Re: Grimm shift as starting point of "Germanic"

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...> wrote:

>
> 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.

That's hardly better. Coloring by which emotion?

> 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. ...

And here's apart of my posting you left out:
"
It sounds to me like
someone is playing on the word's connotations of 'hypochoristic' and
'diminutive' but doesn't want to say it straight out, since that would
provide an actual criterion for evaluating the use of that epithet, by
which it would surely fail. Those supposed 'expressive' forms have
nothing semantic in common.
"

re 1)
'small size' = diminutive
'affection' = hypochoristic
That was pretty accurate of me. Now if that's what he means, why
doesn't he say so? Because etc (see above)

re 2)
Once again: which emotion?


Torsten