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<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff><SPAN
class=640275818-26032005>David,</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff><SPAN
class=640275818-26032005></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff><SPAN class=640275818-26032005>We should
allow you to mount this your hobby horse more often.</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff><SPAN
class=640275818-26032005></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff><SPAN class=640275818-26032005>Happy
Easter,</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff><SPAN
class=640275818-26032005>Fritz</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader dir=ltr align=left><FONT face=Tahoma
size=2><BR></FONT> </DIV><TT>Allow me to mount a hobby-horse, though it's
one that is very germane to <BR>lexicography and indeed to all the rest of
linguistics.<BR><BR>Peter Kirk wrote:<BR><BR>> <snip><BR>><BR>>
Well, it is the "under" rather than the "-ling" which makes
"underling"<BR>> pejorative. And "earthling" was not originally pejorative,
although I<BR>> have seen it used as such. I have never seen
"courtling".<BR>> <snip><BR><BR>Peter is looking at this in a
practical, somewhat simplistic way, as we <BR>can all hardly avoid doing. I've
said similar things plenty of times <BR>myself, and was not wrong for doing
so. Nonetheless...<BR><BR>Meanings *are* associations. Particular thoughts,
attitudes, emotions, <BR>memories, etc., have become associated with
particular linguistic forms: <BR>in the case of lexical items, with patterns
of sounds or of written <BR>letters. How do such thoughts, attitudes,
emotions, memories, etc., get <BR>associated with the particular forms? Most
basically, by repeated <BR>cooccurrence. You hear the sound [rak] over and
over again when you are <BR>aware of physical rock in the vicinity, or when
the context has already <BR>primed the thought of it in your mind, or you hear
the word [dor] over <BR>and over when you can see a physical door, and when
the previous or <BR>subsequent context may have made that door salient in your
thinking. <BR>(E.g. your mother may have said "ʃət ðə dor" ('shut the door')
and you <BR>then saw your older sister shut the door. Eventually, the
prompting of <BR>the thought of the substance ROCK by the sound [rak] or the
physical <BR>object DOOR by the sound [dor] becomes automatic and largely
independent <BR>of context; you can hardly hear [rak] without at least
beginning to <BR>think of ROCK or [dor] without beginning to think of DOOR,
and most of <BR>the time you entertain those concepts strongly in you mind.
You learn <BR>other meanings, related or not, for the form; or associate the
meaning <BR>with other forms. E.g. through hearing [rakabay beybi] and other
usages, <BR>you learn that [rak] can also mean a lulling, swinging motion, or
you <BR>may learn that a friend is named qaya which means ROCK because his
name <BR>is Peter, which derives from a Greek word that also meant ROCK, and
so <BR>forth.<BR><BR>Some meanings are strongly, to the point of being
necessarily, activated <BR>for a given form, whether context independently or
in a particular set <BR>of contexts; these are often called denotations.
Others may not be as <BR>strongly or inevitably activated, and may in fact be
overridden or <BR>denied in many contexts, yet may still be attached to the
form. These <BR>are often classed as connotations. But there is no clear
dividing line <BR>between them. In particular, there may be no practical or
demonstrable <BR>difference between cases where one might say "-ling has
pejorative <BR>connotations" or "-ling has a pejorative sense".<BR><BR>The
point (that got me started, not the only important point) is, <BR>overlap of
meaning with the context is *not* weird, *nor does finding a <BR>meaning in
the context mean it is not in the item you are considering*. <BR>On the
contrary, if the item you are considering constantly occurs in <BR>contexts
having that particular meaning, it will predictably acquire <BR>(become
associated with) the meaning.<BR><BR>Peter said 'it is the "under" rather than
the "-ling" which makes <BR>"underling" pejorative.' But maybe it is 'the
"under" *in addition to* <BR>the "-ling"' rather than '*and not* the "-ling"',
that has that effect. <BR>I would thus want to restate Peter's sentence above
as follows, for <BR>greater accuracy: '"under" would tend to make "underling"
pejorative <BR>whether or not "-ling" had a pejorative sense/pejorative
connotations.' <BR>And I would tend to agree with Fritz that, even though I
rarely if ever <BR>use the suffix productively, a large enough proportion of
the words that <BR>end in it involve a negative evaluation, that for me it has
a pretty <BR>strong association with such evaluation, i.e. that this is an
important <BR>part of its meaning. I might say it has pejorative connotations,
or that <BR>it may have a bit of a pejorative sense, and I wouldn't mean
anything <BR>very different with these two ways of talking about it.<BR><BR>(I
have not talked about contrast, which also is important for the
<BR>establishing of meanings. Note that "under" does not give a particularly
<BR>pejorative tone to such words as "under-secretary" or "undergird" or
<BR>"undergraduate"; contrasting "underling" with such forms might enhance
<BR>the pejorativity of "-ling". )<BR><BR>fwiw,<BR><BR>--David
Tuggy<BR></TT><BR>
<br>
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