On Fri, 17 Oct 1997, Brenda S. Campbell wrote:
>
> "We have increased retirement-plan contributions and life-insurance
> benefits.  We anticipate that these increases will improve our competitive
> standing and help us to weather the current industry-wide slump."
>
> Professor X agreed with the use of the hyphen in "industry-wide" but not
> in the other two instances.  His argument is that "retirement plan" doesn't
> actually modify "contributions" but that the construction becomes
> "something bigger" -- some kind of larger grammatical entity in itself.
> Same with "life insurance."
>
The grammatical entity your professor had in mind was 'compound word'. In
English, we have the freedom to create long compounds on the fly (that is,
brand new ones that are not necessarily already conventional in the
language). 'Retirement plan contributions' and 'life insurance benefits'
qualify as compounds, while 'industry-wide slump' does not. How do I know?
Stress patterns: most compounds (and, so far as I know, all on-the-fly new
ones) have main stress on the first word, and therefore also a rise in
pitch on that word; the remaining words never attain the main stress found
on the first, and the voice remains at a lower pitch throughout the
compound: In reTIREment plan contributions the syllable 'tire' has primary
stress and higher voice pitch than the remainder; same for LIFE insurance
benefits' (try this yourself); while industry-wide SLUMP has main
stress and voice pitch rise on SLUMP (again, try this
yourself). One way to really convince yourself of this is to sing the
phrases; you'll see that the only time you want to hit a high note is on
'tire', 'life' and 'slump'. Indeed, I find that I only want to hit a high
note on the 'slu' of 'slump'.
 
In writing, on-the-fly compounds aren't hyphenated. Conventional
compounds vary as to whether they are separate words, hyphenated, or
written as one word: ice cream, self-help, houseboat. There is some
variation in usage (for instance, I have noticed an increasing tendency to
write 'hometown' as one word lately), but in most cases there is one
'correct' way to do it, and dictionaries can help if you don't remember.
 
As to the hyphen in 'industry-wide', note that the second element is an
adjective where in the other two the second element is a noun; when an
adjective consists of more than one word, it is hyphenated in writing
(cf. 'a four-year-old child vs. 'the child is four years old').
There is much confusion in current student writing about the use of
hyphens. It's like what's happening with apostrophes. I think we can look
forward to some changes in the rules as the next generations move into
positions of authority as editors and publishers.
 
In any case, I'm not sure it's worth getting into a doozy of an argument
with anybody about all this. Either the current generation of learners
will learn the rules that have been traditional for awhile, or those rules
will change in the future of the language. The only time such differences
are important is when they give rise to an ambiguity that can't be
resolved from context. Those cases are worth discussing in detail, because
that's where punctuation is most meaningful, and such discussions
cultivate the ability to plumb subtle meaning differences, which is what
people require to appreciate most of the traditional rules anyway.
 
Hope this helps!
 
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Johanna Rubba   Assistant Professor, Linguistics              ~
English Department, California Polytechnic State University   ~
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407                                     ~
Tel. (805)-756-2184  E-mail: [log in to unmask]      ~
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