Re: TAN: new words [was: RE: LONG: Latest Wenetaic Stuff]

Quoth FFlores:
> Paul Bennett <Paul.Bennett@...> wrote:
> > "the torch" is heading me-wards at an alarming rate
>
> Wow, you just (re?)introduced a postposition in an IE language!
> I get really surprised when people in this list twist English
> grammar and words in strange fashions -- is this common for
> any of y'all to do, or could it be that conlangers are inherently
> better at spontaneous neologism?
English already has one fully productive and well-used postposition:
"ago".  Because it's a singleton, it often gets marked as an adverb or
something; but its distribution mirrors that of the other adpositions.

As for the tendency to coin new words, I think it's rather common in
English to take some portion of a word and use it as an affix.  Consider
the "-gate" suffix, as in "Whitewatergate", "Zippergate", and various
other political scandals in the US (derived from the name of the Nixon
scandal, "Watergate", the name of the hotel where the dirty deed was
done).  Maybe it's an American thing, but I see this sort of
word-grafting *all the time*.

--
-=-Don Blaheta-=-=-dpb@cs.brown.edu-=-=-<http://www.cs.brown.edu/~dpb/>-=-
The mind is like a parachute; it works much better when it's open.