On 6/10/2015 9:37 PM, Philippe Verdy
wrote:
The French "pomme de terre" ("potato" in English,
French vulgar synonym : "patate") is a single lemma in
dictionaries, but is still 3 separate words (only the first one
takes the plural mark), it is not considered a "nom composé" (so
there's no hyphens).
Grevisse, Le bon usage, 11th edition, 1980, page 118, part 1
Elements of the language, chapter 7 The words, section 3 Formation
of new words, article 2, Composition, very first paragraph (179
overall):
---
By
composition, language creates new words, either by
combining simple words with existing words, or by preceding these
simple words with syllables that have no independent existence:
Chou-fleur,
gendarme, pomme de terre, contredire, désunir, paratonnerre.
A word, despite being formed of graphically independent
elements, is composed as soon at it brings to mind, not
the distinct images of each of the words from which it is
composed, but a single image. Thus the composites hôtel
de ville, pomme de terre, arc de triomphe each remind of a
unique image, and not of the distinct images of hôtel and
of ville, of pomme and of terre, of arc
and of triomphe.
---
(hôtel de ville = city hall;
pomme = apple,
de
= of,
terre = earth)
Paragraph 181, 3rd remark:
---
Sometimes the elements composing [the word] are welded in a simple
word:
Bonheur, contredire, entracte; sometimes they
are connected by an hyphen:
chou-fleur, coffre-fort;
sometimes they stay independent graphically:
Moyen âge, pomme de
terre.
---
(“Le Grévisse” as we affectionately call it, or
Le bon usage
/ French Grammar with remarks on today’s french language, is a
must-have for the student of French. It is encyclopedic in its
depth, and has tons of examples and counter-examples. Interestingly,
the French wikipedia page says “a descriptive grammar of French”,
while the English wikipedia page says “a prescriptive grammar”; it’s
both!)
I agree that we don’t need a new space coded character. I was just
pointing out that some of the arguments for a new coded character
for the apostrophe in
don’t apply equally well to the spaces
in the word
pomme de terre.
Eric.
Received on Fri Jun 12 2015 - 22:13:03 CDT