Syntax random

[Richard W]

To manhandle goes back to the 15th century according to Onions. However man is an instrument rather than an object, so you may not want to count it. The original notion seems to be to move by human muscle, perhaps as opposed to animal muscle. Onions gives the earliest meaning as "to wield". The verb maintain goes back to the 13th century, but is a loanword, with the first element apparently being Latin manus "hand", so even less relevant.

[Richard W]

(We can also contrast these with verb-particle compounds, which are lexical entries but resist word status. They are still separable: "I could eat that plate of cookies right up." Logically, we could fully compound and transfer the inflection to the particle— "I eatupped the cookies"— but we just don't. Note that we can do it if neither component is a verb: "I one-upped my brother.")

Up is a verb. as in upping the ante.

Interesting… I hadn’t noticed the different order. I might conjecture that it comes from the influence of prepositions: I [ate up] the plate of cookies can easily be reanalysed as I ate [up the plate of cookies].

No it can't. Compare it to He drank the concoction down. It's up to the mouth and down the gullet - up and down have perfective meanings; they're adverbs, not prepositions, in these sentences.

[zompist]

Calling it noun incorporation already assumes that it's one word!

Huh? No it doesn’t! There’s quite a few isolating languages with noun incorporation. (Niuean comes to mind; pity I can’t find a reference grammar to figure out whether its NI is within a single word or spans multiple words.)

I know nothing about Niuean, but this strikes me as stretching the definition of either "isolating" or "noun incorporation"!

A language can be non-inflecting and yet make heavy use of compounds-- e.g. Mandarin. But its compounds are words.

That phonological criterion at least is debatable: it’s easy to apply with ice-skate, but I’d argue that e.g. mountain-climb has two stresses.

Is that really a full verb for you? "I mountain-climbed for a whole week"?

V-O-ing compounds, acting as a noun, like "mountain climbing", are far more common and productive, but I don't think they're examples of NI. Though they can be stepping stones to verbs!

Note that I said "primary stress". One mark of a compound in English is change in stress-- compare "There's a black bird in the window" with "There's a blackbird in the window."

[zompist]

English has had to handfast since the 14th century, but before that we only have the past participle going back to the 12th century and presumed to be borrowed from Old Norse handfesta.

Thanks, that's quite interesting! That's older than I'd have guessed.

It also brings to mind "breakfast", which is a rare example of a VO compound that's a verb. I found an article on VO compounds, but they're almost all nouns: kickass, cutthroat, killjoy, etc. "Breakfast" started as a noun too, I think, but is one of the few of these that have been verbed.

[bradrn]

(We can also contrast these with verb-particle compounds, which are lexical entries but resist word status. They are still separable: "I could eat that plate of cookies right up." Logically, we could fully compound and transfer the inflection to the particle— "I eatupped the cookies"— but we just don't. Note that we can do it if neither component is a verb: "I one-upped my brother.")

Up is a verb. as in upping the ante.

But only marginally… Up is more usually a preposition, or at least a directional particle: You climbed up the mountain, I’ll go up the passageway, John drove up to Newcastle yesterday. In fact, I can’t think of any time I’d use the verb to up outside an idiomatic expression (I upped my game, she one-upped him).

Interesting… I hadn’t noticed the different order. I might conjecture that it comes from the influence of prepositions: I [ate up] the plate of cookies can easily be reanalysed as I ate [up the plate of cookies].

No it can't. Compare it to He drank the concoction down. It's up to the mouth and down the gullet - up and down have perfective meanings; they're adverbs, not prepositions, in these sentences.

I must admit, I don’t follow what your reasoning here at all. ‘Up to the mouth and down the gullet’ seems a perfectly logical use of directional particles! (Assuming you’re not standing on your head, of course.) That’s not to say that direction is their only use, of course: directionals often end up with a wide range of idiomatic meanings, very commonly including perfectivity. (End up in the previous sentence being a case in point.) But that doesn’t mean they’re not directionals any more!

Calling it noun incorporation already assumes that it's one word!

Huh? No it doesn’t! There’s quite a few isolating languages with noun incorporation. (Niuean comes to mind; pity I can’t find a reference grammar to figure out whether its NI is within a single word or spans multiple words.)

I know nothing about Niuean, but this strikes me as stretching the definition of either "isolating" or "noun incorporation"!

