Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)

Mark J. Reed skrev:
> On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 10:06 AM, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:
>>> What really bemuses me is that Calvin didn't
>>> analyse "weird" as the past participle of a verb
>>> "weir", illiterate as he presumably is...
>> Calvin isn't illiterate. One can tell from the various strips where he's taking
>> (and mostly abysmally failing) various tests at school - he's clearly able to
>> read the questions.
>
> Indeed.  He's a 6-year-old boy enrolled in public school.  Why would
> you assume he's illiterate?
OK, but he ain't very good at spelling, as you can tell
from various samples of his handwriting that have appeared.

> He's also highly intelligent, just, shall we say, not very interested
> in most of the material being presented to him at school.  Poster
> child for gifted programs.  He must even have a store of wisdom
> somewhere, at least if you are a "Hobbes is all in his head" partisan.
Agreed.  BTW he's very much like me at about that age.  I
even had a stuffed leopard (hah!) whose voice was just like
mine except it was falsetto, and who said everything I
hesitated to say.

> I also think English is too full of non-derived -d words (like "word"
> itself) for such an assumption to be reasonable.  Valid for wordplay,
> sure.  Automatically assumed by a native speaker?  Not without further
> supporting evidence.
OK, ý hav this non-nátiv spékr konvinst!

Í'm not a bad spelr, ghyst a non-conformist spelr!

/BP