[Lexicog] Pejorative suffixes

[David Tuggy]

Allow me to mount a hobby-horse, though it's one that is very germane to
lexicography and indeed to all the rest of linguistics.

Peter Kirk wrote:

> <snip>
>
> Well, it is the "under" rather than the "-ling" which makes "underling"
> pejorative. And "earthling" was not originally pejorative, although I
> have seen it used as such. I have never seen "courtling".
> <snip>

Peter is looking at this in a practical, somewhat simplistic way, as we
can all hardly avoid doing. I've said similar things plenty of times
myself, and was not wrong for doing so. Nonetheless...

Meanings *are* associations. Particular thoughts, attitudes, emotions,
memories, etc., have become associated with particular linguistic forms:
in the case of lexical items, with patterns of sounds or of written
letters. How do such thoughts, attitudes, emotions, memories, etc., get
associated with the particular forms? Most basically, by repeated
cooccurrence. You hear the sound [rak] over and over again when you are
aware of physical rock in the vicinity, or when the context has already
primed the thought of it in your mind, or you hear the word [dor] over
and over when you can see a physical door, and when the previous or
subsequent context may have made that door salient in your thinking.
(E.g. your mother may have said "ʃət ðə dor" ('shut the door') and you
then saw your older sister shut the door. Eventually, the prompting of
the thought of the substance ROCK by the sound [rak] or the physical
object DOOR by the sound [dor] becomes automatic and largely independent
of context; you can hardly hear [rak] without at least beginning to
think of ROCK or [dor] without beginning to think of DOOR, and most of
the time you entertain those concepts strongly in you mind. You learn
other meanings, related or not, for the form; or associate the meaning
with other forms. E.g. through hearing [rakabay beybi] and other usages,
you learn that [rak] can also mean a lulling, swinging motion, or you
may learn that a friend is named qaya which means ROCK because his name
is Peter, which derives from a Greek word that also meant ROCK, and so
forth.

Some meanings are strongly, to the point of being necessarily, activated
for a given form, whether context independently or in a particular set
of contexts; these are often called denotations. Others may not be as
strongly or inevitably activated, and may in fact be overridden or
denied in many contexts, yet may still be attached to the form. These
are often classed as connotations. But there is no clear dividing line
between them. In particular, there may be no practical or demonstrable
difference between cases where one might say "-ling has pejorative
connotations" or "-ling has a pejorative sense".

The point (that got me started, not the only important point) is,
overlap of meaning with the context is *not* weird, *nor does finding a
meaning in the context mean it is not in the item you are considering*.
On the contrary, if the item you are considering constantly occurs in
contexts having that particular meaning, it will predictably acquire
(become associated with) the meaning.

Peter said 'it is the "under" rather than the "-ling" which makes
"underling" pejorative.' But maybe it is 'the "under" *in addition to*
the "-ling"' rather than '*and not* the "-ling"', that has that effect.
I would thus want to restate Peter's sentence above as follows, for
greater accuracy: '"under" would tend to make "underling" pejorative
whether or not "-ling" had a pejorative sense/pejorative connotations.'
And I would tend to agree with Fritz that, even though I rarely if ever
use the suffix productively, a large enough proportion of the words that
end in it involve a negative evaluation, that for me it has a pretty
strong association with such evaluation, i.e. that this is an important
part of its meaning. I might say it has pejorative connotations, or that
it may have a bit of a pejorative sense, and I wouldn't mean anything
very different with these two ways of talking about it.

(I have not talked about contrast, which also is important for the
establishing of meanings. Note that "under" does not give a particularly
pejorative tone to such words as "under-secretary" or "undergird" or
"undergraduate"; contrasting "underling" with such forms might enhance
the pejorativity of "-ling". )

fwiw,

--David Tuggy


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