incent : a big SOTA

[Dennis R. Preston]

JL,

Having spent way too much time in both Germanic Philology and the
Rat-Killer at UW Madison in my grad school days, I can only say that
I expected as much.

dInIs

>Drugs and alcohol play an important part in linguistic change.  Ever
>notice how Old English speakers began slurring away their case
>endings ?  Ever notice how much mead they put away ?
>
>   JL
>
>"Dennis R. Preston" <preston at MSU.EDU> wrote:
>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: "Dennis R. Preston"
>
>Subject: Re: incent : a big SOTA
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>JL,
>
>It's very interesting to me that you associate the use of items you
>disapprove of (and which reflect natural linguistic processes) with a
>lack of sobriety. Perhaps you would like to offer a drug-and-alcohol
>(or ludic?) theory of linguistic change.
>
>dInIs
>
>>Since comic relief is the only kind I get these days, I have no
>>objection to words like "incent" (or "burgle" or "truthiness" or
>>"heorshe" or "obnoxify") used humorously or ironically or any other
>>way except soberly.
>>
>>  And since I was paid for thirty years by a state government to get
>>prescriptivist every time I graded a student paper, it's hard for me
>>- as for many others - not to revert to type when, e.g., a state
>>governor repeatedly uses a neologism that makes him sound like a
>>dope. (To a pure descriptivist, of course, no usage can possibly
>>make you sound like a dope; it's just linguistic change. Which
>>approach best characterizes reality ?)
>>
>>  Allow me to reassure everyone that, first, I think users of
>>"incent" should not really be scourged, just sentenced to community
>>service; and, second, I don't really believe that the existence of
>>this stupidism heralds the Death of English, End of the World, Heat
>>Death of the Universe, Reversal of the Big Bang, or the like.
>>
>>  But such things do have to start somewhere.
>>
>>  JL
>>Michael McKernan wrote:
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>Sender: American Dialect Society
>>Poster: Michael McKernan
>>Subject: Re: incent : a big SOTA
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>>Subject: Re: incent : a big SOTA
>>
>>>Nice try, Mike, but OED shows "invect" to be a rather uncommon 16th-17th
>>>C. term, an alternative to _inveigh_, and regards it as having been
>>>abstracted straight from Latin _invectus_, past ppl. of _invehere_. They
>>>don't see it as a back-formation from _invective_.
>>>
>>>  Of course, it could be, *in theory*. ("Communism works too--*in theory*
>>>! " --Homer Simpson.) But evidently the idea of forming a verb in such a
>>>way was so unthinkable to the OED editors that they didn't...er, think of
>>>it.
>>>
>>
>>Thanks for supplying the OED canon on invect. No argument from me on the
>>uncommon quality of the verb. OTOH, 'invective' has a bit more in the way
>>of legs, which I thought was more of what you were looking for: reasonably
>>common noun forms. (Which might argue for naive back-formation? I did
>>google some current 'invect' usage, probably not derived from study of
>>historical lexicography.)
>>
>>It seems to me that many English speakers may well infer a 'rule' that
>>subtracting 'ive' suffixes will provide verb forms, if mostly from
>>adjectives rather than nouns. Is this a rather subtle distinction? Do we
>>not risk the 'prescriptivist' label if we insist on demonstrable
>>back-formation?
>>
>>To what level of detail do naive would-be-rule-applying speakers have to
>>examine their assumptions?
>>
>>In my own ignorance, I suppose that many assumptions concerning rules are
>>phonetic and/or visual: if it sounds like a duck, and looks like a duck,
>>it is a duck, regardless of back-formation...but perhaps Jonathan is
>>claiming otherwise, based on a paucity of specific empirical exx.?
>>Personally, I can see choosing 'incent,' even as an obvious neologism, in
>  >some situations, either for comic relief or emphasis, or even to make a
>>point about prescriptivism, etc.
>>
>>Waiting patiently to be further educated, I remain,
>>
>>yours truly,
>>
>>
>>Michael McKernan
>>
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>>
>>
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>
>--
>Dennis R. Preston
>University Distinguished Professor
>Department of English
>Morrill Hall 15-C
>Michigan State University
>East Lansing, MI 48824-1036 USA
>Office: (517) 353-4736
>Fax: (517) 353-3755
>
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--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of English
Morrill Hall 15-C
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1036 USA
Office: (517) 353-4736
Fax: (517) 353-3755

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org