Modern English Grammar

She became a good wife to him.

He became a good husband because she made him good.

The validity of the theory of surface and deep structure as applied to the explanation of syntactic homonymity in any language can hardly be doubted.

All languages have homonymy at several levels. Observations on syntactic structures of various types furnish numerous examples of homonymic patterns, i. e. such syntactic units as are identical in their grammatical arrangement but differ in meaning. Numerous situations may be pointed out in which structural ambiguities commonly occur. In such instances we may easily observe that ambiguity is resolved by some other element, linguistic or situational, or intonation.

A descriptive analysis of the structural signals of English will always be helpful to make clear the places where such ambiguities are likely to occur and the precise nature of the distinctive features involved. Students of English, must be aware of the common sources of structural ambiguity, as well as the precise devices for resolving them.

The following examples will furnish good illustration of the statement. The English verb is usually followed by a noun, with or without determiner. However, if both the noun determiner and the initial function word are missing, such structures may become ambiguous, like the following:

love blossoms in spring where ambiguity is avoided by intonational differences. Compare:

Love blossoms in spring.

Love blossoms in spring!

love is a noun in (1) and a verb in (2).

Ambiguity is quite possible at bast in written English and rapid speech; when, for instance, the two parts of a separable verb are not separated:

She looked' over your papers.

She 'looked over your 'papers.

If these two sentences are read aloud it will become apparent that in (1) the subject was inspecting the paper itself, while in (2) he is looking at something on the other side. Therefore only (1) can be replaced by he looked.

Illustrative examples of ambiguity will be found in patterns with the so-called "dangling participles". In patterns of this type the participle is, in fact, a sentence-modifier, though it may occupy the position at the beginning of the sentence which can also be occupied by a participial modifier or the subject. This gives a structure that is always structurally ambiguous. Lexical incongruity between the participle and the following subject resolves ambiguity. Ambiguous examples are often unintentionally comic or ridiculous.

Proceeding down the road a small village came in sight.

Many ambiguities are never noticed because the various possible meanings are narrowed down by context.

In they have busy lives without visiting relatives only context can indicate whether visiting relatives is equivalent in meaning to paying visits to relatives or to relatives who are visiting them, and in I looked up the number and I looked up the chimney only the meanings of number and chimney make it clear that up is syntactically a second complement in the first sentence and a preposition followed by its object in the second.

Structural ambiguity often occurs with prepositional phrases which are fairly common modifiers of various types of heads. This is often the case when the prepositional phrase appears medially or finally. However the characteristic intonation contour of the sentence-modifier, frequently supported by lexical indicators, serves to recognise prepositional phrases as such, e. g.:

His faith in her words was unshakable.

As written above, the sentence is surely ambiguous. The distinction between the two possible meanings would be preserved by setting off in her words with commas.

Ambiguity occurs more frequently in connection with constructions appearing in complement, predicate-modifier, or end-adverbial positions than with constructions appearing in front-adverbial subject, or verbal positions. This is primarily due to the fact that there are more positions in the last half of a sentence which may be filled by similar constructions than there are in the first half. The recipient of a message usually has little difficulty in recognising the boundary line between a subject and a following verb-cluster because of the change from "nominal material" to "verbal material". In the complement and the following sectors, however, there are no such clear-cut lines of demarcation between one kind of material and another: a phrase, for example, may occur as a post-nuclear modifier in a noun-cluster in C_o position, or as an adjunctional in C₂ position, or as a predicate-modifier in H position, or as an adverbial in any one of the three end positions.

Most, if not all, of the cases of structural ambiguity discussed by Ch. Fries in the Structure of English, as well as of those discussed by N. Chomsky in Syntactic Structures, can probably be explained in terms of uncertainties about positions. Thus, to borrow an example from Ch. Fries, the sentence The new train appeared faster may be assigned to sectors in either of these two ways:

The new train appeared faster.

The new train appeared... faster.

In (1) faster is analysed as an adjunctal word occurring in C₁ position; in (2) it is analysed as a predicate-modifier.

But the fact still remains that our ability to analyse the sentence in two different ways does not resolve the ambiguity. The sentence as it stands -- without any larger context that might indicate which of the two analyses is the correct one -- remains ambiguous.

