Re: Verb-classifiers and preverbs.

For what it's worth, the Japanese seem to have adopted "ism" as an
independent word quite some time before the Westerners who invented
the concept did. It exists as, of course, the katakana loanword
"izumu", which simply means "ideology", "theory", or "way of
thinking". It has also led to "chirarizumu", coming from "chirari", an
adverb meaning approximately "instantaneous" -- Instantaneism, anyone?

Eugene

On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 2:10 PM, Carl Banks <conlang@...> wrote:
>
>  I think a better example than "ish" is "ism".  As in, "I will not tolerate
> racism, sexism, ageism, or any other isms".
>
>  The fact that "ism" can be pluralized, but that you can't normally
> pluralize words with the -ism suffix, indicates that its usage here is as a
> separate word, and not a suffix with an elided base.
>
>  I believe the reason "ism" was able to break free is that English speakers
> tend to parse -ism words as compound words, since -ism is added to a noun
> and results in a noun.  They think of "ism" as a word roughly meaning
> "focus".  Compare the above to the following hypothetical sentence:  "I will
> not tolerate racefocus, sexfocus, agefocus, or any other focuses."  See?
> It's "right" to parse it as a compound in one case, "wrong" in the other,
> but there's really not much qualitative difference between the two.
>
>  Of course what really proves "ism" is a word is it has started serving as
> the root for other words: words such as "ismism", the belief in
> (over)emphasizing isms.
>
>
>  Carl Banks
>