D. V. Demidov

2. The noun as an attribute (“the cannon ball 
proble m”). 
The last case in the previous paragraph presents a special 
linguistic problem, which is sometimes referred to as “the cannon 
ball problem”. One aspect of the problem can be formulated in 
the following way: is it a contact group of two nouns or is the first 
word in this phrase an adjective homonymous with a noun? The 
arguments which support the former point of view are as follows: 
the first word in such contexts does not display any other qualities 
of the adjective, except for the function (it can‘t form the degrees 
of comparison, it cannot be modified by an adverb, etc.); besides, 
sometimes the first noun in such groups is used in the plural, e.g.: 
translations editor. An additional argument is purely semantic, 
cf.: a dangerous corner – a danger signal; the adjective dangerous 
describes the thing referred to by the following noun, so it is 
possible to ask a question “What kind of …?”, while the noun 
danger tells us what the purpose of the signal is, so the possible 
question is “What … for?” [14, p. 156] 
Another aspect of ―the cannon ball problem‖ is as follows: 
can the components of such contact groups be considered two 
separate words, or, as some linguists maintain, is it a kind of a 
compound word? The arguments which support the former point of 
view are as follows: a compound word is a stable, ready- made 
lingual unit, fixed in dictionaries, while most ―noun + noun‖ groups 
are formed freely in speech; besides, they can be easily transformed 
into other types of word-combinations (this type of transformation 
test is known as ―the isolability test‖), e.g., prepositional word-
combinations: a cannon ball à a ball for cannon, space exploration 
à exploration of space, etc.; compound words as a rule need 
additional transformations which explain their ―inner form‖, or 
etymological motivation, e.g.: a waterfall – water of a stream, 
river, etc., falling straight down over rocks. So, combinations like 

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space exploration are combinations of two nouns, the first of which 
is used as an attribute of the other. They may include several noun 
attributes, especially in scientific style texts, e.g.: population 
density factor, space exploration programmes, etc.
It must be admitted, though, that with some ―noun + noun‖ 
word-combinations, especially if they become widely used and are 
fixed in dictionaries, their status becomes mixed, intermediary 
between a word and a phrase, and this is reflected by their one-
word spelling and changes in accentuation; incidentally, the 
lexeme cannonball today is considered a compound word spelled 
jointly according to the latest dictionaries.