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Great contribution, John, thank you,<br>
<br>
and I agree fully with your comments on and corrections of the affix
dictionary (thanks again for transcribing this).<br>
And here they are, plenty of examples of derivations of intransitive
verbs by means of <i>-en</i> that I was looking for.<br>
<br>
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 <i>en-/em-</i> and not be ascribed to the
transitive-verbalization <i>per se</i>, so despite of the analysis of
the dictionary I am not yet fully convinced that this effect should
indeed be ascribed to <i>en-/em-</i> (at least traditionally, as I
said, it might be getting this effect via words like <i>embitter</i>).<br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid009c01c6f920$1cf696b0$0200a8c0@johnroberts"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">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.</pre>
</blockquote>
I agree (taken the parallel meaning of <i>en-/em-</i> for granted for
the sake of the argument).<br>
This is probably one of the major causes for this form to have a
humoristic effect.<br>
<br>
This reminds me of a similar joke in the german edition of one of the
Asterix issues, where the comical word <b><i>verkomplizieren</i></b>
(literally something like <i>encomplicate(n)</i>, with a simple
intensifying meaning for <i>en-</i>, as I prefer to analyse it)
instead of the sufficient <i>komplizieren</i>. To that time, this was
a joke. But I guess by now <i>verkomplizieren</i> is surpressing the
'correct' but somehow awkward form <i>komplizieren</i>. There are
almost as many hits in google for both words, and the first hits for <i>verkomplizieren</i>
seem not to be ironical.<br>
<br>
Best, Sebastian<br>
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