Curious3141 said:
Interestingly, when tin is appended to can, the "tin" part signifies the metal used. However, "tin" by itself can also mean can. So it's a valid trinonym.
Maybe I can get you to think that it is not so interesting (or at least not surprising or inexplicable or is interesting for a different reason).
For one thing, if
tin meant
can in
tincan, why would anyone have ever formed or used
tincan? It would have made just as much sense to form and use
cantin,
cancan, or
tintin. The same thing applies to all of these other trinonyms.
But I propose that how
tin came to mean (or could have come to mean)
tincan is a regular, predictable process.
English compounds are of the form
[[complement][head]]
in that order, where brackets surround words. Compounding words is similar to adding or multiplying numbers. The math people here can think of compounding as a binary operation on words (it is one, by my definition). The head and complement themselves can be compounds as well:
[[[complement][head]][head]]
[[complement][[complement][head]]]
[[[[complement][head]][head]][head]]
...
So in
tincan,
tin is the complement and
can is the head. The head determines the category and broad meaning of the compound, so the set of the compound's referents is a subset of the set of the head's referents. (A fairytale is a specific type of tale, a blackbird is a specific type of bird, first base is a specific type of base, a kittycat is at least a type of cat, as a cat is a type of cat, even if not more specific). The complement, however, can differ from the compound in both category and meaning, and by its association with the compound, the complement can take on the compound's meaning and category.
I think this basic process of the complement 'leeching' the compound's features is also happening with
tincan -- the features that get leeched are just different.
(You could possibly look at it in different ways. I'm not really sure if it's a morphological (words & their parts) process or syntactic (phrases & their parts) process, say, where the head is deleted, but I'll assume you guys aren't that interested, and either way, the result is the same. Oh, I meant to correct myself before:
clipping is used only for deletions based on sound analysis, not deletions based on meaning analysis. Saying
sis for
sister and
bro for
brother are instances of clipping. I'm not sure what to call this deletion of complements and heads, but its name is no great matter.)
I think what happened with
tincan might be what happened with, e.g.,
water bottle. (And two heads are better than one anyway. :groan:)
Tin and
water, as nouns, are mass, or non-count, nouns, as opposed to count nouns like
can and
bottle. (The count/mass distinction really refers to how words can function; a word isn't, e.g., a count noun but, rather, is functioning as a count noun in a particular instance.) I won't bore y'all with the details; the basic idea is that you can count count nouns.
Count nouns can be pluralized (
dogs), used with cardinals and
many (
three dogs, many dogs), and are thought of as coming in discrete units, or being quantized. Mass nouns cannot be pluralized or used with cardinals (*
fogs, *
three fog(s)), are used with
much (
much fog), and use quantizers (
a patch of fog, two bottles of water, an ounce of tin).
Tincan(s) and
water bottle(s) function as count nouns. And when you use
tin and
water to mean
tincan and
water bottle,
tin and
water, which are usually mass nouns and, more importantly, are mass nouns in their compounds, become count nouns:
5) Where did those three tins go?
6) Can we have two waters, please?
That is, the complements are leeching the count feature of the compound (and perhaps they must do so when they take on the compound's meaning).
The reason I chose
water bottle is that it introduces another explanation:
water could be functioning as a count noun because the head of
water bottle was deleted or because the quantizer of
bottle of water was deleted, as when you say
waters to mean
glasses/cups/servings/etc. of water. It would be interesting to look at the mass/count feature in other compounds to see if there are any rules at work there. Can mass nouns function as compound heads? I can't think of any at the moment.* Anywho... sorry, I love this stuff.
Does that make sense? I realize it's GD and people might just not care about this stuff, but if anyone is interested and wants me to explain something, I'd be glad to try.
I imagine people do use
tin to refer to any kind of can, but do they use
tincan that way?
*(Edit: Oh, right,
oleomargarine and
sodapop, mass compounds with mass heads and mass complements. Ooh, but look at
breakwater, which turns count -- this is a special type of compound formed by incorporation, usually a verb and one of its arguments (direct object, etc.); breakwaters break water, as scarecrows scare crows. But maybe it has nothing to do with incorporation.
Water could have already been turned to a count noun by deleting its quantizer, as when you say
waters to mean some bodies of water (oceans or whatever). Or, I don't know, how do people use breakwater? I haven't heard it much, but considering it as a wall, I would use it as a count noun. Okay, shutting up now.)
