[Lexicog] embiggen

[Michael Nicholas]

Dear David,
   Doubtful?

David Tuggy <david_tuggy at sil.org> escribió:
          Assumptions or expectations probably reflected in this discussion: 
1. en-/em- (or any other morpheme) has only one meaning. (I.e. it is not polysemous.)
2. There is only one path from pieces (morphemes) to overall meaning that can be correct.
3. There is a principled distinction between "basic" and "non-basic" meanings which always obtains. (Of course we may not always be able to discern or demonstrate it.)
4. Once a basic sense, always the basic sense.
5. If a meaning component (e.g. “make”) can be shown to come from one morpheme in a word, it cannot come from another.
6. If a meaning component (e.g. “make”) can be shown to be absent in one use of a morpheme, it is absent from all. (This may be #1 above in another form.)
7. If a it can be shown that a given meaning component (e.g. “make”) *needn't* be present in a given morpheme, that proves that it *cannot* be present. (Perhaps this is just a stronger form of #6.)

I find all of these assumptions highly dudacious. (dudible? dubitional?).

mhofwiw.

--David Tuggy

Sebastian Drude wrote:   Thank you, Kenneth,   Two examples that come to mind of en- creating an intransitive verb from a noun are enlist, encyst, though both of these verbs can also be used transitively.
If one could show that the intransitive sense is the basic one, that would be one more argument against em-/en- as carrier of the sense component "to make".

What I was looking for are derivations of intransitive verbs (possibly with the meaning "to become X") exactly WITHOUT em-/en-.  
I probably caused a confusion by mentionning the verbalizing SUFfix -en (as in widen) in this context, easily confused with the prefix in question.

Sebastian

  

         

 		
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