Don't know why that would be. I'm using GNU Make 4.1, but this has worked for years and years as far as I knew. Not a particularly useful feature, so I it doesn't really matter, but you messed up my fun fact.
dima@fatty:/tmp$ mkdir dir
dima@fatty:/tmp$ cd dir
dima@fatty:/tmp/dir$ touch foo.c
dima@fatty:/tmp/dir$ make -n foo
cc foo.c -o foo
dima@fatty:/tmp/dir$ make --version
GNU Make 4.1
Built for x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
Copyright (C) 1988-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