If a sentence such as "flying planes can be dangerous" ¹ is presented in an appropriately constructed context, the listener will interpret it immediately in a unique way, and will fail to detect the ambiguity. In fact, we may reject the second interpretation, when this is pointed out to him, as forced or unnatural (independently of which interpretation we originally selected under contextual pressure). Nevertheless the intuitive knowledge of the language is clearly such that both of the interpretations (corresponding to "flying planes are dangerous" and "flying planes is dangerous") are assigned to the sentence by the grammar internalised in some form. In the case just mentioned, the ambiguity may be fairly transparent. But in such a sentence, for instance, as He had a book stolen grammar provides at least three structural descriptions:

He had a book stolen from his car when he left the window open, that is Someone stole a book from his car;

He had a book stolen from the library by a professional thief whom he hired to do the job, that is He had someone steal a book;

He almost had a book stolen, but they caught him leaving the library with it, that is He had almost succeeded in stealing a book.

Resolving this triple ambiguity in this way we arrange matters in such a way that the linguistic intuition, previously obscured, becomes evident.

To borrow an example from N. Chomsky, we shall consider the following sentences:

persuaded John to leave.

expected John to leave.

The first impression of the hearer may be that these sentences receive the same structural analysis. Even fairly careful thought may fail to show him that grammar assigns very different syntactic descriptions to these sentences. However, it is clear that the sentences (1) and (2) are not parallel in structure. The difference can be brought out by consideration of the sentences:

persuaded a specialist to examine John.

persuaded John to be examined by a specialist.

expected a specialist to examine John.

(6) I expected John to be examined by a specialist.

The sentences (5) and (6) are cognitively synonymous: one is true if, and only if, the other is true.

But no variety of even weak paraphrase holds between (3) and (4). Thus (3) can be true or false quite independently of the truth or falsity of (4). Whatever difference of connotation or "topic" or emphasis one may find between (5) and (6) is just the difference that exists between the active sentence a specialist will examine John and its passive counterpart John will be examined by a specialist. This is not at all the case with respect to (3) however. In fact, the underlying deep structure for (1) and (4) must show that John is the direct object of the verb-phrase as well as the grammatical subject of the embedded sentence.

Not less characteristic are patterns with adverbs as sentence-modifiers which are rare in final position, and when they do occur there, ambiguity will be resolved by intonation.

Consider the following examples which will remind you that a change in intonation may change the structural meaning of adverbs:

The student is clearly speaking of his own impression.

He is apparently willing to join us.

The above examples will suffice to show that intonation may indicate rather important differences in structural meaning of the phrases.

Co-ordinators are not always used between members of structures of co-ordination and such sentences may frequently be structurally ambiguous, or at least potentially so. In speech, however, there are prosodic patterns which clearly distinguish the various types of construction. Consider the following sentence:

Let me introduce my friend a doctor and a scientist.

If we disregard prosody (and punctuation) this has at least three possible meanings.

An utterance does not necessarily become understandable even when all its vowels, consonants, and stress patterns have been recognised. It is still necessary to recognise where the boundaries fall. A typical pair of sentences is "He will act, roughly in the same manner", and He will act roughly, in the same manner. In presenting these two sentences in writing, roughly is assigned to what follows or what precedes by the position of the comma. In speech, the two are equally distinct and in no danger of confusion. The position of the boundary is signalled by elements in the sound system, which are imperfectly represented in writing by punctuation marks. These boundary signals are generally called junctures. ¹

There is a close parallel to such developments in other languages.

Here are a few typical examples of structural ambiguity in noun-phrases with the possessive case in Russian and Ukrainian: фотография Петрова, for instance, has three possible contextual meanings:

the photo belongs to Petrov;

Petrov has taken the photo(graph) of smb.;

Petrov is portrayed on the photo.

Structural homonymy of prepositional noun-phrases is also a common occurrence.

Он сделает это в два часа may mean either (1) at 2 o'clock or (2) in two hours.

Phrases with the preposition про may express object and adverbial relations, e. g. He про нас писано may mean:

He о нас писано.

He для нас писано. Ukrainian:

Читайте тільки про себе (не вголос).

Читайте тільки про себе (а не про когось іншого).

Кувшин с цветами may mean: (а) кувшин и цветы; (b) кувшин, на котором нарисованы цветы; (с) в кувшине находятся цветы.

Compare for illustration the German sentence Das ist naturlich genug which may be an instance of two different structures:

that's natural enough;

that's naturally enough.

Revision Material

The syntactic structure of any language is a system constituted by organically related levels. Comment on the hierarchical intra-level relationship of syntactic units.

Be ready to discuss different approaches to the study of syntax:

traditional syntactic theory;

structural syntactic theories;

transformational syntax.