It may well be stretching the definition a bit (the construction is most often termed ‘pseudo noun incorporation’), since Niuean allows incorporation of whole phrases rather than just single nouns, and disallows stranding; but in all other respects it seems to behave just like NI in other languages. (See e.g. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/do ... 1&type=pdf for a good introduction.)

A language can be non-inflecting and yet make heavy use of compounds-- e.g. Mandarin. But its compounds are words.

That phonological criterion at least is debatable: it’s easy to apply with ice-skate, but I’d argue that e.g. mountain-climb has two stresses.

Is that really a full verb for you? "I mountain-climbed for a whole week"?

Maybe not grammatically, but it certainly is phonologically: [ɑ͡iˈmæ͡ʉntˢənˈk͡ʎ̥ɑ͡imtfə̆ɻʷəˈhowˈwiːkʰ].

V-O-ing compounds, acting as a noun, like "mountain climbing", are far more common and productive, but I don't think they're examples of NI. Though they can be stepping stones to verbs!

Yep, I agree that those aren’t really NI. (Perhaps we could label them ‘derivational NI’, since they change word class?)

It also brings to mind "breakfast", which is a rare example of a VO compound that's a verb. I found an article on VO compounds, but they're almost all nouns: kickass, cutthroat, killjoy, etc. "Breakfast" started as a noun too, I think, but is one of the few of these that have been verbed.

That’s quite different to what I expected… I thought the verb was the original form, with the noun being an innovation. (‘To breakfast’ has always sounded quite archaic to me.)

[Richard W]

(We can also contrast these with verb-particle compounds, which are lexical entries but resist word status. They are still separable: "I could eat that plate of cookies right up." Logically, we could fully compound and transfer the inflection to the particle— "I eatupped the cookies"— but we just don't. Note that we can do it if neither component is a verb: "I one-upped my brother.")

Up is a verb. as in upping the ante.

But only marginally… Up is more usually a preposition, or at least a directional particle: You climbed up the mountain, I’ll go up the passageway, John drove up to Newcastle yesterday. In fact, I can’t think of any time I’d use the verb to up outside an idiomatic expression (I upped my game, she one-upped him).

Upping prices and downing food don't feel particularly idiomatic to me

Interesting… I hadn’t noticed the different order. I might conjecture that it comes from the influence of prepositions: I [ate up] the plate of cookies can easily be reanalysed as I ate [up the plate of cookies].

No it can't. Compare it to He drank the concoction down. It's up to the mouth and down the gullet - up and down have perfective meanings; they're adverbs, not prepositions, in these sentences.

I must admit, I don’t follow what your reasoning here at all. ‘Up to the mouth and down the gullet’ seems a perfectly logical use of directional particles! (Assuming you’re not standing on your head, of course.) That’s not to say that direction is their only use, of course: directionals often end up with a wide range of idiomatic meanings, very commonly including perfectivity. (End up in the previous sentence being a case in point.) But that doesn’t mean they’re not directionals any more!

The point is that up the plate of cookies is not a coherent constituent; it's merely what's left if you remove the verb. Or are you playing meaningless formal games? I don't think that is your aim.

[Richard W]

Is that really a full verb for you? "I mountain-climbed for a whole week"?

Maybe not grammatically, but it certainly is phonologically: [ɑ͡iˈmæ͡ʉntˢənˈk͡ʎ̥ɑ͡imtfə̆ɻʷəˈhowˈwiːkʰ].

But is it English? I don't accept it, and Zompist seems to have grave doubts. Is this a case of conlangs interfering with your L1?

[bradrn]

Up is a verb. as in upping the ante.

But only marginally… Up is more usually a preposition, or at least a directional particle: You climbed up the mountain, I’ll go up the passageway, John drove up to Newcastle yesterday. In fact, I can’t think of any time I’d use the verb to up outside an idiomatic expression (I upped my game, she one-upped him).

Upping prices and downing food don't feel particularly idiomatic to me

But are there any other objects which can occur with to up or to down? Unless I’m forgetting something (a real possibility), there are very few things other than prices and food which can be upped or downed, suggesting idiomaticity.

No it can't. Compare it to He drank the concoction down. It's up to the mouth and down the gullet - up and down have perfective meanings; they're adverbs, not prepositions, in these sentences.

