Re: Grimm shift as starting point of "Germanic"

At 6:05:37 PM on Monday, March 17, 2008, tgpedersen wrote:

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

>> At 12:34:47 PM on Monday, March 17, 2008, tgpedersen wrote:

>>> --- 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?

>> Any, including 'This isn't something prosaic' and 'I want
>> to give this term special emphasis'.

[...]

>>>> 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.
>>> "

>> I omitted it because I thought that anyone reading the
>> definition without prejudice would have seen that it
>> answered the allegation satisfactorily. I still think so.

> Pfft. Anything you haven't heard before is 'prejudice' to
> you.

Eh? *You're* the one who's having trouble with the concept,
not I.

>>> 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 it isn't what he means. Expressive slang
>> formations, for instance, often carry pejorative
>> emotional coloring.

> Trask doesn't say that, so why quote him?

Because his definition was handy and obviously allows for
pejorative emotional coloring (among many others).

>> Augmentatives as well as diminutives can be expressive
>> formations. And the boundary between expressive formation
>> and onomatopoeia is fuzzy; <zing> in 'The Hunan chicken
>> doesn't have its usual zing tonight' is expressive,
>> falling under his (2), but it seems to have an
>> onomatopoetic component when used to describe an arrow
>> flying by.

> And?

I'm partly illustrating the possible range of expressive
formations and partly emphasizing that it's a fuzzy
category, since you seem to be having trouble with that.
(A graded category, actually, and quite possibly radial as
well.)

>> The category of expressive formations is like
>> pornography: it's hard to define and a lot of
>> disagreement over details, but there's considerable
>> agreement on the membership or non-membership of specific
>> candidates.

> What a load of blather.

It would probably make more sense to you if you took your
fingers out of your ears and stopped going 'Nyaa, nyaa, I
can't hear you'.

Brian