[Lexicog] mentee/mentoree

[Mike Maxwell]

Benjamin Barrett wrote:
> The normal formation is to add -er/-or to get the person doing it and 
> add -ee to the receiver of the action. So employ-> employer, employee, 
> address -> addresser, addressee. There isn't a verb for mentor, but 
> using back formation you get: mentor <- ment and then ment -> mentee. 

There's a substantial difference between deriving a new word from an 
attested word (which is the case with most -er/-ee words, I believe) and 
deriving one from an unattested = back-formation word.  The latter is, I 
think, much odder.  In his 1980 book "Word Formation in Generative 
Grammar", Mark Aronoff claimed that regular word formation from 
non-words (by which he meant uninflected lexemes, as opposed to stems or 
roots) wasn't even possible.  He ascribed apparent cases of word 
formation from non-words to word formation rules which involved a 
truncation process and an affixation process at the same time.

Of course, not everyone bought into that (or buys into it today).  But 
it does explain the extreme rarity (and for some of us, impossibility) 
of words like 'mentee' or 'dediquee'.

A related issue is the apparent morphological complexity of words like 
perceive, permit, perception, permission etc., which are apparently 
frozen Latin(?) morphology.  I forget what Aronoff said about these. 
Other examples he considered were 'raspberry', 'boysenberry' etc., but I 
can't remember what he did with the non-morphemes 'rasp' (except that he 
explicitly did not link it to the verb 'rasp') and 'boysen'.
-- 
	Mike Maxwell
	maxwell at ldc.upenn.edu


 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lexicographylist/

<*> Your email settings:
    Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lexicographylist/join
    (Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
    mailto:lexicographylist-digest at yahoogroups.com 
    mailto:lexicographylist-fullfeatured at yahoogroups.com

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    lexicographylist-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/