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.