I must admit, I don’t follow what your reasoning here at all. ‘Up to the mouth and down the gullet’ seems a perfectly logical use of directional particles! (Assuming you’re not standing on your head, of course.) That’s not to say that direction is their only use, of course: directionals often end up with a wide range of idiomatic meanings, very commonly including perfectivity. (End up in the previous sentence being a case in point.) But that doesn’t mean they’re not directionals any more!

The point is that up the plate of cookies is not a coherent constituent; it's merely what's left if you remove the verb. Or are you playing meaningless formal games? I don't think that is your aim.

Well, strictly speaking I am playing meaningless formal games, since that’s what analogy and reanalysis is all about! My point is that, if particle verbs worked the same as other English complex predicates, we would get the modifier-modified order *I up ate the plate of cookies — yet that’s not what we observe. Why? I suggest that, by analogy to English prepositional phrases, up ‘wants’ to be before an NP; it doesn’t matter that up the plate of cookies isn’t a constituent, because analogy only involves surface structure, and on the surface, the modified-modifier order allows up to be next to the cookies where it ‘wants’ to be.

(One huge flaw with this argument: It doesn’t explain sentences like I ate the plate of cookies up. I take this as a sign that my attempt at an explanation through analogy is wrong, or at least incomplete. But I would still be interested to hear an explanation for the differing word orders in mountain climb vs eat up!)

Is that really a full verb for you? "I mountain-climbed for a whole week"?

Maybe not grammatically, but it certainly is phonologically: [ɑ͡iˈmæ͡ʉntˢənˈk͡ʎ̥ɑ͡imtfə̆ɻʷəˈhowˈwiːkʰ].

But is it English? I don't accept it, and Zompist seems to have grave doubts. Is this a case of conlangs interfering with your L1?

Huh? Yes, of course this is English! As best as I can tell, this is exactly how I say it. I can attach a recording if you really want the extra confirmation.

[zompist]

Is that really a full verb for you? "I mountain-climbed for a whole week"?

Maybe not grammatically, but it certainly is phonologically: [ɑ͡iˈmæ͡ʉntˢənˈk͡ʎ̥ɑ͡imtfə̆ɻʷəˈhowˈwiːkʰ].

But is it English? I don't accept it, and Zompist seems to have grave doubts. Is this a case of conlangs interfering with your L1?

Just to be clear... it's marginal for me, and it certainly doesn't have the stress Brad gives it. If it's a verb, it gets initial stress like other compounds.

I just googled "I mountain climbed", and there are a fair number of results, so I wouldn't call it ungrammatical.

[Kuchigakatai]

Note that I said "primary stress". One mark of a compound in English is change in stress-- compare "There's a black bird in the window" with "There's a blackbird in the window."

Maybe bradrn just feels "mountain-climbed" has morphemes seems sufficiently long to give a primary stress to each, as in noun compounds like "the controversial Hán Unificátion" (WP), "the Pánama pápers", "the Southern Póverty Láw Cénter" (assuming it's [Southern] [Poverty Law Center], if it isn't, it's still [[Southern Poverty] Láw Cénter] anyway).

[Travis B.]

I asked my parents, and they thought that attorney generals and sergeant majors were more natural than attorneys general and sergeants major, while thinking that passersby was more natural than passerbys, and I am inclined to agree with them.

[zompist]

Note that I said "primary stress". One mark of a compound in English is change in stress-- compare "There's a black bird in the window" with "There's a blackbird in the window."

Maybe bradrn just feels "mountain-climbed" has morphemes seems sufficiently long to give a primary stress to each, as in noun compounds like "the controversial Hán Unificátion" (WP), "the Pánama pápers", "the Southern Póverty Láw Cénter" (assuming it's [Southern] [Poverty Law Center], if it isn't, it's still [[Southern Poverty] Láw Cénter] anyway).

And those aren't words.

Now, few things in linguistics are watertight, and that includes the morphology/syntax barrier. But, things do behave differently on either side of that fuzzy line. Phonological rules differ for words and phrases. Rules for putting things together are quite different. Things can be inserted, deleted, or moved around much more freely on the syntax side.

What does seem likely to me is that some of these NV constructions, especially nonce creations, are more syntactic than morphological. E.g. Brad's original example, "<company> online delivers to you". I don't think this has become one word "onlinedelivers", and therefore it consists of two words each fully stressed. Though we should of course be wary about orthographic evidence, I think the typographic progression from "online delivers" to "house-sitting" to "babysitting" reflects this transition from syntax to morphology.

