[Lexicog] embiggen

[Sebastian Drude]

> It says in English it is often used as an intensifier or as a marker 
> of transitivity. But from the words I have seen that have this prefix 
> it seems to me it means 'to make'.
I would say that the additional semantic component "to make" is not an 
effect of the _em-_/_en-_, but of the change of the word class -- of the 
part-of-speech (noun or adjective to verb) and the target verbal 
subclass (transitivity).  As the earlier cited examples of _widen_ etc. 
show, the "make" component (and the transitivity component) is added 
even without the _em-_-prefix.

Now, it seems possible to me that _em-_, besides the original 
intensifying semantic effect in these environment, turns gradually into 
an derivational prefix that marks exaclty this change of word class, 
possibly on order to awoid homonomy as it would result in the cases 
where the _-en_ suffix can not be (or simply is not) added, as in 
_embitter_.

Are there cases (in English or elswhere) where there is conversion or 
derivation by other means such as _-en_, of an adjective (or noun) X 
into an *intransitive* verb (with the meaning "to become X"? 
In English, in this case, if there is a contrasting pair of derivations 
(_Xen_ -- "to become X"  vs.  _emXen_ "to make sth. X"), _em-_ could 
arguably be said to carry the transitivizing meaning component.

Sebastian

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