3. Comment on oppositional relationship of syntactic units.

4. Give comments on paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations in syntax.

On what assumptions can syntactic paradigms be built?

Be ready to discuss the statement that the division into parts of speech and the division into parts of the sentence are organically related.

Comment on two main types of subject that are opposed to each other in terms of content.

Comment on predication as a structure with the verb or verb- phrase at its core.

Give comments on oppositional relations between the principal and secondary parts of the sentence.

What do we mean by textlinguistics?

Give comments on discourse analysis of supra-phrasal unities.

Distinguish between "mentalistic" and "mechanistic" approaches to syntactic analysis.

What do we mean by "deep grammar" analysis?

Be ready to discuss grammatical ambiguity. Give a few examples of constructional homonymity. Make comparison with other languages.

Illustrate the statement that many ambiguities are never noticed because the various possible meanings are narrowed down by context.

Chapter XI PHRASE-STRUCTURE

The ways in which word-combinations (phrases) as non-communicative units are constituted may be described as "Minor" Syntax in contrast to "Major" Syntax dealing with linguistic units of communicative value.

The syntactical description of any language is facilitated by isolating certain recurrent units of expression and examining their distribution in contexts.

English syntax is a many-layered organisation of relatively few types of its basic units. A twofold or binary structure is one of the most striking things about its grammatical organisation.

According to the ways in which phrases are used and constituted, two main types of English phrases can be distinguished: headed (endocentric) and non-headed (exocentric).

The terms "endocentric" and "exocentric" for syntactic constructions were introduced by L. Bloomfield.

"Every syntactic construction shows us two (or sometimes more) free forms combined in a phrase, which we may call the resultant phrase. The resultant phrase may belong to a form-class other than that of any constituent. For instance, John ran is neither a nominative expression (like John) nor a finite verb expression (like ran). Therefore we say that English actor-action construction is exocentric: the resultant phrase belongs to the form-class of no immediate constituent. On the other hand, the resultant phrase may belong to the same form-class as one (or more) of the constituents. For instance, poor John is a proper-noun expression, and so is the constituent John; the forms John and poor have, on the whole, the same functions. Accordingly we say that the English character-substance construction (as in poor John, fresh milk and the like) is an endocentric construction" ¹.

Headed phrases have this peculiarity: all the grammatical functions open to them as phrases can also be exercised by one expression within them. They may be regarded as expansions of this expression, called the head of the group and it is possible to substitute the head for the group or the group for the head within the same grammatical phrase (i. e. in the same context) without causing any formal dislocation of the overall grammatical structure. For instance, in fresh fruit is good the headed word-group fresh fruit serves as subject; in I like fresh fruit, it serves as objective complement. If we substitute the head expression fruit for fresh fruit in either case, the grammatical frame subject, verb, complement will remain formally undisturbed.

Fresh fruit is good. Fruit is good. I like fresh fruit. Similarly: I like fruit.

All this nice fresh fruit is good. Fruit is good. Singing songs is fun. Singing is fun. I like singing songs. I like singing.

In these sets of examples, the head expression fruit and singing are freely substitutable grammatically for the word-groups of which they are constituents. In both cases, then, the italicised word-groups are headed groups.

Syntactic relations may be signalled by the following devices:

Word-order, i. e. the position of words relative to each other in the utterance.

Prosody-combinations of patterns of pitch, stress and juncture. Patterns of pitches and terminal junctures are called intonation patterns; patterns of stresses and internal junctures are often referred to as super- fixes.

Function words -- words with little or no lexical meaning which are used in combining words into larger structures (prepositions, con- junctions,relative pronouns).

Inflections which adapt words to fit varying structural positions without changing their lexical meaning or part of speech.

Punctuation in writing.

It seems practical to classify phrases according to the character of their syntactical arrangement. We shall thus distinguish: 1) subordinate phrases, 2) co-ordinate phrases and 3) predicative (or "nexus") phrases. Every structure may be divided into its immediate constituents:

1) In terms of grammatical organisation, subordinate phrases are binary structures in which one of the members is syntactically the leading element of the phrase. No matter how complicated this twofold or binary structure may be, it can always be divided into two immediate constituents, one functioning as head and the other as modifier.

Adjuncts serve to describe, to qualify, to select, to complete, to extend or in some other way to affect the meaning of the head, e. g.: fresh air, stone wall, writing a letter, perfectly right, awfully tired, etc.