[bradrn]

I asked my parents, and they thought that attorney generals and sergeant majors were more natural than attorneys general and sergeants major, while thinking that passersby was more natural than passerbys, and I am inclined to agree with them.

I agree with them as well.

Note that I said "primary stress". One mark of a compound in English is change in stress-- compare "There's a black bird in the window" with "There's a blackbird in the window."

Maybe bradrn just feels "mountain-climbed" has morphemes seems sufficiently long to give a primary stress to each, as in noun compounds like "the controversial Hán Unificátion" (WP), "the Pánama pápers", "the Southern Póverty Láw Cénter" (assuming it's [Southern] [Poverty Law Center], if it isn't, it's still [[Southern Poverty] Láw Cénter] anyway).

And those aren't words.

Now, few things in linguistics are watertight, and that includes the morphology/syntax barrier. But, things do behave differently on either side of that fuzzy line. Phonological rules differ for words and phrases. Rules for putting things together are quite different. Things can be inserted, deleted, or moved around much more freely on the syntax side.

What does seem likely to me is that some of these NV constructions, especially nonce creations, are more syntactic than morphological. E.g. Brad's original example, "<company> online delivers to you". I don't think this has become one word "onlinedelivers", and therefore it consists of two words each fully stressed. Though we should of course be wary about orthographic evidence, I think the typographic progression from "online delivers" to "house-sitting" to "babysitting" reflects this transition from syntax to morphology.

I think this is one of those cases where it’s best to distinguish phonological and grammatical words, as well as lexicalisation/idiomaticity. Are they phonological words? For me, they aren’t. Are they grammatical words? Possibly… you can’t break them up without changing the meaning. Are they lexicalised/idiomatic? Definitely: some of them are already non-compositional (‘Panama papers’ aren’t just papers from Panama).

[zompist]

And those aren't words.

Now, few things in linguistics are watertight, and that includes the morphology/syntax barrier. But, things do behave differently on either side of that fuzzy line. Phonological rules differ for words and phrases. Rules for putting things together are quite different. Things can be inserted, deleted, or moved around much more freely on the syntax side.

What does seem likely to me is that some of these NV constructions, especially nonce creations, are more syntactic than morphological. E.g. Brad's original example, "<company> online delivers to you". I don't think this has become one word "onlinedelivers", and therefore it consists of two words each fully stressed. Though we should of course be wary about orthographic evidence, I think the typographic progression from "online delivers" to "house-sitting" to "babysitting" reflects this transition from syntax to morphology.

I think this is one of those cases where it’s best to distinguish phonological and grammatical words, as well as lexicalisation/idiomaticity. Are they phonological words? For me, they aren’t. Are they grammatical words? Possibly… you can’t break them up without changing the meaning. Are they lexicalised/idiomatic? Definitely: some of them are already non-compositional (‘Panama papers’ aren’t just papers from Panama).

It's not quite clear what "they" refers to here. I was talking about NV compounds, but you're talking about NN compounds?

"Panama papers" is a lexeme. That's not a word, unless you want to maintain that all titles ("If on a winter's night a traveler", "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Linguistics", "General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party") and idioms ("kick the bucket") are words. They're fixed because that's how lexemes work.

There can be edge cases, but "Panama papers" doesn't strikes me as one. It's a very ordinary NP which has taken on a specific meaning. I don't see any advantage in obscuring the difference from actual derived words like "Panamanian".

[kodé]

I asked my parents, and they thought that attorney generals and sergeant majors were more natural than attorneys general and sergeants major, while thinking that passersby was more natural than passerbys, and I am inclined to agree with them.

I agree with them as well.

Maybe bradrn just feels "mountain-climbed" has morphemes seems sufficiently long to give a primary stress to each, as in noun compounds like "the controversial Hán Unificátion" (WP), "the Pánama pápers", "the Southern Póverty Láw Cénter" (assuming it's [Southern] [Poverty Law Center], if it isn't, it's still [[Southern Poverty] Láw Cénter] anyway).

And those aren't words.

Now, few things in linguistics are watertight, and that includes the morphology/syntax barrier. But, things do behave differently on either side of that fuzzy line. Phonological rules differ for words and phrases. Rules for putting things together are quite different. Things can be inserted, deleted, or moved around much more freely on the syntax side.

