I'm not sure what the grammatical terms are called so please accept my apology if I explain it a bit unsophisticatedly (is that a word?).
First, let's take a simple example.
Those are self-explanatory. It's a room used for living (activities), a method of conducting a work and a bunch of four-leggers getting together. But how about constellation of three word, such as this?
human computer interaction
Of course, we know what this means, because there's a consensus on the term (and it's vastly known from it's hyphenated correspondent). But what implies that it's not an interaction between computers (across the web using services) which is humanized? Or a cyborg (humanized computer) that's interacting?
So, the question pondering me is this. How should one interpret grammatically based correctly an ambiguous phrase on the following form?
something-a something-b something-c
Are there any rules or preferences as to whether it's:
- a-b'ish c,
- a'ish b-c, or
- something else'ish?