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Re: [aspell-devel] Hyphenation and compound words
From: |
Christoph Hintermüller |
Subject: |
Re: [aspell-devel] Hyphenation and compound words |
Date: |
Fri, 16 Apr 2004 18:17:09 +0200 |
User-agent: |
KMail/1.4.3 |
Hi
Am Sonntag, 11. April 2004 22:43 schrieb Lars Aronsson:
> Maybe the key to compund words is in the hyphen.
>
> Languages with many compound words also frequently use a special form
> of hyphenation. In English, one example of this case would be "wooden
> and brick buildings", which in German is written "Holz- und
> Backsteingebäude". Note that this hyphen has nothing to do with line
> breaks. This kind of hyphen most often appears before "and" or "or",
> or (in lists) before the comma (Holz-, Backstein- und Stahlgebäude).
> (There are a few more cases, e.g. "wooden rather than brick
> buildings", where "rather than" takes the place of "and".)
>
> In compound words where a glue letter is used, the glue letter appears
> before the hyphen. In compound words where a special form of the
> first word is used, this special form appears before the hyphen even
> though it would not be allowed as a word by it self.
>
> In Swedish, a typicaly nound (such as "girl") has eight different
> forms:
>
> flicka - singular, nominative, indefinite = girl
> flickan - singular, nominative, definite = the girl
> flickas - singular, genitive, indefinite = girl's
> flickans - singular, genitive, definite = the girl's
> flickor - plural, nominative, indefinite = girls
> flickorna - plural, nominative, definite = the girls
> flickors - plural, genitive, indefinie = girls'
> flickornas - plural, genitive, definite = the girls'
>
> Added to this, however, is the form used in compound words: flick-
> e.g. flick-cykel (girl's bicycle), flick-aktig (girl-ish). A shop can
> advertise new models of "flick- och pojkcyklar" (girls' and boys'
> bicycles).
>
> To cover Swedish (and Danish and Norwegian, and probably German), it
> would be sufficient to distinguish the hyphenated form (flick-) as a
> legal word of its own and the only legal prefix for compound words.
All the above definitly does not hold for german
eg.
Dampfschiff ->steam engine boat
Dampf -> steam
Schiff -> ship
Both words Dampf and Schiff are regular and valid german words. A speciallity
for german is that new compund Nouns and other words may be created (
invented if not allready existing ) by simply combining two other words.
There is no such global gramtical rule for glue letters special forms and so.
in german. I do not rember any at least not in austrian variant, slangs and
dialects.
cu
Christoph (JEH)