What does seem likely to me is that some of these NV constructions, especially nonce creations, are more syntactic than morphological. E.g. Brad's original example, "<company> online delivers to you". I don't think this has become one word "onlinedelivers", and therefore it consists of two words each fully stressed. Though we should of course be wary about orthographic evidence, I think the typographic progression from "online delivers" to "house-sitting" to "babysitting" reflects this transition from syntax to morphology.

I think this is one of those cases where it’s best to distinguish phonological and grammatical words, as well as lexicalisation/idiomaticity. Are they phonological words? For me, they aren’t. Are they grammatical words? Possibly… you can’t break them up without changing the meaning. Are they lexicalised/idiomatic? Definitely: some of them are already non-compositional (‘Panama papers’ aren’t just papers from Panama).

I’m not sure why not being able to break up the components of a lexicalized phrase without changing its meaning has any bearing on whether the construction is one or two grammatical words. Having an idiomatic or specialized meaning doesn’t have anything to do with wordhood; idioms are, after all, phrases, not single words. I don’t see how ‘Panama Papers’ isn’t just an [NP [N]] structure (well, depending on whether you take a proper noun like ‘Panama’ to be a full DP, but that’s beside the point).

[bradrn]

And those aren't words.

Now, few things in linguistics are watertight, and that includes the morphology/syntax barrier. But, things do behave differently on either side of that fuzzy line. Phonological rules differ for words and phrases. Rules for putting things together are quite different. Things can be inserted, deleted, or moved around much more freely on the syntax side.

What does seem likely to me is that some of these NV constructions, especially nonce creations, are more syntactic than morphological. E.g. Brad's original example, "<company> online delivers to you". I don't think this has become one word "onlinedelivers", and therefore it consists of two words each fully stressed. Though we should of course be wary about orthographic evidence, I think the typographic progression from "online delivers" to "house-sitting" to "babysitting" reflects this transition from syntax to morphology.

I think this is one of those cases where it’s best to distinguish phonological and grammatical words, as well as lexicalisation/idiomaticity. Are they phonological words? For me, they aren’t. Are they grammatical words? Possibly… you can’t break them up without changing the meaning. Are they lexicalised/idiomatic? Definitely: some of them are already non-compositional (‘Panama papers’ aren’t just papers from Panama).

It's not quite clear what "they" refers to here. I was talking about NV compounds, but you're talking about NN compounds?

“They” refers to ‘Han Unification’, ‘Panama papers’, ‘Poverty Law Center’… but also ‘mountain climbing’ etc., to which exactly the same logic applies.

"Panama papers" is a lexeme. That's not a word, unless you want to maintain that all titles ("If on a winter's night a traveler", "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Linguistics", "General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party") and idioms ("kick the bucket") are words. They're fixed because that's how lexemes work.

I stand by my comment above: those titles are not words phonologically, but at the same time they are both grammatical words and lexemes: ‘grammatical’ because they resist being split by other words, and ‘lexemes’ because they are conventionalised non-compositional phrases.

(I’m not so sure what you see as so unusual about this… I’m just applying the usual definition of those terms!)

There can be edge cases, but "Panama papers" doesn't strikes me as one. It's a very ordinary NP which has taken on a specific meaning. I don't see any advantage in obscuring the difference from actual derived words like "Panamanian".

But I never said there wasn’t a difference! Not only that, the difference is an extremely important one: ‘Panama papers’ is non-compositional, whereas ‘Panamanian’ is. (In that sense, you could say that ‘Panamanian’ is less lexicalised than ‘Panama papers’, though I appreciate that that sounds decidedly odd.)

I’m not sure why not being able to break up the components of a lexicalized phrase without changing its meaning has any bearing on whether the construction is one or two grammatical words. Having an idiomatic or specialized meaning doesn’t have anything to do with wordhood; idioms are, after all, phrases, not single words. I don’t see how ‘Panama Papers’ isn’t just an [NP [N]] structure (well, depending on whether you take a proper noun like ‘Panama’ to be a full DP, but that’s beside the point).

Um… because that’s the definition of grammatical words? e.g. from Julien’s Syntactic Heads and Word Formation:

Let us now summarize what we have found to be the characteristics of the grammatical word, … First, [a property] that distinguish[es] grammatical words from smaller elements [is] … the relative freedom of position within the phrase or the clause. If a string of one or more morphemes has [this property], it is minimally a grammatical word. Further, a grammatical word cannot be freely interrupted by other free forms. A string that can be interrupted by words or phrases is a phrase, unless there are very specific restrictions on the inserted material and the resulting complex behaves as a word on other relevant tests.

