Category talk:German verb-noun compounds

@Mnemosientje, Lingo Bingo Dingo: Hello. Does Dutch have this type of compounds? If yes, are they as rare as in German? --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 20:18, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

@Per utramque cavernam Yes, they exist, but I wouldn't call them rare at all. I'd guess that they are the second-most common type of compound, after noun-noun compounds. Examples are breekpunt ("breaking point"), brekebeen ("clumsy person"), drinkbeker ("cup used for drinking"), hakmes ("chopping knife, shopper"), kieskring ("administrative region in elections"), schaafwond ("abrasion", due to scraping, not a wound from a plane or grater), schietschijf ("target at which one shoots"), trouwlocatie ("wedding location"), vaarboom ("punting pole"), vliegveld ("airfield, airstrip"), zinkboot ("boat that is deliberately sunk"). It is also very productive: lokoma ("(apparently) old woman used by law enforcement to bait petty thieves"), lokpuber ("adolescent used by law enforcement to bait groomers") ragbak ("ramshackle car"), sjoemelsoftware ("software used to game tests"), neukseks ("sexual activity that involves actual intercourse"), verslikvis (more a proper noun, "fish on which someone choked") are all relatively recent, completely unexhaustive examples. Analysing them can sometimes be complicated because verbal stems may be identical to nouns. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 10:41, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

@Lingo Bingo Dingo: This makes me realise that the category name is unfortunately ambiguous; the examples you've given me (or at least some of them) belong to a type of compounds (endocentric) different from the one I was referring to (exocentric). A breekpunt is a kind of punt, a hakmes a kind of mes, a schaafwond a kind of wond, a zinkboot a kind of boat, a vliegveld a kind of veld, etc. These are of course extremely common, in Dutch as well as in German.

Contrast that with pickpocket (which isn't a kind of pocket), scarecrow (which isn't a kind of crow), sawbones, lave-vaisselle, sèche-cheveux, etc. We might call these "syntactic compounds": the second part is the direct object of the first part.

Maybe brekebeen is the right kind, though: it's not a kind of been, but "someone who breaks his leg", right? @Mnemosientje --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 11:48, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

@Per utramque cavernam Oh, right. Exocentric verb-noun compounds are vastly less common, but they exist. Brekebeen is one, another one is draaikont ("restless person", "U-turner"). Vechtjas ("brawler") could also be of this type, but it is not syntactic. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 12:05, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

I'd support renaming the category by the way. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 12:08, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Yeah I'm also getting a bit caught up on terminology here. There's definitely a lot of compound nouns consisting of a verb + noun, but specifically exocentric ones are a bit more elusive. Our definition at exocentric suggests that exocentric compounds aren't necessarily verb+noun either, it can be any combination of parts of speech that yields a new part of speech? In which case durfal (verb+determiner?) and deugniet (verb+adverb) both would count, I think?. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 12:16, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

@Mnemosientje, Lingo Bingo Dingo: I agree that it will have to be renamed at some point, but I'm a bit reluctant to do that now: I've only just got through the tedious task of moving +200 entries from CAT:Spanish verb plus plural noun compounds to CAT:Spanish verb–noun compounds. Besides, it might well be subject to further renaming, should we realise we'd missed something.

The problem is that I don't have a big picture of composition. I'm focusing on some specific type of compounds I find interesting, and am not working very systematically; hence I'm rather short-sighted in my naming of these cats.

That said, I think there are at least three variables to take into account: POS of the components, POS of the compound, exocentricity/endocentricity. These could theoretically be combined in any given way. Of course, many combinations won't work for a given language (or even for any language... I struggle to see what an "exocentric adverb+preposition compound verb" might be; but hey, you never know); but if we want to have a common scheme for all languages, we can't just skip one variable.

To Mnemosientje: I think exocentricity is unrelated to the POS of the compounds, yes; what matters is the semantics. Category:English bahuvrihi compounds are exocentric adjective+noun or noun+noun noun compounds, for example: a "redneck"/"rooinek" isn't a kind of neck/nek, but "someone with a red/rooi neck/nek". --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 23:07, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

@Mnemosientje Yes, durfal, weetal, vraagal, bedilal (it me), etc. are all exocentric.

@Per utramque cavernam Still, the current name is rather misleading, especially for languages with lots of endocentric verb-noun compounds. Renaming the category soon would still be a good idea. Besides, I think Habenichts and Taugenichts shouldn't be in this category at all, they look like compounds of haben (“to have”, verb) or taugen (“to be good/appropriate”, verb) + nichts (“nothing”, pronoun). Nichts (noun) has a slightly different sense. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 13:09, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

@Mnemosientje, Lingo Bingo Dingo: I've renamed the cats for Germanic languages, but have kept the Romance cats as is, i.e. "Verb–noun compounds" as a subcat of "exocentric compounds": I don't think endocentric verb–noun compounds exist in Romance, so there shouldn't be any risk of ambiguity (fingers crossed). In other words, CAT:Dutch exocentric verb–noun compounds = CAT:French verb–noun compounds from a typological POV.

I've put durfal, vraagal, bedilal and deugniet in CAT:Dutch exocentric compounds, and Habenichts, Taugenichts in CAT:German exocentric compounds for now; they could stay there, or we could create another subcat and specify the POS.

Please have a look at the setup, and tell me if it makes sense. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 12:15, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

@Per utramque cavernam Looks good to me. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 13:24, 20 February 2018 (UTC)