[Ads-l] Antedating of "Suffix"

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Mon Feb 3 00:44:30 UTC 2020


> On Feb 2, 2020, at 12:06 PM, Joe Salmons <000008f18d0e0c45-dmarc-request at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> wrote:
> 
> Are those examples of degrammaticalized affixes? Like, is anti-ism a prefixed form of the noun ism? Muriel Norde has a lot about these, as do other people. 

It’s also possible to use “anti” as a count noun; I think of these as liberated affixes. As Joe says, these are not really a simple case of prefix + suffix.  I’m sure there are better examples in English that don’t involve liberated affixes but I’m not coming up with any offhand.  Arnold probably has some in his back pocket.  

LH
> 
> In Menominee a couple of verb stems have allomorphs that are literally zero phonologically. Below are two inflected forms of a verb, thanks to Monica Macaulay, meaning 'to say so', one with a phonologically realized stem and then an allomorph without:
> 
> ena͞ew 's/he says so to him, her, it (animate)'
> Stem: /aeN-/
> Inflectional suffixes: -a͞ew
> 
> neta͞ekwah 's/he says so to me'
> Prefix: net-
> Stem: zero
> Inflectional suffixes: /-Ekwah/ ([a͞ekwah])
> 
> 
> On 2/2/20, 10:48 AM, "American Dialect Society on behalf of Laurence Horn" <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU on behalf of laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
> 
> Very nice.  Presumably such words have nothing in between the suffix and prefix (or, we might prefer to say, between the prefix and suffix), e.g. “anti-ism”, the philosophy of being against everything, or “postness”, the quality of being too late.  
> 
> I’m also quite fond of _The Compleat Linguist_, a journal that has evidently been discontinued.  I suspect the name has been in the public domain long enough to be revived for a new journal in the field.  (Not quite as catchy as _The Compleat Angler_ for a geometry journal, but still)
> 
> LH
> 
> 
>> On Feb 2, 2020, at 8:42 AM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU> wrote:
>> 
>> suffix (OED 1778)
>> 
>> 1720 John Henley _The Compleat Linguist_ no. 6 (Eighteenth Century Collections Online) 39  There are words made of a Suffix and Prefix.
>> 
>> Fred Shapiro
>> 
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