Re: Personal adjectives (was: Fruitful typos (was: Vulgar Latin))

At 07:35 +0100 23.1.2000, Raymond Brown wrote:
>
>But I was thinking of the personal name.  While we happily form 'Chomskyan'
>and 'Chomskyite' (with different implications), we do not readily form
>adjectives like 'Noamian', 'Noamic' or whatever from his personal name.
I've heard "Noamy" used about a prose-style deliberatly imitating his.  By
an inebriated native AmEng speaker, very deprecative!

>It appeared from Philip's mail, that Swedish can happily do this.
Yes, but with the stress on "happily", since it is mostly jocular with
first names, unless it is a very famous bearer of the name intended.
"Gustaviansk" for the period of king Gustaf III is common.

OTOH the suffix -(i)sk can and is freely attached to family names.  An
expression like "den strindbergska dramaturgin" would be unremarkable, if
very much written-stylish.



/BP

 B.Philip Jonsson  <mailto: bpj@...> <mailto: melroch@...>
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