Our kick-ass set-up

Little did I know when I wrote it how well the entry on verb-noun compounds in Romance would be received; even less did I foresee the strange turns of some of the comment threads. One of these ended up with my rash assertion that, when it comes to English, homey don't play dat game. Of course, a couple days go by and I find myself musing about the exceptions.

English may be very strongly head-final when it comes to noun phrases, but with verb phrases, it's just as strongly head-initial. That is, we expect our complements (objects, predicate nouns, etc.) to come after the conjugated verb. So, when it comes to making nouns out of verb phrases, there is a conflict between the ordering we prefer for VPs and the one we prefer for NPs. For compound nouns, as I pointed out before, this overwhelmingly resolves in favour of the NP ordering, e.g.: stomp a buzz -> buzz-stomp, tease a cock -> cocktease.

But it wouldn't be English without a significant class of exceptions, would it?

English has rather a large store of so-called "phrasal verbs", words which consist of a simple verb followed by a verbal particle like "up", "out", or "with". These particles are considered another type of verbal complement. Since they're almost all identical in form to common prepositions, it can be difficult at times to distinguish phrasal verbs from combinations of verb + prepositional phrase. Consider:

We ran out of the houses.

Only context can disambiguate a sentence like this:
We heard an explosion on the water, so we ran out of the houses and onto the beach.
We were playing Monopoly® and we ran out of the houses so we had to use pistachios.

But we don't need to worry about thiswhen talking about nominal derivations, since--AFAICT--these can only be made from true phrasal verbs. (That was rash; just watch me get myself in trouble again.)

Phrasal verbs are hardly unique to English. They're a common Germanic inheritance. But this doesn't mean our Continental cousins deal with them in the same way. Consider German: Like us, when they break something up, they brechen etwas auf. However, they end up with something that is aufgebrochen, not broken-up. And--arriving at my theme--the action is an Aufbruch, not a break-up. If we followed the same rules with phrasal verbs as we did with others, we'd have an *upbreak, just like a jailbreak or a page break.

Of course, we're not entirely consistent. We have outbreaks as well as breakouts (though note the difference in meaning: We don't have breakouts of disease or outbreaks from prison), but no *inbreaks, *downbreaks, *throughbreaks or *awaybreaking republics. Overall, verb + particle = adjective/noun is the way to go. (And, incidentally, it's a way where the Romance languages can't follow.)

Representin'

It's been a while since I've spied any gang tags around. I try to keep an eye out for them, and they're nowhere as common in most parts of town as they were when I first moved to Chicago. But I was confronted with one on the el this morning. It said "BLOOD CITY CIRCLE" descending vertically (right right to left, oddly enough) and, below that, "FUCK CRIPS" followed by three sets of initials.

Two things about it immediately struck me:

1. These are two gangs you generally don't hear much about in Chicago, whose powerful local outfits largely shut them out.
2. With the exception of the second one in "Circle", every letter C had an X on the lower left portion of the curve.

It's quite common with gang tags to see a reference to a rival gang. Tags mark turf and, when it changes, the rivals' symbols are crossed out or repeated in inverted fashion, respectively symbolism the "breaking" or "overthrowing" of their control.

As a result, it's common to include the inverted or otherwise mutilated sumbol of a rival even when marking turf afresh, which is what I think is going on here. I know little about the symbolism of the Bloods and Crips, but I'm assuming that "C" is used on its own to represent the Crips often enough that this has become a firm association. The rival gang can't very well write English without using the letter C, so the solution is to systematically "break" the letters and, symbolically, the power of the group they represent.

To give another example of how this works: Almost every local street gang in Chicago belongs to one of two major alliances or "nations". Unlike with the Bloods and Crips, colours are a local choice and you'll find both members of the Folk Nation and the People Nation wearing red or blue. Nation symbolism is directional and numerological. That is, Folk have adopted the right side (for earings, bandanas, etc.) and a six-pointed star or the number six, whereas the People use the left side and a five-pointed star or the number five.

Back in the 80s, Converse high-tops were in style. The People were particularly fond of them because the Converse logo was a five-pointed star. The Folk wanted to follow the trends, but they didn't want to be signifying for rival gangs in the process. Their solution was to roll down the tops of their sneakers so the star was partially concealed--symbolically broken. Furthermore, neither group would lace up their sneakers all the way, but whereas the People would stop at the fifth eyelet, Folk would go all the way up to six.