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) _______________________________________________ Aspell-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/aspell-devel
