gentile = ethnonymic (was: Heard on The Judges: crack)

[Mark Mandel]

On Sat, Apr 12, 2008 at 3:20 PM, Arnold M. Zwicky
<zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:

>  the terminology in this area seems remarkably confused.  "demonym",
>  "gentilic", and "ethnonym" all have some uses in the technical
>  literature, but not always consistently.  we need labels for (at
>  least)

[rearranged as list -- m a m]

> proper nouns that refer to places (or regions or nations),

toponym

>  people from those places,

> ethnic groups,

> and people belonging to those groups,

> and for the corresponding adjectives.

Forwarding to ANS-L.

>  now, in the real world,
>  these categorizations are related to one another in complex ways.  and
>  the words for particular categories also overlap, especially in their
>  morphology, and these overlap with language names and names of
>  religious groups and so on.  it's hard to imagine a terminology that
>  would allow us to keep things straight.
>
>  for instance, what kind of proper [adjective] is "Turkish" in "Turkish
>  invasion" 'invasion by Turkey' -- and "Turkish" in "Turkish invasion"
>  'invasion by Turks'?
>
>  arnold
>
>
>
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>



--
Mark Mandel

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