[kodé]

I must admit, I don’t follow what your reasoning here at all. ‘Up to the mouth and down the gullet’ seems a perfectly logical use of directional particles! (Assuming you’re not standing on your head, of course.) That’s not to say that direction is their only use, of course: directionals often end up with a wide range of idiomatic meanings, very commonly including perfectivity. (End up in the previous sentence being a case in point.) But that doesn’t mean they’re not directionals any more!

The point is that up the plate of cookies is not a coherent constituent; it's merely what's left if you remove the verb. Or are you playing meaningless formal games? I don't think that is your aim.

Well, strictly speaking I am playing meaningless formal games, since that’s what analogy and reanalysis is all about! My point is that, if particle verbs worked the same as other English complex predicates, we would get the modifier-modified order *I up ate the plate of cookies — yet that’s not what we observe. Why? I suggest that, by analogy to English prepositional phrases, up ‘wants’ to be before an NP; it doesn’t matter that up the plate of cookies isn’t a constituent, because analogy only involves surface structure, and on the surface, the modified-modifier order allows up to be next to the cookies where it ‘wants’ to be.

(One huge flaw with this argument: It doesn’t explain sentences like I ate the plate of cookies up. I take this as a sign that my attempt at an explanation through analogy is wrong, or at least incomplete. But I would still be interested to hear an explanation for the differing word orders in mountain climb vs eat up!)

In particle-verb constructions, it’s not clear to me that the verb is the head here and the particle its modifier, at least on a syntactic level. I could imagine an analysis similar to double object constructions (Larson 1988, I think, though I might be wrong) where a ditransitive verb has two heads, one for the goal and one for the theme (some people have done a similar analysis of verbs like “shelve,” decomposing it into “put on a shelf” with multiple heads). In that case, both the verb and the particle in “eat up” are heads, so they’re not in a modified-modifier relationship.

Maybe not grammatically, but it certainly is phonologically: [ɑ͡iˈmæ͡ʉntˢənˈk͡ʎ̥ɑ͡imtfə̆ɻʷəˈhowˈwiːkʰ].

But is it English? I don't accept it, and Zompist seems to have grave doubts. Is this a case of conlangs interfering with your L1?

Huh? Yes, of course this is English! As best as I can tell, this is exactly how I say it. I can attach a recording if you really want the extra confirmation.

This is grammatical to me, though with stress on the initial syllable /maun/. FWIW, “mountain climb” isn’t equivalent to “climb mountains” semantically (though they’re similar). Also, I can have an object: “She mountain climbed that huge pile of tires.” I’m not sure if this makes “mountain climb” a single grammatical word, but it’s clear to me that “mountain” here at most is a bare N, and doesn’t project to the NP level.

[kodé]

I’m not sure why not being able to break up the components of a lexicalized phrase without changing its meaning has any bearing on whether the construction is one or two grammatical words. Having an idiomatic or specialized meaning doesn’t have anything to do with wordhood; idioms are, after all, phrases, not single words. I don’t see how ‘Panama Papers’ isn’t just an [NP [N]] structure (well, depending on whether you take a proper noun like ‘Panama’ to be a full DP, but that’s beside the point).

Um… because that’s the definition of grammatical words? e.g. from Julien’s Syntactic Heads and Word Formation:

Let us now summarize what we have found to be the characteristics of the grammatical word, … First, [a property] that distinguish[es] grammatical words from smaller elements [is] … the relative freedom of position within the phrase or the clause. If a string of one or more morphemes has [this property], it is minimally a grammatical word. Further, a grammatical word cannot be freely interrupted by other free forms. A string that can be interrupted by words or phrases is a phrase, unless there are very specific restrictions on the inserted material and the resulting complex behaves as a word on other relevant tests.

