[lojban] Re: Question to native English speakers

["Joel Shellman" <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

On 9/24/07, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
> I doubt that's the reason. I think for any pair of nouns,
> "another noun1 noun2" can only be read as "another (noun1 noun2)".

"can only be read"? No, not in American English anyway--anything goes here.

The original poster did not ask what is grammatically correct, but
rather, how a native English speaker would interpret. Also,
considering that "native English speaker" covers people from many
nations across the globe, it's quite likely to get very different
perspectives.

After googling, I found one non-authoritive account stating that
adj-noun-noun combos should always be considered adj (noun noun)
unless there is a hyphen between the first two words.

Regardless of what is proper grammar, though, and considering that
most people don't know it, and that most high school Japanese students
know more about the rules of English grammar than most American
college students (ok, irrelevant but a curious piece of trivia), I
would say that adj-noun-noun combos will be intended and interpreted
either way depending on the context, intonation, etc. in casual
conversation and writing.


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