Noun as prefix/adjective without any particle after it?

Question

I couldn't shake off this question for a while now. I've seen some example sentences from WordNet for 標準 such as:

• 標準手続き。
• 非標準テキスト。
• 標準室温でワインを出す。

All these sentences effectively present 標準 as an adjective, without any particle after. What confuses me is that I couldn't find 「標準手続き」, nor 「標準テキスト」, nor 「標準室温」 in any dictionary that I looked in, and all present 標準 just as a noun. Not a prefix, nor adjective, nor anything else, nothing.

What am I missing here?

Answer 1

Unlike English "standard" which works both as an adjective and a noun, 標準 is basically just a noun. This means you usually need some particle or a suffix to make it modify a noun. In the case of 標準, it's either 的な or の:

• 標準的な価格
  standard price
• 標準の価格
  standard price

However, both in English and Japanese, two nouns can be directly combined to form a compound with a unique concept. In English, you have countless noun-noun compounds, including "hair spray", "machine learning", "computer virus" and "Hollywood movie". The corresponding Japanese terms are ヘアスプレー, 機械学習, コンピュータウイルス and ハリウッド映画.

Likewise, even though 標準 is a noun, we can say:

• 標準価格
  standard price

標準手続き, 標準室温, 標準偏差 (standard deviation) and so on are the same. They are noun-noun compounds that refer to some fixed idea.

This does not mean you should omit 的な or の all the time. Directly connecting 標準 with some noun will give the impression that it is a predefined idea at least in your industry/workplace. If you simply want to say "ordinary/normal X", you should say 標準的なX. For example:

1. 日本の標準的な車はABCです。
2. 日本の標準車はABCです。

Sentence 1 just means ABC is a car that is very commonly seen in Japan, whereas Sentence 2 sounds as if ABC is officially established by the government as the "standard car".

For similar examples, please read: the omission of an implied "の" creates the appearance of a 四字熟語{よじじゅくご}?

Answer 2

標準 is often used as a prefix or adjectivally depending on how you want to look at it.

The standard language (as in standard Japanese) is 標準語.

Nelson's and my 和英辞典 list a number of other examples that regularly occur,

• 標準化 to standardize
• 標準時 standard time
• 標準偏差 standard deviation (as in statistics)

In your examples, it works the same way:

• 標準手続き a standard procedure
• 非標準テキスト a non-standard text
• 標準室温 standard room temperature, which I think given the rest of the context I would just translate as "put the wine out at room temperature".

Other examples that might be a bit less intuitive

• 標準以上/以下 above/below average=substandard
• 標準的 average