[Ads-l] Children's speech sprinkled into serious adult discourse: Gulfie

[Laurence Horn]

Curious.  I would have spelled it “Gulfy” or “Gulf-y”, as in “chocolate-y”, and I don’t find it particularly childish, as opposed to “That’s a nice doggie/horsie”, which are.  The adjectival -y is fairly productive in denominal adjective formation in adult language.

LH

> On Jun 29, 2017, at 12:08 PM, Cohen, Gerald Leonard <gcohen at MST.EDU> wrote:
> 
> An example of children's speech appearing for effect in an entirely serious conversation is "Gulfie" (i.e., the Arabian Gulf); small children often add the -ee sound to nouns to indicate something diminutive and/or endearing, e.g. piggy.  A Pentagon consultant, upset at the effort of the Saudis to isolate and blockade U.S. ally Qatar, said: 'This isn't just some kind of Gulfie dust-up, where we can go out and hold everyone's hands... .The Saudis have handed the Iranians a gift and we're on the outside looking in.'
> 
>     The quote appears in the next-to-last paragraph of the following article:          http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/tillerson-and-mattis-cleaning-up-kushners-middle-east-mess/
> 
> 'The full paragraph says:
> 
> 'The Saudis and Emiratis have told us repeatedly that they want to weaken Iran, but they've actually empowered them," a senior Pentagon consultant who works on the Middle East told me. The Saudi actions, this official went on to explain, have backfired. Instead of intimidating the Qataris, the Saudis have "thrown them into the arms of the Iranians." The result is an uneasy, but emerging Turkish-Qatari-Iranian alliance backed by Russia. "This isn't just some kind of Gulfie dust-up, where we can go out and hold everyone's hands," this Pentagon consultant says. "The Saudis have handed the Iranians a gift and we're on the outside looking in."'
> 
> G. Cohen
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org