Re: USAGE: Circumfixes

Christophe Grandsire scripsit:

[teddy-bear stuff snipped]

English "teddy bear" is itself interesting.  The stuffed toy bear was
first popularized after a famous incident involving U.S. President
Theodore ("Teddy") Roosevelt (1901-09) refusing to shoot a bear that
had been mauled by dogs and then tied to a tree for his benefit (though
he did order it euthanized).  When the toy and its name spread to
England, "Teddy" was reinterpreted as "Edward" (an interpretation almost,
but not quite, unknown here), so Pooh's formal name is "Mr. Edward Bear"
as a consequence.

> Another example is the word for "orange" in French, Spanish and
> Portuguese. The fact that French has "orange", Spanish "naranja" and
> Portuguese "laranja" (not sure about the spelling for that one) shows
> definitely a case of the article becoming reanalysed as part of the main
> word in Spanish and Portuguese.
French and Portuguese, actually.  The Spanish "n" is part of the original
Arabic < Sanskrit word.  The French is a straightforward matter of loss of
"n" because it was seen as part of an indefinite article (English is
full of these:  adder (the snake) < OE naeddre, e.g.)  Portuguese dropped
the "n" and then added the "l" of the definite article, but then lost
"l" from its own definite articles (now "o a os as") leaving "laranja"
as an unanalyzable freak.

Pretty good choice of .sig here.

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