Editing Compound (linguistics) (section)

====Noun–noun compounds====
All natural languages have compound nouns. The positioning of the words (i.e. the most common order of constituents in phrases where nouns are modified by adjectives, by possessors, by other nouns, etc.) varies according to the language. While Germanic languages, for example, are left-branching when it comes to noun phrases (the modifiers come before the head), the Romance languages are usually right-branching.

[[English compound#Compound nouns|English compound nouns]] can be spaced, hyphenated, or solid, and they sometimes change orthographically in that direction over time, reflecting a [[semantics|semantic]] identity that evolves from a mere [[collocation]] to something stronger in its solidification. This theme has been summarized in [[usage]] guides under the aphorism that "compound nouns tend to solidify as they age"; thus a compound noun such as ''[[wikt:place name|place name]]'' begins as spaced in most attestations and then becomes hyphenated as ''[[wikt:place-name|place-name]]'' and eventually solid as ''[[wikt:placename|placename]]'', or the spaced compound noun ''[[wikt:file name|file name]]'' directly becomes solid as ''[[wikt:filename|filename]]'' without being hyphenated.
{| class="wikitable"
|+Types of English compound nouns
!Type
!Description
!Examples
|-
|Spaced (or open)
|The words are not visibly connected in writing.
|''place name'', ''ice cream''
|-
|Hyphenated
|A [[hyphen]] is used to join the words.
|''place-name'', ''hunter-gatherer''
|-
|Solid (or closed)
|When written, there is no space or intervening punctuation.
|''placename'', ''scarecrow''
|}
German, a fellow [[West Germanic languages|West Germanic language]], has [[German orthography|a somewhat different orthography]], whereby compound nouns are virtually always required to be solid or at least hyphenated; even the hyphenated styling is used less now than it was in centuries past.

In [[French language|French]], compound nouns are often formed by left-hand heads with prepositional components inserted before the modifier, as in ''chemin-de-fer'' 'railway', lit. 'road of iron', and ''moulin à vent'' 'windmill', lit. 'mill (that works)-by-means-of wind'.

In [[Turkish language|Turkish]], one way of forming compound nouns is as follows: ''yeldeğirmeni'' 'windmill' (''yel'': wind, ''değirmen-i'': mill-possessive); ''demiryolu'' 'railway' (''demir'': iron, ''yol-u'': road-possessive).

Occasionally, two synonymous nouns can form a compound noun, resulting in a [[pleonasm]]. One example is the English word ''[[wikt:pathway|pathway]]''.

In [[Arabic]], there are two distinct criteria unique to Arabic, or potentially [[Semitic languages]] in general. The initial criterion involves whether the [[possessive]] marker li-/la ‘for/of’ appears or is absent when the first element is definite. The second criterion deals with the appearance/absence of the possessive marker li-/la ‘for/of’ when the first element is preceded by a [[cardinal number]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Altakhaineh |first=Abdel Rahman Mitib |date=2018-02-27 |title=Identifying N+N compounding in Modern Standard Arabic and Jordanian Arabic |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/stul.12087 |journal=Studia Linguistica |language=en |volume=73 |issue=1 |pages=1–36 |doi=10.1111/stul.12087 |issn=0039-3193|url-access=subscription }}</ref>