[Lexicog] On infixes and tmesis

[Rudolph Troike]

Scott wrote the following:

In Adam's paper "Meaningful Infixing: a Nonexpletive Form", he refers to
McMillan's wording about infixing ? "According to James B. McMillan
(1980, 163), infixing generates a lexeme with "a polysyllabic word as
the matrix and an emotional intensifier (an expletive or a euphemism)
as the insert," such as guaranfuckingtee or unfuckingbelievable.
Infixes are "emotive stress amplifier[s]," and inserts are usually
semantically neutral."
Adams goes on to say, "where an infixing or interposing is not
an "emotional stress amplifier," we observe tmesis or diacope,
instead. The OED says of tmesis,.. ? 1678 (Phillips) "a figure of
Prosody, wherein a compounded word is, as it were, cut asunder, and
divided into two parts by some other word which is interposed, as
Septem Subjecta Trioni, for Subjecta Septemtrioni." The OED says
of "diacope" ? "a division of a word compound into two parts, as,
What might be so ever..for, whatsoever might be"

   A good example of tmesis, following the definition, would be
"a whole nother" -- a usage used twice on CBS news this evening (in
a report on the disputed origin of "sundae").

   However, despite my personal fondness for the late Jim McMillan,
I must disagree with his limited definition of "infix". It would,
it seem, be better to label this insertion of expletives or euphemisms
as "tmesis", and reserve "infix" for its more general and common
use in linguistics as on a par with "prefix" and "suffix", the three
together constituting "affixes". If one follows Item-and-Arrangement
morphological description, it could be held that English has infixing
of the {PAST} tense morpheme in "irregular" verbs such as "run/ran" or
"sing/sang". But other languages may using infixing quite regularly,
as Coahuilteco (a language I work with) marked plural in verbs with
infixes such as -aw- or -ak-. These morphemes (or allomorphs of the
{PLURAL} morpheme) do not occur as independent words, but only occur
in this position.

  Rudy Troike




 
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