From: Rick McCallister
Message: 55097
Date: 2008-03-13
> At 8:22:26 PM on Wednesday, March 12, 2008, Patrick____________________________________________________________________________________
> Ryan
> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > I did _not_ write "nihilist"; I wrote "nilist", a
> > reference to your peculiar "nil-grade" terminology
> instead
> > of the standard 'zero-grade'.
>
> Arnaud isn't the only one who failed to understand
> it as you
> intended. I also took it to be a misspelling of
> 'nihilist',
> or possibly a pun on 'Nile'; normal English
> orthographic
> conventions guarantee that <nilist> will be read
> /'naIlIst/,
> not /'nIlIst/. If you want the latter, <nil-ist>
> and
> <nillist> are about your only reasonable choices.
>
> Then again, it would never have occurred to me that
> anyone
> here would fail to recognize the term 'nil-grade'.
> Though
> 'zero grade' is more common, 'nil grade' isn't
> precisely
> uncommon, probably as a direct translation of
> 'Nullstufe'.
> Here, for instance, is a quotation from Piotr's 'An
> Overview
> of the Proto-Indo-European Verb System', 'The suffix
> *-sk^e-/*-sk^o-, usually added to nil-grade bases,
> forms
> iterative (or inchoative) stems'. (There are
> several other
> instances of the term on that page.)
>
> Brian
>
>
>