Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: OT: interestin' factoids (mostly language-related)

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Wednesday, August 9, 2000, 2:48
>> >Exstewardesses?> >> I do believe a hyphen is required.
Tom Wier wrote:
>I disagree. If a morpheme is a fully fledged derivational morpheme, and
not
>just a clitic like <'s> nor a compound in a compound word, then why
hyphenate> I suspect usage is changing as we speak. Seems to me Safire has weighed in on this question many a time in his column. (But can't recall whether he's pro or con whatever the Good Gray Times demands.) Use/non-use of hyphens may be a (gasp!) generational thing....... co-conspirator? co-defendant? ex-lover? ex-dictator? non-conforming? non-living? excetera. I've been taken to task for making the possessive of names ending in -s with the simple apostrophe-- Mills' theory, Geurtjens' dictionary, Mr. Roberts' rank..... which I think is OK in British usage. Or am I wrong on all counts?