Are you saying that idioms or lexicalized phrases are grammatical words, too? If “kick the bucket” is a single V0, I’ll eat my hat. I don’t see what advantage we get from saying “Panama Papers” is a single N0. The fact that you can’t put anything between “Panama” and “Papers” isn’t helpful, because you can’t do that even if “Panama” is a separate head. If you make a parallel NP like “Biden gaffes” or “Trump lies”, you can’t put anything between the two words, either. They’re still two words, though, and lexicalized meaning isn’t going to be helpful because idioms. (FWIW I don’t agree with Julien, though her work is really thought-provoking)

[bradrn]

But is it English? I don't accept it, and Zompist seems to have grave doubts. Is this a case of conlangs interfering with your L1?

Huh? Yes, of course this is English! As best as I can tell, this is exactly how I say it. I can attach a recording if you really want the extra confirmation.

This is grammatical to me, though with stress on the initial syllable /maun/. FWIW, “mountain climb” isn’t equivalent to “climb mountains” semantically (though they’re similar). Also, I can have an object: “She mountain climbed that huge pile of tires.” I’m not sure if this makes “mountain climb” a single grammatical word, but it’s clear to me that “mountain” here at most is a bare N, and doesn’t project to the NP level.

Yes, exactly: that’s how we know it’s noun incorporation rather than anything else.

Are you saying that idioms or lexicalized phrases are grammatical words, too?

No, of course not: e.g. ‘eat sth up’ is lexicalised, but not a grammatical or phonological word.

If “kick the bucket” is a single V0, I’ll eat my hat.

I never said it was, though. The key here is to realise that ‘grammatical word’ is non-identical to ‘terminal node of a syntax tree’: ‘kick the bucket’ has internal structure, but also has a non-compositional conventionalised meaning, which is lost if the internal structure is changed. (‘The bucket was kicked by him’ is grammatical, but not usually with the intended meaning.)

I don’t see what advantage we get from saying “Panama Papers” is a single N0.

Leaving aside that I don’t think it’s a single N0 at all… One advantage is that it helps you distinguish between lexicalised and non-lexicalised uses of the same word. Let’s say I’m in an office which happens to contain a set of documents for each country: in such a situation, if I said ‘Can I see the Panama papers please?’, then I am no longer using ‘Panama papers’ as a single lexeme. (Orthographically, we represent the difference using capitalisation.)

The fact that you can’t put anything between “Panama” and “Papers” isn’t helpful, because you can’t do that even if “Panama” is a separate head. If you make a parallel NP like “Biden gaffes” or “Trump lies”, you can’t put anything between the two words, either. They’re still two words, though, and lexicalized meaning isn’t going to be helpful because idioms.

But ‘Biden gaffes’ and ‘Trump lies’ aren’t lexemes though: they’re fully compositional, and you can’t even say they’re conventionalised expressions! I would say that they’re grammatical words though, precisely because you can’t put anything between them.

(FWIW I don’t agree with Julien, though her work is really thought-provoking)

Why? (I’m curious to know, since I don’t know enough syntax to be able to fully evaluate her work myself.)

[zompist]

"Panama papers" is a lexeme. That's not a word, unless you want to maintain that all titles ("If on a winter's night a traveler", "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Linguistics", "General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party") and idioms ("kick the bucket") are words. They're fixed because that's how lexemes work.

I stand by my comment above: those titles are not words phonologically, but at the same time they are both grammatical words and lexemes: ‘grammatical’ because they resist being split by other words, and ‘lexemes’ because they are conventionalised non-compositional phrases.

(I’m not so sure what you see as so unusual about this… I’m just applying the usual definition of those terms!)

Well, I feel like I am too! To me you're conflating "word" and "NP" and conflating syntax and morphology.

You give two reasons above, so let me address those.

One, that they're "conventionalized". Of course they are, but I deny that conventionalization makes things a word. Otherwise the Lord's Prayer, the Rosary, or Psalm 23, or Hamlet's "to be or not to be" soliloquy, are "words".

Two, that they resist insertions and other operations. I agree with that, but that's because they're lexicalized. Not every term can be a single word, so we have conventions to choose certain NPs and make them the complex term for something. You can't just change the accepted term for "Panama Papers" without confusing everyone. But in formation, "Panama Papers" is a completely ordinary NP following NP rules.

Maybe a better way of looking at this is not to just say "words can't be separated", but to ask, what can('t) you insert in various places, and why. There are rules of various kinds and absoluteness. The reason you can't change "Panama Papers" is not anything structural about the phrase, but because then people wouldn't recognize the reference. It's not the same sort of reason you can't say "my the papers" or "Australareallylovelycontinentia."