔ dzo turn leave "turn and leave" जाकर jā-kar go- CONJ . PTCP Noun phrase A noun phrase – or NP or nominal (phrase) –

1326-516: The Danube Steam Shipping"), but there is no evidence that this association ever actually existed. In Finnish, although there is theoretically no limit to the length of compound words, words consisting of more than three components are rare. Internet folklore sometimes suggests that lentokone­suihkuturbiinimoottori­apumekaanikko­aliupseerioppilas (airplane jet turbine engine auxiliary mechanic non-commissioned officer student)

1377-598: The Eastmain was a centre of the Hudson's Bay Company fur trade. Charles Bayly reached it from Rupert House in the 1670s. After Rupert House was destroyed in 1686, the area was visited by a ship from York Factory . In 1723 to 1724, Joseph Myatt of the Hudson's Bay Company built a post. This article related to a river in Quebec , Canada is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Compound word In linguistics ,

1428-516: The English compound doghouse , where house is the head and dog is the modifier, is understood as a house intended for a dog. Endocentric compounds tend to be of the same part of speech (word class) as their head, as in the case of doghouse . An exocentric compound ( bahuvrihi in the Sanskrit tradition) is a hyponym of some unexpressed semantic category (such as a person, plant, or animal): none (neither) of its components can be perceived as

1479-409: The compound are marked, e.g. ʕabd-u servant- NOM l-lāh-i DEF -god- GEN ʕabd-u l-lāh-i servant-NOM DEF-god-GEN "servant of-the-god: the servant of God" Agglutinative languages tend to create very long words with derivational morphemes. Compounds may or may not require the use of derivational morphemes also. In German , extremely extendable compound words can be found in

1530-510: The compound may be similar to or different from the meaning of its components in isolation. The component stems of a compound may be of the same part of speech —as in the case of the English word footpath , composed of the two nouns foot and path —or they may belong to different parts of speech, as in the case of the English word blackbird , composed of the adjective black and the noun bird . With very few exceptions, English compound words are stressed on their first component stem. As

1581-403: The determiner is lacking (such as big house ). The situation is complicated by the fact that in some contexts a noun phrase may nonetheless be used without a determiner (as in I like big houses ); in this case the phrase may be described as having a "null determiner". (Situations in which this is possible depend on the rules of the language in question; for English, see English articles .) In

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1632-470: The determiner. An early conception of the noun phrase can be found in First work in English by Alexander Murison . In this conception a noun phrase is "the infinitive of the verb" (p. 146), which may appear "in any position in the sentence where a noun may appear". For example, to be just is more important than to be generous has two underlined infinitives which may be replaced by nouns, as in justice

1683-569: The discussion of a regulation on tendering of Danube steamboat shipping company captain hats") etc. According to several editions of the Guinness Book of World Records , the longest published German word has 79 letters and is Donau­dampfschiffahrts­elektrizitäten­hauptbetriebswerkbau­unterbeamten­gesellschaft ("Association for Subordinate Officials of the Main Electric[ity] Maintenance Building of

1734-605: The head is a pronoun rather than a noun, or when elements are linked with a coordinating conjunction such as and , or , but . For more information about the structure of noun phrases in English, see English grammar § Phrases . Noun phrases typically bear argument functions. That is, the syntactic functions that they fulfill are those of the arguments of the main clause predicate , particularly those of subject , object and predicative expression . They also function as arguments in such constructs as participial phrases and prepositional phrases . For example: Sometimes

1785-489: The head), the Romance languages are usually right-branching. English compound nouns can be spaced, hyphenated, or solid, and they sometimes change orthographically in that direction over time, reflecting a semantic identity that evolves from a mere collocation to something stronger in its solidification. This theme has been summarized in usage guides under the aphorism that "compound nouns tend to solidify as they age"; thus

1836-400: The heavier ones as post-dependents (following their head). The second tree assumes the DP hypothesis, namely that determiners serve as phrase heads, rather than nouns. The determiner the is now depicted as the head of the entire phrase, thus making the phrase a determiner phrase. There is still a noun phrase present ( old picture of Fred that I found in the drawer ) but this phrase is below

1887-490: The heavier units – phrases and clauses – generally follow it. This is part of a strong tendency in English to place heavier constituents to the right, making English more of a head-initial language. Head-final languages (e.g. Japanese and Turkish ) are more likely to place all modifiers before the head noun. Other languages, such as French , often place even single-word adjectives after the noun. Noun phrases can take different forms than that described above, for example when

1938-574: The hyphenated styling is used less now than it was in centuries past. In French , compound nouns are often formed by left-hand heads with prepositional components inserted before the modifier, as in chemin-de-fer 'railway', lit. 'road of iron', and moulin à vent 'windmill', lit. 'mill (that works)-by-means-of wind'. In Turkish , one way of forming compound nouns is as follows: yeldeğirmeni 'windmill' ( yel : wind, değirmen-i : mill-possessive); demiryolu 'railway' ( demir : iron, yol-u : road-possessive). Occasionally, two synonymous nouns can form

1989-454: The joining of the words or signs is orthographically represented with a hyphen, the result is a hyphenated compound (e.g., must-have , hunter-gatherer) . If they are joined without an intervening space, it is a closed compound (e.g., footpath , blackbird ). If they are joined with a space (e.g. school bus, high school, lowest common denominator ), then the result – at least in English – may be an open compound . The meaning of

