Fwd: [SEELANGS] : "Pots.."

[Vitalii Cherednichenko]

Fwd: [SEELANGS] :   "Pots.."


Hugh and colleagues,

thanks for all the learned clarifications,

it was just way too close to the obscene Yiddish borrowing (as it sounds).


Good to know the real meaning.




---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Hugh Olmsted <hugh_olmsted at comcast.net>
Date: Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 7:10 AM
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] : "Potstrochnik" A Second Thought About the Soviet Past
To: SEELANGS at listserv.ua.edu


Vitalii and colleagues:

The normal spelling is подстрочник podstrochnik (from pref. pod
'under' and the nominal formant strok+ as in строка stroka 'line' [of
text, verse].  Of course in this position the last consonant of the
prefix becomes devoiced to /t/, providing the temptation to interpret
and write the word as "potstrochnik'.

It means a literal translation, an interlinear or word-for-word
rendering of a text.

As for the word itself,  it's a representative of a grand old highly
productive pattern of word-formation consisting of prefix denoting
place or relative position + a nominal root + suffix -ник /-nik
(expanded from earlier  adjectival -н+ / -n plus -ик /-ik), giving you
a new noun which means something like the thing which is under / along
/ above (etc.) the object referred to. Stress typically on the
penultimate syllable.

Some common examples:

подоконник / podokonnik 'window sill' (pod + ok#n+ [# used to denote
fleeting vowel, most typically the zero/o alternation]),
подстаканник / podstakannik  'tea-glass holder', (pod + stakan+)
подснежник / podsnezhnik 'snowdrop' [flower that grows and blooms up
from under the late-winter snow) (pod + sneg+ [with of course the
velar mutation you generally get with the ajectival -n+),
подгузник / podguznik 'diaper' (pod + guz+ 'bottom [of a person, or an
animal, or a sheaf of grain - now obsolete in its primary unsuffixed
form])
подлотокник / podlokotnik 'armrest' [on a chair] (pod + lok#t+ 'elbow')
and the like.

And not only with the prefix pod, of course.

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