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#affixes

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Stan Carey<p>Readers who get a kick out of unfashionable affixes may also enjoy this post on obsolete be- words, such as:</p><p>BEBUTTER: to cover with butter (1611)<br />BEDINNER: to give a dinner to (1837)<br />BEMISSIONARY: to pester with missionaries (1884)<br />BEMONSTER: to make a monster of (1692)<br />BEPAW: to befoul as with paws (1684)<br />BETHWACK: to thwack soundly (1598)<br />BEWIZARD: to influence by a wizard (1862)</p><p><a href="https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2017/09/25/bewondered-by-obsolete-be-words/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">stancarey.wordpress.com/2017/0</span><span class="invisible">9/25/bewondered-by-obsolete-be-words/</span></a><br /><a href="https://mastodon.ie/tags/words" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>words</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.ie/tags/language" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>language</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.ie/tags/OED" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>OED</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.ie/tags/RareWords" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>RareWords</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.ie/tags/linguistics" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>linguistics</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.ie/tags/grammar" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>grammar</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.ie/tags/etymology" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>etymology</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.ie/tags/affixes" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>affixes</span></a></p>
Joshua McNeill<p>"In this study, we improved the <a href="https://h4.io/tags/methodology" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>methodology</span></a> by teasing out two distinct measures: <a href="https://h4.io/tags/fusion" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>fusion</span></a> (how many <a href="https://h4.io/tags/affixes" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>affixes</span></a> <a href="https://h4.io/tags/verbs" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>verbs</span></a> and <a href="https://h4.io/tags/nouns" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>nouns</span></a> have) and informativity (how many distinctions are made)."</p><p>Yeesh. Regardless of the merits of the study, this is extremely poor framing, especially a <a href="https://h4.io/tags/science" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>science</span></a> <a href="https://h4.io/tags/journalism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>journalism</span></a> article, as it's really just asking if <a href="https://h4.io/tags/fusional" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>fusional</span></a> <a href="https://h4.io/tags/languages" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>languages</span></a> specifically are correlated with environment.</p><p><a href="https://h4.io/tags/linguistics" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>linguistics</span></a> <a href="https://h4.io/tags/grammar" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>grammar</span></a> <a href="https://h4.io/tags/linguisticcomplexity" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>linguisticcomplexity</span></a> <a href="https://h4.io/tags/morphology" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>morphology</span></a></p><p><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-08-evolution-complex-grammars-grammatical-complexity.html" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">phys.org/news/2023-08-evolutio</span><span class="invisible">n-complex-grammars-grammatical-complexity.html</span></a></p>
Sentence first<p><strong>Children’s awareness of irregular&nbsp;verbs</strong></p><p><a href="http://stancarey.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/steven-pinker-words-and-rules-the-ingredients-of-language-book-cover.jpg" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a>I’ve been enjoying Steven Pinker’s <a href="http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/books/wr/index.html" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language</a> (1999). More technical and focused than his popular bestseller <em>The Language Instinct</em>, it is effectively a monograph on linguistic irregularity, examining in particular how we inflect verbs for past tense and plurality, and what the exceptions can tell us about the structure of language and our minds.</p><p>In chapter 7, ‘Kids Say the Darnedest Things’, Pinker points out that children sometimes know that the mistakes they make are mistakes. He cites Dan Slobin and Tom Bever, psycholinguists who inserted their children’s speech errors into their own speech and recorded the results:</p><blockquote><p>TOM: Where’s Mommy?<br>CHILD: Mommy goed to the store.<br>TOM: Mommy goed to the store?<br>CHILD: NO! (<em>annoyed</em>) Daddy, <em>I</em> say it that way, not you.</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>CHILD: You readed some of it too . . . she readed all the rest.<br>DAN: She read the whole thing to you, huh?<br>CHILD: Nu-uh, you read some.<br>DAN: Oh, that’s right, yeah, I readed the beginning of it.<br>CHILD: Readed? (<em>annoyed surprise</em>) Read! (<em>pronounced</em> rĕd)<br>DAN: Oh yeah, read.<br>CHILD: Will you stop that, Papa?</p></blockquote><p>Pinker infers from this, and from the evidence of more controlled studies, that children know irregular forms better than we might suppose; as they progressively master these forms, their errors are ‘slip-ups in which they cannot slot an irregular form into a sentence in real time’. Adults make similar slips, though nowhere near as often.</p><p>The main points of <em>Words and Rules </em> are set out in a <a href="http://www.psichi.org/pdf/pinker.pdf" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">short lecture</a> (PDF) of the same name, while the <em>London Review of Books</em> has a <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n16/charles-yang/dig-dug-think-thunk" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">critical review</a> by Charles Yang.</p><p><span></span></p><p><a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stancarey.wordpress.com/tag/affixation/" target="_blank">#affixation</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stancarey.wordpress.com/tag/affixes/" target="_blank">#affixes</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stancarey.wordpress.com/tag/books/" target="_blank">#books</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stancarey.wordpress.com/tag/children/" target="_blank">#children</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stancarey.wordpress.com/tag/grammar/" target="_blank">#grammar</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stancarey.wordpress.com/tag/language/" target="_blank">#language</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stancarey.wordpress.com/tag/language-acquisition/" target="_blank">#languageAcquisition</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stancarey.wordpress.com/tag/linguistics/" target="_blank">#linguistics</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stancarey.wordpress.com/tag/morphology/" target="_blank">#morphology</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stancarey.wordpress.com/tag/plurals/" target="_blank">#plurals</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stancarey.wordpress.com/tag/psycholinguistics/" target="_blank">#psycholinguistics</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stancarey.wordpress.com/tag/psychology/" target="_blank">#psychology</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stancarey.wordpress.com/tag/speech/" target="_blank">#speech</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stancarey.wordpress.com/tag/speech-errors/" target="_blank">#speechErrors</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stancarey.wordpress.com/tag/steven-pinker/" target="_blank">#StevenPinker</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stancarey.wordpress.com/tag/tense/" target="_blank">#tense</a></p>
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