[Lexicog] mentee/mentoree

[Hayim Sheynin]

Is it not more productive to classify categories -or/-er  and -ee nouns along active-passive lines? It is clear that both morphologically and semantically -ee
formations are parallel to Latin -atus, -ata, -atum past participles or French participe passe (e accent aigu) . The -ee words that cannot be explained by this concept (like biographee) are formed by analogy.

John Roberts <dr_john_roberts at sil.org> wrote:                                      
 
 Mike Maxwell wrote: 
   
I'm confused by a couple things here (and a lot of things elsewhere in 
the world).

John Roberts wrote:
<snip>
  
        
However, according to Urdang (1982) its current usage has expanded 
beyond these beginnings. Now it has (at least) the following senses:

    
      
<snip>
  
        
2. 'A person or persons that are recipients of the result of an action': 
/amputee/, /biographee/, /selectee/.
3. 'A person furnished with' the thing named by the combining root: 
/custodee/, /patentee/, /mortgagee/.

Senses 1, 2 and 4 are based on the semantic properties of the verb from 
which the /-ee/ form is derived and sense 3 is based on the thing named 
by the combining root. 
    
      
 Is 'biographee' incorrectly categorized?  I don't know of any verb  related to 'biography'.  (One might question whether 'patentee' and  'mortgagee' are correctly categorized, or whether they in fact relate to  the verb, but these cases are less clear, and might have dual sources in  some sense anyway.)    
  I assume the 'action' for biographee is 'write a biography'. The biographer is the one who writes the biography and the biographee is the one whom the biography is about. But I am not clear how the biographee is the recipient of the action - more like the beneficiary - but that would depend on the biography, wouldn't it?
    

        
But Chris Barker's semantic analysis (see below) 
only seems to take into account the senses that can be related to verbs.

The formation of /-ee/ nouns systematically adheres to three essentially 
semantic constraints:
first, the referent of an /-ee/ noun must be sentient;
second, the denotation of an /-ee/ noun must be episodically linked (as 
defined below) to the denotation of its stem;
and third, a use of an /-ee/ noun entails a relative lack of volitional 
control on the part of its referent.

(39) A derived noun N is EPISODICALLY LINKED to its stem S iff for every 
stage </x, e/> in the stage set of N, /e/ is a member of the set of 
events that characterizes S.
    
      
 I don't see anything in this semantic analysis that refers to verbs??  The defn in (39) refers to a stem of undefined category, and stages and  events.  Can't nouns denote events that have stages?   
  You are right. Nouns can denote events. So "biograph" denotes the event of writing a biography and this includes a biographer and a biographee as necessary sentient participants in the event. 
 
 But that still doesn't help us with the derivation below because "ment" is neither a noun or a verb and consequently doesn't name an event. Yet it is apparently more popular than "mentoree".
 
 
-or form      BACKFORM    -ee form
mentor (n) -> ment (v) -> mentee (n)


 John R
 
 
 -- 
 ********************
 John R Roberts
 SIL International Linguistics Consultant
 dr_john_roberts at sil.org
 ********************   
     
                       

       
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