Re: Small Derivational Idea

---- Original Message ----
> From: David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...>
> It's based on phonological constraints usually (languages don't
> know about "morphemes".  They're not a very useful theoretical
> device, in my opinion).
Inasmuch as languages aren't sentient, they don't know about anything. But given that
the differentiation between "infix," "suffix," and "prefix" is how
one morpheme adheres to another, it seems counterproductive to reject the
notion of "morpheme" when discussing how infixes work (if you were discussing
"affixing" on the other hand, well, then, that's a different story ;) ).

In English, as the only language I'm fluent enough to comment on :D, it's
certainly true that the rare examples of infixes follow a phonemic rather than
morphemic rule, specifically: a word can take an obscenity infixed
following the first non-stressed syllable, as in "guaran-goddamn-tee,"
"in-f***ing-credible," and "abso-f***ing-lutely". The middle example could be
argued to be a prefix since it comes between two morphemes, but intuitively it
seems like the obscenity has been inserted into the concept represented by
"incredible." Also, there's "a whole nother," which appears to be an infix now,
but may eventually fall into the class of "n" jumping the morpheme barrier (as
in a napkin / an apron coming from the same root; which is to say, hundreds of
years from now, there may be "some nothers," etc.).

> (6) Infixing after the lowest alphabetic letter.
Many more languages don't know about alphabetic letters than don't know about
morphemes. ;) I wouldn't expect any natural, terrestrial language to have such
a rule as this, although, sure, it's possible in an englang.

-- Paul

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