fuckedupness vs. fuckedupedness

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Sep 7, 2004, at 9:58 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:

> I don't think of it as an infix as much as redundant morphological
> marking, parallel in some ways to "sleptwalked", where past tense is
> doubly marked.  Neither "fuckupedness" (74 google web hits) nor
> "fuckedupness" does the job satisfactorily, so when in doubt,
> re-mark.

it's a bit more complex than that, i think.  there's an "-ed" that
makes a syllable on its own, regardless of the phonology of the base it
attaches to.  some occurrences of it are doublets of the modern past
participle "-ed" ("learne`d", "crooke`d", "cusse`d"), but others become
syllabic with the suffixation of "-ness" ("assured" with 2 syllables,
"assuredness" with 4, similarly "marked"/"markedness" and a number of
others; the unaccented "-ed" syllable maintains alternating accent).
these facts would encourage people to think of "-edness" (2 syllables)
as some kind of unit and to attach it to bases of various sorts (even
if they're not *quite* the right sort).  that would not only allow
"fuckupedness" (4 syllables), based on the verb "fuckup" (with final
accent), but also invite "fuckedupedness" (again 4 syllables, with one
nonsyllabic "-ed" and one syllabic one), based on the participial
adjective "fuckedup" (again with final accent).

of course, there may be people with "fuckupedness" and "fuckedupedness"
both with 3 syllables, in which case plain 'ol double marking is the
only thing at work.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)