Re: USAGE: WOMYN (was: RE: [CONLANG] Optimum numberofsymbols,though mostly talking about french now

Nik:
> And Rosta wrote:
> > If I read you correctly, you're reiterating my points here.
>
> Then perhaps I misread you.  I was under the impression that you were
> analyzing woman as a prefix wo- added to the noun man, whereas I'm
> saying that, if it's to be analyzed as a compound at all, it would be a
> word wo with the *suffix* -man, because it acts more like that suffix
> than the independent noun _man_, namely, pronounced /m@n/ as opposed to
> /m&n/.
These, though different, are subtypes of the same thing, judging
by their similar semantics, their common orthography in singular
and plural, their shared absense of -s plural, and the perceptions
of the average user (-man terms are commonly perceived as sexist,
even when the morph involved is clearly your 'suffix' sort).

I was arguing only that _woman_ was wo+man, whatever {man} is, and
not a single morpheme.

> At any rate, I personally suspect there's no one true analysis.  A word
> like that may very well be considered as a compound by some speakers and
> as a single morpheme by others.
I think I said that too in the post you were replying to? So we
can conclude with this point of agreement.

--And.