Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Exercises in English N + N compounds (for use in another context), illustrated in cartoons exemplifying the Psychiatrist cartoon meme, with dogs either as patient or therapist (or both): therapist dog ‘dog that is a therapist’ (also ‘dog for therapists (to use, for example as companions)’, a sense I’ll disregard here); dog therapist either ‘therapist that is a dog’ (sense 1) or ‘therapist for dogs (taking dog as patients)’ (sense 2).

The compounds are subsective (the denotation of N1 + N2  is a subset of the denotation of N2): a therapist dog is a dog, a dog therapist is a therapist. The semantic relations between head N2 and modifier N1 are from a small set of canonical relations in the interpretation of N +  N compounds:

PredCop (Predicative / Copulative): the compound denotes a N2 that is a N1: e.g. therapist dog or sense 1 of dog therapist

Use: the compound denotes a N2 that is for N1s (to use): e.g., sense 2 of dog therapist

Dog as patient. Just one example, from my 6/3/18 posting “The canine therapist”, a Bizarro:

(#1)

Dog as therapist (for human patient). A Charles Barsotti and two Randy Glasbergens:

(#2)

(#3)

(#4)

Dog-on-dog therapy. Dog as both patient and therapist. Two Barsottis. First, in my 12/11/15 posting “Barsotti dogs, plus”, #3 there:

(#5)

and a new one:

(#6)

This entry was posted on September 22, 2018 at 5:18 pm and is filed under Comic conventions, Compounds, Linguistics in the comics, Morphology, Semantics, Subsectivity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.