Perhaps because it was supposed to modify “discussions” as a single unit: “[ice cream] discussions” rather than “ice [cream discussions]” or whatever (notice that in speech there’s a difference in stress between the first and second, which in writing hyphenation takes the place of).
Probably not necessary this time, but sometimes there’s ambiguity, which is perhaps why there’s a tendency for people to do it anyway. Either that or he just has some idiosyncrasy where he hyphenates it for the hell of it. Perhaps “ice cream” will at some time become a single word (“icecream”)! Such hyphenation is but the first step in the effort to wordify it!!
Perhaps because it was supposed to modify “discussions” as a single unit: “[ice cream] discussions” rather than “ice [cream discussions]” or whatever (notice that in speech there’s a difference in stress between the first and second, which in writing hyphenation takes the place of).
Probably not necessary this time, but sometimes there’s ambiguity, which is perhaps why there’s a tendency for people to do it anyway. Either that or he just has some idiosyncrasy where he hyphenates it for the hell of it. Perhaps “ice cream” will at some time become a single word (“icecream”)! Such hyphenation is but the first step in the effort to wordify it!!