2) Co-ordinate phrases consist of two or more syntactically equivalent units joined in a cluster which functions as a single unit. The units so joined may be any of the parts of speech or more complex structures taking part in grammatical organisation. The joining may be accomplished by word order and prosody alone, or with the help of conjunctions, e. g.: girls and boys, pins and needles, sooner or later, now and then, etc. 3) Predicative (or "nexus") phrases are such structures in which the syntactic functions of the component' parts differ from the function of the phrase, as a whole , e. g.: the lesson over, circumstances permitting, this done, for them to come, on him to do, etc.

SUBORDINATE PHRASES

Subordinate phrases may be best enumerated when we arrange them according to their leading member: noun phrases, adjectival phrases, verb phrases, adverbial phrases, pronominal phrases (pronominal phrases are most suitably included in the noun or adjective groups to which they are evident parallels). As has been pointed out, their immediate constituents are head word and modifier (adjunct). The term head word (head) means the word that is modified.

Noun-Phrases

In terms of position of the attributive adjunct, noun-phrases may be classified into; 1) phrases with preposed modifier; 2) phrases with postposed modifier.

Phrases with Preposed Modifier

In noun-phrases with preposed modifiers we generally find adjectives, pronouns, numerals, participles, gerunds and nouns in the possessive case. Here belongs also premodification of nouns by nouns (so-called noun-adjunct-groups).

With his own hands he put flowers about his little house-boat and equipped the punt in which, after lunch, he proposed to take them on the river. (Galsworthy)

Many a time had he tried to think that in old days of thwarted merrier life; and he always failed. (Galsworthy)

Val had just changed out of riding clothes and was on his way to the fire -- a bookmaker's in Cornmarket. (Galsworthy)

Jolly Forsyte was strolling down High Street, Oxford, on a November afternoon. (Galsworthy)

After a few morning consultations, with the pleasant prospect of no surgery in the evening Andrew went on his round. (Cronin)

And beneath it lay the family's Christmas treat -- three small oranges, (Cronin)

A preposed determinant may be extended only by an adverb, e. g.:

That was a typically French way to furnish a room. '

In premodification of nouns by nouns the noun-adjunct may be extended by words of different parts of speech, e. g.: long playing micro-groove full frequency range recording.

The -s is appended to a group of words if it forms a sense-unit, e. g.: the man of property's daughter, Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, the King of Denmark's court.

The division into immediate constituents in cases like the man of

property's daughter is not the man || of property's, but the man of property's.

Postposition of adjectives occurs in some fixed phrases, e. g.:

mother dear the university proper

the president elect a battle royal

time immemorial the first person singular

Postpositive position is often natural for adjectival units which themselves contain postpositive modifiers of their own and even for some which contain only postpositive modifiers

applicants desirous of personal interviews a wall six feet high rooms large enough

Noun-Adjunct Groups

English nominals presented by N + N structures are one of the most striking features about the grammatical organisation of English.

Noun-adjunct groups consisting of "nounal modifier" plus "nominal head" result from different kind of transformational shifts. Premodification of nouns by nouns can signal a striking variety of meanings. The grammar of English nominalisations presents here a major point of linguistic interest.

In order to appreciate how very wide the variety of grammatical meaning in nominal compounds may be, consider the following miscellaneous examples:

world peace (= peace all over the world)

table lamp (= a lamp for tables)

sheep dog (= a dog which herds sheep)

prairie dog (= a dog which inhabits the prairie)

silver box (= a box made of silver)

field worker (= a worker works in the field)

chair legs (= the legs of the chair)

night owl (= an owl which flies at night)

river sand (= sand from the river)

soap salesman (= the salesman sells soap)

school child (= the child goes to school)

Noun-groups of this type are fairly common and new specimens are constantly being formed.

Since nominal compounds usually consist of only two constituents and incorporate the most general grammatical relations in the language, there are unusually great opportunities for grammatical ambiguity in this kind of binary structures.

To make our point clear, we shall give a number of interesting ambiguities and variations in interpreting them.

Thus, for instance, in its ordinary use the noun-phrase snake poison is interpreted to have the same structure as that of snake oil, snake track, etc., і. e. it is derived from some expression like poison from a snake, or ultimately perhaps from some kernel-sentence such as: The snake gives poison. However it could also be interpreted to be the same in structure as snake venom, snakehead, snakeblood, etc., i. e. to be more like snake's poison or poison of a snake, say from some sentence as: The snake has the poison.¹

But these do not exhaust the possibilities, though the latter two are probably the way the expression is commonly used, the first when meaning "poisonous substance made from snake venom".

