[Lexicog] embiggen

[Sebastian Drude]

Great contribution, John, thank you,

and I agree fully with your comments on and corrections of the affix 
dictionary (thanks again for transcribing this).
And here they are, plenty of examples of derivations of intransitive 
verbs by means of /-en/ that I was looking for.

But we have no example yet of a pair where the transitivizing effect 
(semantically "make X", or "cause to be X" or "cause to have (property) 
X") can be isolated in /en-/em-/ and not be ascribed to the 
transitive-verbalization /per se/, so despite of the analysis of the 
dictionary I am not yet fully convinced that this effect should indeed 
be ascribed to /en-/em-/ (at least traditionally, as I said, it might be 
getting this effect via words like /embitter/).

> So my conclusion is that either the 'em-' or the '-en' is redundant in 
> 'embiggen'. The sense of [do' (x, Ø) CAUSE [INGR big' (y)] can be expressed 
> by either 'embig' or 'biggen'. 'embiggen' says the same thing twice. So the 
> 'em-' must be being used emphatically here.
I agree (taken the parallel meaning of /en-/em-/ for granted for the 
sake of the argument).
This is probably one of the major causes for this form to have a 
humoristic effect.

This reminds me of a similar joke in the german edition of one of the 
Asterix issues, where the comical word */verkomplizieren/* (literally 
something like /encomplicate(n)/, with a simple intensifying meaning for 
/en-/, as I prefer to analyse it) instead of the sufficient 
/komplizieren/.  To that time, this was a joke.  But I guess by now 
/verkomplizieren/ is surpressing the 'correct' but somehow awkward form 
/komplizieren/.  There are almost as many hits in google for both words, 
and the first hits for /verkomplizieren/ seem not to be ironical.

Best, Sebastian
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lexicography/attachments/20061026/f95f7f2c/attachment.htm>