Re: Small Derivational Idea

On Tue, 24 Feb 2009 12:42:27 -0800, David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...> wrote:

>My favorite morpheme test: Spanish diminutives:
>
>Paco = /pak-/ "name" + /-o/ "masculine"
>Paquito = /pak-/ "name" + /-it/ "diminutive" + /-o/ "masculine"
>Carlos = /karlos/ "name"
>Carlitos = /karl-/ "name" + /-it/ "diminutive" + /-os/ "?!?!?!?"
>or...
>Carlitos = /karlos/ "name" + /-it-/ "diminutive"
>
>Either there is allomorphy among the masculine suffix morpheme,
>or the diminutive has an infix allomorph, giving Spanish hosts of
>prefixes and suffixes and exactly one infix.  Both are rather absurd,
>and entirely miss the point.
Isn't there also _azu'car_ > _azuquitar_?  That one suggests infixing even
more strongly.

But why's it absurd that Spanish would have exactly one infix?  I thought
that languages with infixes tended to have only few of them.

Anyway, are you saying that if you look at this word-and-paradigm style you
should reject the whole concept of "infix"?  You shouldn't use it to
describe a paradigm with a pattern relating forms to the same forms with a
bit stuck inside them somewhere?

Alex

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