Notice also the possible contrast among snake flesh, snake meat, and snake food: "flesh of a snake","meat from a snake", and "food for a snake". The formal characteristics within the structure of various noun-adjunct groups provide significant contrast to distinguish certain of the meaning that attach to «modifier» relation.

Noun-adjunct groups are often derived from already generated post-nominal participial or gerundive modifiers, e. g,:

The well yields oil

...well which yields oil...

...well yielding oil...

...oil-yielding well...

...oil well...

Observe the significant contrast in the following pairs of noun-adjunct groups:

a baby sister a mother country

a baby sitter a mother complex

a woman lawyer a toy cupboard

a woman hater a toy cupboard a candy cane a candy store

Each of these units contains a modifying noun and a head noun, and the modifying noun precedes its head. When the modifying noun has the essentially descriptive force of an adjective, the head noun normally has phrase stress. In a baby sister the sister is a baby, in a candy cane the cane is candy. When the modifying noun has relationship to its head, the modifying noun rather than the head normally has phrase stress. Thus in a baby sitter the sitter is not a baby but a sitter with babies, and in a candy store the store is not candy but sells candy. When it is used of a cupboard that is itself a toy, a toy cupboard has phrase stress on cupboard; when it is used of a cupboard which is not itself a toy but is used as a place for toys, the same sequence has phrase stress on toy.

The pattern of stress normally indicates the nature of the "modifier" relationship. Compare also the following:

growing children -- growing pains

a living soul -- living conditions the waiting mother -- the waiting room

Growing children are children that are growing, but growing pains are the pains of growing.

Instances are not few when the nominalised verb appears as head of the structure the transform may be generated directly from the genitive case or the of-phrase periphrasis, e. g.:

The population grows ... population's growth ... growth of the population ... population growth

The deletion of a post-nominal modifier along with the preposition gives such derivations as, for instance:

The owl flies at night ... owl which flies at night ... owl flying at night ... night owl

An attempt to tabulate the underlying grammatical relations observed in noun-adjunct groups will help to distinguish significant contrasts in their meaning:

1) Subject-predicate relations: graduate-student, class struggle, student failure, temperature change, weather change, blood pressure, etc.

Closely related to such nominals are formations like queen bee, mother earth, girl draftsman, lady journalist, man friend, woman author, woman scientist, woman writer, etc. where the relation between the two nouns is essentially different. Viewed in their combination, the two elements in such patterns are syntactically equal, each of the two nouns can function to name a person or thing denoted by a whole pattern. This is made abundantly clear by the simplest transformational analysis: the girl draftsman > the girl is a draftsman; the woman scientist > > the woman is a scientist.

2) Object relations:

a) body nourishment, coal production, chemistry student, carpet sweeper, health service, ink transfer, money economy, package delivery, product control, potato peeler, rug sale, safety feeling, truck driver, war talk, woman hater, etc.;

"with"-nominals (the modifying noun denotes instrumental relations), e. g.: acid treatment, eye view, oil painting, etc.;

the qualitative genitive or the of-phrase periphrasis, e. g.: child psychology, fellow feeling, mother wit, mother heart, science degree, etc. (Cf. Syn.: child psychology -- child's psychology -- the psychology of a child -- childish psychology);

the of-phrase periphrasis (the modifying noun denotes the material of which a thing is made), e. g.:

brick house, gold watch, iron bridge, oak table, paper bag, rubber coat, silver box, stone wall, etc.

3) Adverbial relations of time: day shift, night shift, morning star, morning exercises, spring time, spring term, summer vacation, summer sunshine, September sun, winter vacation, winter afternoon, etc.

Adverbial relations of place: world peace, country air, chimney swallows, England tour, nursery door, river house, study window, ground water, etc.

Adverbial relations of comparison: button eyes, eagle eye, hawk nose, iron nerves, lost dog look, swallow dive, etc.

Adverbial relations of purpose: bath robe, export products, peace movement, resistance fighters, tooth brush, writing table, walking stick, etc.

It is important to remember that the modifying noun is usually marked by a stronger stress than the head.

The semantic relations which underlie such nominals present certain difficulties of analysis.

The meaning of the modifying noun is often signalled by the lexical meaning of the head word. Compare the following: river house, river margin, river sand; cotton dress, cotton production, cotton prices; war production, war talk, war years; oak leaves, oak tables; medicine smell, medicine bottle.

