ToTn

[Mark A. Mandel]

Our Sage Hen Alison Murie (not a cock of any kind. Fnord) inquired:
>>>
 Does this mean I *shouldn't* write to my local npr station to ask their
announcers/news reporters to notice that "preventive" does not have four
syllables?
 <<<

To which Larry noted:
>>>
 Well, they'd probably note (at least I would if I were they) that while
"preventive" does indeed have just three syllables, "preventative" has four.
 <<<

And Alison replied:
>>>
Yeah, sure.  But why?   Preventate ??!  Preventation?!?  I see that OED
(against my expectation) has an entry for "preventative," but I don't get
it.
 <<<

By analogy to such words as "administrative" and "curative". If you haven't
studied Latin (and too few have in these degenerate days), the rules
governing related forms are almost impossible to cipher out:

administration
administrative
administer ~ the deprecable back form* "administrate"
administrator

narration
narrative
narrate
narrator

sensation
sensitive (schwa written with 'i' not 'a')
sense
sensor (not *sensator or *sensitor)

(curation, in technical use only, and in a different sense so not clearly
part of the same set)
curative
cure
curator (in lay use but also a different sense)


Of these four, only the "narr-" set is superficially regular. So what's a
native speaker to do? It *is* confusing. Arme Narr.

m a m

* No, I've never heard/seen anyone else use it. "'It's a joke, son.'"

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