2040-774: The language of chemical compounds, where, in the cases of biochemistry and polymers, they can be practically unlimited in length, mostly because the German rule suggests combining all noun adjuncts with the noun as the last stem. German examples include Farb­fernsehgerät (color television set), Funk­fernbedienung (radio remote control), and the often quoted jocular word Donau­dampfschifffahrts­gesellschafts­kapitänsmütze (originally only two Fs, Danube-Steamboat-Shipping Company captain['s] hat), which can of course be made even longer and even more absurd, e.g. Donau­dampfschifffahrts­gesellschafts­kapitänsmützen­reinigungs­ausschreibungs­verordnungs­diskussionsanfang ("beginning of

2091-557: The lexeme familia (family). Conversely, in the Hebrew language compound, the word בֵּית סֵפֶר bet sefer (school), it is the head that is modified: the compound literally means "house-of book", with בַּיִת bayit (house) having entered the construct state to become בֵּית bet (house-of). This latter pattern is common throughout the Semitic languages , though in some it is combined with an explicit genitive case, so that both parts of

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2142-409: The nouns and pronouns in bold in the following sentences are noun phrases (as well as nouns or pronouns): The words in bold are called phrases since they appear in the syntactic positions where multiple-word phrases (i.e. traditional phrases) can appear. This practice takes the constellation to be primitive rather than the words themselves. The word he , for instance, functions as a pronoun, but within

2193-541: The original X-bar theory , the two respective types of entity are called noun phrase (NP) and N-bar ( N , N ′ ). Thus in the sentence Here is the big house , both house and big house are N-bars, while the big house is a noun phrase. In the sentence I like big houses , both houses and big houses are N-bars, but big houses also functions as a noun phrase (in this case without an explicit determiner). In some modern theories of syntax, however, what are called "noun phrases" above are no longer considered to be headed by

2244-513: The plural (but in many cases they have been reanalyzed as plural forms, and a singular form has appeared). French and Italian have these same compounds with the noun in the singular form: Italian grattacielo 'skyscraper', French grille-pain 'toaster' (lit. 'toast bread'). This construction exists in English, generally with the verb and noun both in uninflected form: examples are spoilsport , killjoy , breakfast , cutthroat , pickpocket , dreadnought , and know-nothing . Also common in English

2295-690: The possessive marker li-/la ‘for/of’ when the first element is preceded by a cardinal number . A type of compound that is fairly common in the Indo-European languages is formed of a verb and its object, and in effect transforms a simple verbal clause into a noun. In Spanish , for example, such compounds consist of a verb conjugated for the second person singular imperative followed by a noun (singular or plural): e.g., rascacielos (modelled on "skyscraper", lit. 'scratch skies'), sacacorchos 'corkscrew' (lit. 'pull corks'), guardarropa 'wardrobe' (lit. 'store clothes'). These compounds are formally invariable in

2346-415: The previous section). Below are some possible trees for the two noun phrases the big house and big houses (as in the sentences Here is the big house and I like big houses ). 1. Phrase-structure trees, first using the original X-bar theory, then using the current DP approach: 2. Dependency trees, first using the traditional NP approach, then using the DP approach: The following trees represent

2397-511: The relevant functional categories. Dependency grammars, for instance, almost all assume the traditional NP analysis of noun phrases. For illustrations of different analyses of noun phrases depending on whether the DP hypothesis is rejected or accepted, see the next section. The representation of noun phrases using parse trees depends on the basic approach to syntactic structure adopted. The layered trees of many phrase structure grammars grant noun phrases an intricate structure that acknowledges

2448-635: The river. In 2005, a further hydroelectric project on the upper Eastmain River was under construction. The project was part of the original hydroelectric project provided for by the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement of 1975. The Eastmain Reservoir will eventually have a surface area of about 600 square kilometres (230 sq mi), and the Eastmain-1 power plant will generate a maximum of 900 MW. The mouth of

2499-529: The sentence it also functions as a noun phrase. The phrase structure grammars of the Chomskyan tradition ( government and binding theory and the minimalist program ) are primary examples of theories that apply this understanding of phrases. Other grammars such as dependency grammars are likely to reject this approach to phrases, since they take the words themselves to be primitive. For them, phrases must contain two or more words. A typical noun phrase consists of

2550-583: The spot and used as compound nouns in English too. For example, German Donau­dampfschifffahrts­gesellschafts­kapitän would be written in English as "Danube steamship transport company captain" and not as "Danube­steamship­transportcompany­captain". The meaning of compounds may not always be transparent from their components, necessitating familiarity with usage and context. The addition of affix morphemes to words (such as suffixes or prefixes , as in employ → employment ) should not be confused with nominal composition, as this

2601-465: The word would most likely be divided in two: sökintervalls­inställningar för rörelse­uppskattning – "search range settings for motion estimation". A common semantic classification of compounds yields four types: An endocentric compound ( tatpuruṣa in the Sanskrit tradition) consists of a head , i.e. the categorical part that contains the basic meaning of the whole compound, and modifiers, which restrict this meaning. For example,

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