Trask query

[Robert Whiting]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
On Fri, 24 Jul 1998, Margaret E. Winters wrote:
 
> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
<snip>
> I think you are looking at a reanalysis of morphology - a kind of folk
> etymology at work.  I included a long story about 'alcoholic' in a recent
> paper in "Cognitive Linguistics" on analogical change and Kurylowicz (1997
> last issue I think).
 
I think that this is very close to the mark.  Hock, Principles of
Historical Linguistics, p. 176, treats this as four-part analogy
based on "morphological reinterpretation."  Being analogy, it requires
an original form before it can occur.  Thus, without Watergate, there
could have been no Irangate or Camillagate, as without a model there
is no way to reinterpret -gate as a morpheme meaning 'a government
scandal involving a cover-up.'  It would be interesting to check the
U.S. news sources for the 1920's to see if or how often 'x Dome' was used
in the same sense.
 
Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi