backformations (again)

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:19 PM -0500 2/3/01, Fred Shapiro wrote:
>On Sat, 3 Feb 2001, Beverly Flanigan wrote:
>
>>  Two last backformations (maybe):  Read in _The Nation_ just this
>>  morning:  someone was "coronated" (figuratively) for something or
>>  other.   And in another written text, "invocating" was used for
>>  "invoking."  Interestingly, these were both written; I would guess more
>>  such usages would occur in speech than in writing, unless they've already
>>  become established and accepted?
>
>Neither of these is new (one dates from 1623, the other from 1526) and
>neither is a back-formation.
>
>Fred Shapiro
>
In defense of Beverly's observations, it might be argued that

(1) "coronate" and "invocate" represent instances of our
resuscitation-of-dead-words thread

(2) while neither is a back-formation, for the reason Fred cites,
each of them may nevertheless be seen as an ontogenetic
back-formation, in the sense that for a contemporary speaker, who has
no access to these defunct verbs (and who, in fact, DOES have access
to the verbs that "should" block them, "crown" and "invoke"), these
verbs ARE back-formed from morphologically more complex items already
in his/her lexicon, "coronation" and "invocation".

larry