Re: Grimm shift as starting point of "Germanic"

At 7:57:11 PM on Sunday, March 16, 2008, tgpedersen wrote:

>>> In other words, with some words, you'll have to resort
>>> to 'expressiveness' to explain the gemination, which is
>>> no explanation at all.

>> Why not? In many languages, "expressive" formnations do
>> have their own peculiar phonology and phonotactics, and
>> follow different historical developments.

> What is 'expressive'? What does it express?

Emotional coloring. Indeed, I now see that this is exactly
the characteristic that Larry Trask used to define the term:

*expressive formation* Either of two rather different cases.
1. A modified form of a word possessing additional
emotional colouring, such as small size or affection. ...
2. (also *descriptive form*) A lexical item which is
coined _de novo_, often in defiance of the ordinary
phonological structure of words, and often to denote
something with intrinsic emotional colouring. ...

Brian