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How can I explain to a non-native speaker that while this is correct:

The felling of trees.

And this is also correct:

tree felling

This is not:

*trees felling

To a non-native it seems very reasonable that since many trees are being felled and given that the felling of trees uses the plural, the inverse form would also use the plural and become trees felling.

To a native speaker such as myself, the latter is very obviously wrong, but I couldn't figure out how to formalize this into a rule that a non-native can understand.

terdon
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    The question is really why the plural of a noun isn't used adjectivally. It isn't only with gerund. Tree frogs not trees frogs. Tree diseases not trees diseases. – TimR Mar 26 '16 at 12:26
  • @TRomano indeed, good point. Same question though. Why? It is blindingly obvious to me and I thought it would be trivial to explain but it isn't. – terdon Mar 26 '16 at 12:28
  • We don't use the plural noun as an adjective. Why not? Thinking about that gives me a head ache and a nose bleed, as if I'd been hit with a tire iron or a golf club. Perhaps what we're really seeing is a compound noun formation (noun noun) which we treat orthographically as separate words but shouldn't? – TimR Mar 26 '16 at 12:45
  • I wonder if this happens more often among learners from non-western languages? Is it exclusively? Or it happens to anyone whose first language is not English. – Damkerng T. Mar 26 '16 at 12:50
  • @TRomano we're discussing this in the ELU chat room, if you're interested. – terdon Mar 26 '16 at 12:50
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    @DamkerngT. this came up when I was proofreading a presentation written by a French friend. I would guess it would occur among learners of any language that has the felling of trees construct but not the tree felling one. – terdon Mar 26 '16 at 12:51
  • There's a related question on ELU about this. It doesn't answer your question per se but there are plenty of examples and a few insights. – Yay Mar 26 '16 at 13:44
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    See also this question here. – StoneyB on hiatus Mar 26 '16 at 13:48
  • @StoneyB that's very interesting, especially the quote from Leech that explains the existence of some plural forms, thanks. Do you have any insight on why the singular is the default though? We've been hashing this out in the ELU chat room and the consensus seems to be "because". – terdon Mar 26 '16 at 13:54
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    @terdon Well, this sort of compounding is 'designed' to simplify the surface structure: to move what would otherwise be expressed by morphological or prepositional case-marking into the hearer's inference; so I don't think we need to look any further than the fact that the sg form is morphologically the simplest and semantically the most generic. – StoneyB on hiatus Mar 26 '16 at 15:01
  • @StoneyB that makes sense and is indeed probably the best answer I'm likely to get. A gaggle of ELU regulars were unable to come up with anything better, though they did demonstrate that it is even more complex than it appears. Care to whip that into an answer? – terdon Mar 26 '16 at 15:05
  • @terdon I wouldn't feel comfortable offering it as an answer (Answer) without a good deal of research stretching back into OE -- and I just don't have time for that right now. – StoneyB on hiatus Mar 26 '16 at 15:08
  • @StoneyB: Fun fact: Dutch uses the same construction, but we can use either the simple singular as in English, or what is perceives as a plural on -en-, or -e-, or what I think is a genitive -s-. Even with the same word. Rechtbank (court of law), rechtsgebied (field of law), rechteloos (lawless), rechtenstudie ("the study of law"; this one is explained by the fact that the official name of the academic programme is "rechten", but -en- is extremely common with other words). In general, there is no semantic difference and it's hard to predict with connective (if any) is used. – Cerberus Mar 26 '16 at 15:29
  • ... Oh, to complicate things further, -e- and -en- sound exactly the same, because -n is not pronounced in syllables ending on -en. – Cerberus Mar 26 '16 at 15:31
  • Being a non-native-english-speaker, I believe this is a much more difficult feature to explain when it comes to Latin-like languages, such as my own.In those we just don't have nouns used adjectivally, the only possibility is to write something like "the felling of the tree/trees" so we get very confused when we meet with these different structures. – Joao Arruda Mar 26 '16 at 15:38
  • Do you think you could use tree felling in a complete sentence? It's possible that the grammatical status of tree felling could be different in different sentences, which could change the answer. –  Mar 26 '16 at 16:59
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    @snailboat Tree felling is not allowed in national parks for example. – terdon Mar 26 '16 at 17:05
  • It's impossible to do any snowboarding where there's been lots of treefelling. – TimR Mar 26 '16 at 17:16
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    See http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2014/02/14/pluralisms/ and https://britishisms.wordpress.com/2015/06/10/covers-band/ and especially the link in the latter to the paper by Elisa Sneed (pdf). – Alan Carmack Mar 26 '16 at 22:52
  • @AlanCarmack thanks! Those were very interesting reads. They all focus on noun-noun compounds though. My feeling, which I can't quite articulate, is that noun+verb and noun+noun are somehow different. There is, somehow, a different syntactical relationship between the two parts of a tree trimmer and tree trimming. I certainly feel that trees trimmer is less objectionable than trees trimming. But I digress, none of this was in my original question, my understanding of the issue has grown enormously since posting. – terdon Mar 27 '16 at 11:56
  • Well, I was thrown by the first comment to this post and your response to it. Plus the line between a noun and a verbal noun (trimming, felling) is slim sometimes (i. e., building, beginning). What are the legitimate examples of plural noun + verbal noun (-ing) that you've run across? @terdon Certainly, it seems to me, a doubles hitter does doubles hitting. – Alan Carmack Mar 27 '16 at 12:16
  • @AlanCarmack that's very reasonable. As I said, I wasn't too clear on what I was asking myself. The question has evolved (in my mind, if not necessarily in the post itself) in response to the comments here and the long discussion in the ELU chat room. As for legitimate examples, I don't know that there are any (though there probably are), it;s just that I was hoping for a clear rule that explain why there aren't any. – terdon Mar 27 '16 at 12:36
  • Highly interesting question, one I've not thought much on previously. Yeah, seems perhaps that some/many of the noun + noun can be converted to noun + verbal noun: drugs running; arms/weapons dealing; jobs reporting; shoes selling (just kidding on that one). – Alan Carmack Mar 28 '16 at 03:51
  • Related: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/425983/pluralization-rules-with-prepositional-phrases , https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/292770/number-of-genitive-object-in-a-nominal-compound , https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/48636/plural-nouns-in-nominal-compounds – SAH Jan 11 '18 at 23:27

