Re: [Lingo] 黒犬 vs. 黒い犬

[David J Iannucci <jlinux@example.com>]

On Tue, Sep 5, 2017, at 17:56, steve wrote:
> But 黒犬 is really two words or at least a contraction, right??  I have
> スーパー大辞林 and 研究社 on phone and neither has 黒犬.

Keep forgetting to get back to this....

I think it's good to consider this a normal two-word phrase (adj +
noun), or possibly a compound, but not a contraction, in the
normal sense.

If I'm recalling my Old Japanese studies of a few years ago correctly
(I'm sure I am :), adjectives in OJ (such as we see in 万葉集) were all
uninflected. That is, there are no suffixes like the い or く that we see
on modern wago adjectives. That stuff came a bit later in history.
Thus, black was just くろ, high was just たか, etc.

Somehow I think that the recognition that it's ok to use adjective roots
uninflected has managed to survive into the present day... although I'm
unable to say exactly how. But certain phrases like your くろいぬ are a
perfect example, and clearly they are accepted by modern native
speakers. And naturally enough, these phrases probably have a strongly
archaic flavor for modern people (any native speakers wanna comment?)

Dave