Is GENERICIDE a bad choice or morphemes?

[Dennis R. Preston]

In Ann Arbor - Ypsilanti, at last fifteen years ago, the buses had a
sign which read "Do not stand in front of the standee line when bus
is moving."

dInIs





>        But there are other words that are used in senses at odds
>with their morphologies.  Consider escapee; one would suppose that
>the person who escapes is the escaper, and the person or thing
>escaped is the escapee, but a different meaning prevails.  Another
>example is looker, which means a person who is looked at, not one
>who looks.  I was also going to trot out informant, which is used in
>lieu of the stigmatized informer, but I guess that isn't really at
>odds with its morphology.
>
>
>John Baker
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
>Of Laurence Horn
>Sent: Friday, March 04, 2005 2:41 PM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Re: Is GENERICIDE a bad choice or morphemes?
>
>
>
>All I'm saying is that a word containing partially productive
>morphology coined with the intention that it is to be used in a sense
>totally at odds with that morphology suggests is misleading at best
>and doomed at worst.  Anyone has the right to coin a word, for
>example, like _unfaxable_ (of a document), but to coin such a word to
>be used for the meaning "capable of being faxed" (or the meaning
>"capable of being shredded more than once, and served with pickles on
>the side") would be rather...peculiar.  If this be prescriptivism,
>make the most of it.


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages
A-740 Wells Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
Phone: (517) 432-3099
Fax: (517) 432-2736
preston at msu.edu