A clue concerning the meaning of the modifier may also be found in the grammatical nature of the noun modified. Thus, for instance, when the second element is a verbal noun made from an intransitive verb, the first element will often denote the doer of the action, e. g.: class struggle, student failure, etc. If the second element is a verbal noun made from a transitive verb (which is fairly common), the first element will generally denote the object of the action, e. g.: product control, production increase, safety feeling, rug sale, coal production, etc.

If the second element denotes a person or an animal, the first element may denote gender, e. g.: woman writer, man servant, bull elephant, cow elephant.

In cases when the lexical meaning of the words admits either interpretation without lexico-grammatical incongruity, ambiguity is prevented in actual speech by contrast in intonation patterns. Thus, for instance, a dancing girl with rise of pitch and primary stress both on the headword girl marks dancing as a present participle: "a girl performing the act of dancing". But a dancing girl, with primary stress and rise in pitch both on the modifier dancing, identifies dancing as a verbal noun and signals the meaning "a dancer" -- танцівниця.

The contrast of meaning as tied to a particular intonation pattern is fairly common and is a good example of the role that prosody plays in grammar.

In some instances it is possible to carry the variation in stress patterns through a series of three, all correlated with differences in meaning:

a blackbird's nest (= nest of a blackbird)

a black bird's nest (= bird's nest which is black)

a black bird's nest (= nest of a black-coloured bird)

Premodification is widely current in present-day scientific usage where, we can say with little fear of exaggeration, such patterns have not got their equals.

The multifarious use of nominals in scientific English presents special difficulties. It is in this area of English grammar that the student's linguistic knowledge is often severely put to the test.

Different correlations of nouns and arrangements of their order present special interest in cases where such nominals consist not of two but three, four and even five elements.

Examine the following:

hydraulic work carriage traverse speed regulating valve -- клапан, що регулює швидкість гідравлічного переміщення робочої каретки;

a high grade paraffin base straight mineral lubricating oil -- високосортне прямої конки мінеральне мастило на парафіновій основі;

room temperature neutron bombardment effects -- явища, викликані бомбардуванням нейтронами при кімнатній температурі;

long-playing microgroove full frequency range recording -- мікрозапис довгограючих пластинок з повним діапазоном частот;

cabin-pressure regulator air valve lever -- важіль пневматичного клапана регулятора тиску (повітря) в кабіні.

The high frequency value of such nominals in the language of science is clear without special frequency counts.

When a head noun includes several modifiers of different sorts, the result is often rather a complex thing. But in point of fact, it is always organised along strict and precise lines. The most important thing about such an adjunct-group is that unless it contains structures of coordination, it consists not of a series of parallel modifiers but of a series of structures of modification one within the other, e. g.:

hydraulic work carriage traverse speed regulating valve -- клапан що регулює швидкість гідравлічного переміщення робочої каретки.

English nominalisation has given large numbers of such formations as approach compounding when the two nouns express a single idea, making up a special term in terminology or a stock-phrase in professional vocabulary: The United Nations Organisation, Security Council, Labour party, labour movement, face value, horse power, coal mine, mother oil, Trade Union, trade balance, etc.

In phraseology: mother earth, swan song, Vanity Fair, vanity bag, brain storm, brain wave, chair days ("old age"), tragedy king ("an actor playing the part of the king in a tragedy"), toy dog('^la little dog", болонка).

Some nominals fluctuate in spelling and may be written solid, hyphened or separate, e. g.:

apple tree -- apple-tree -- appletree brain storm -- brain-storm -- brainstorm brain wave -- brain-wave

The direction of modification structures can have a special stylistic value. Involving different classes of nouns into modification structures of that type has long become effective for stylistic purposes. It is fairly common in Shakespearean language where numerous word-groups of this kind furnish vivid examples of the metaphoric use of the premodifying noun, as in: From Fortune with her Juory hand to her ("Timon of Athen"); ... two siluer currents when they joyne ("King John").

In Modern English unusual premodification structures are often created by the author anew to achieve humorous effect, e. g.: The umbrella owner slowed his steps. Soapy did likewise, with a presentiment that luck would again run against him. The policeman looked at the two curiously. "Of course", said the umbrella man "that is -- well, you know how these mistakes occur -- I -- if it's your umbrella I hope you'll excuse me -- I picked it up this morning in a restaurant -- if you recognise it as yours, why -- I hope you'll -- "."Of course, it's mine", said Soapy, viciously. The ex-umbrella man retreated. (Henry)