2 Answers2

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There is no simple explanation, and explanations given by linguists are not to date convincing. See, for example, Sneed's work, which builds on earlier work.

You can say that there is a rising trend, that seems to correlate with the increased use of nouns + noun combination (e. g., nowadays one is more likely a Cubs fan rather than a Cub fan). There is now covers band and not just cover band; jobs report, drugs dealer (and one thinks, drugs dealing).

Just spotted: birds conservation. This seems to be a British English usage, and such nouns + noun are used more often in BrE than AmE.

I found ESPN and the Washington Post both using Numbers Crunching, which seems novel compared to the singular option. You are free to google your favorite expression and see if anyone is (yet) using it in the plural.

Community
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Alan Carmack
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Why do you want to explain it when there is no simple explanation. It should be sufficient to say that in compound nouns of the type noun + noun the first noun or subnoun is normally singular with a few exceptions.

But of course, one may think about why the singular is preferred. It might be a simple case of shortening: horse trainer is shorter and easier to speak than horses trainer.

Another reason might have been that in spoken language it might have been disturbing to decide whether girls class or girls' class was said, and that girl class was simply unambiguous.

rogermue
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    Because when I posted this question, I hadn't yet spent 3 hours discussing it in the ELU chat room and believed there was a simple explanation. – terdon Mar 26 '16 at 17:07
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    You might find this link useful :) http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/compound-nouns – Yuri Mar 28 '16 at 10:24