The Innovative Usage Thread

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Viktor77
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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by Viktor77 »

That's fascinating! Thanks for that tidbit of information.

My husband is so weird. He for some reason has the pin/pen merger in very scattered situations, ie. it's like he has half of the merger. And he often writes 'simi' for 'semi' by mistake because of it.
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linguoboy
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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by linguoboy »

My husband has the pin/pen merge in a single word ("stent") because he learned it from me.

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Viktor77
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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by Viktor77 »

linguoboy wrote:My husband has the pin/pen merge in a single word ("stent") because he learned it from me.
Pretty sure that's the same way my husband acquired it. His father has the merger in a lot of words like 'Wisconsin' and 'semi', etc. whereas his mother doesn't and so he must've picked up on his dad's dialect. But his dad's dialect is completely weird. He doesn't come from anywhere else and yet he somehow has a dialect all his own.
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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by Travis B. »

Viktor77 wrote:Oh and just something really stupid. I've caught myself taking simple past forms of strong verbs and adding -en to make past participles. Thus dranken, tooken, and wroten. I doubt anyone else does this and I only seem to do it when I'm exhausted.
As I have noted before here, I do this a lot when I'm not trying to speak relatively formally. I don't say wroten but I definitely say dranken, tooken, aten, and so on.
Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

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Viktor77
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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by Viktor77 »

I am fascinated by the fact that speakers of English are reinventing old archaic verb forms. The example is in [img=http://i.imgur.com/OqQMOLc.jpg]this image[/img] where the speaker says "he has ever drunken." The past participle drunken reflects the Old English past participle gedruncen, the -en having fallen off over time to give drunk. Now speakers are adding it back on, likely with analogy from the adjective drunken (including myself, I do this too). But I think this is more than just an analogy with drunken. I think speakers are reestablishing the past participle of drunken based on the strong verb conjugation paradigm of participles ending in -en, such as broken, taken, etc. which didn't see their -en disappear.
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linguoboy
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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by linguoboy »

Can you use wanderlust as a verb? And, if so, can it take a direct object or only a prepositional one? In the latter case, which preposition(s)?

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by Sumelic »

linguoboy wrote:Can you use wanderlust as a verb? And, if so, can it take a direct object or only a prepositional one? In the latter case, which preposition(s)?
I myself don't remember ever having done so or ever seeing this. But Google Books gives a number of results for "wanderlusting" and "wanderluster", and even some for "wanderlusted". They aren't especially recent, either--I found several on the first few pages from the 1960s, and one from 1946. All of the usages I saw were intransitive with no complement or adjunct.

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by Zaarin »

linguoboy wrote:Can you use wanderlust as a verb? And, if so, can it take a direct object or only a prepositional one? In the latter case, which preposition(s)?
I wouldn't use it personally, but it wouldn't strike me as overly strange either.
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What ship would bear me ever back across so wide a Sea?”

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by sanskacharu »

I'm usually pretty forgiving when I judge what can and can't be a verb, but verbing 'wanderlust' just strikes me as... intensely strange. I feel like I'd do a double take if I heard it in conversation.
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  • Ku Ṣili -- Lonely Misfit. Can't make up its mind.
  • Ayakadiya -- Standoffish, self-important. Needs More Lexicon.

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by Magb »

Has anyone else noticed a trend of people dropping the nasal in the -ent/-ant suffix? I see it a lot online, particularly with the word "dominant", which people frequently spell "dominate" and presumably pronounce /ˈdɑmənət/. I'm guessing the spelling is by analogy with other words where -ate represents /ət/, such as "desperate" and "intricate", but is it just a misspelling or did the pronunciation come first? Here's an Urban Dictionary entry from 2011 that complains about "dominate": http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... id=5596387. To be honest it might be mostly just that particular word, but I feel like I've seen it in one or two other words that end in -ant as well.

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by Sumelic »

Magb wrote:Has anyone else noticed a trend of people dropping the nasal in the -ent/-ant suffix? I see it a lot online, particularly with the word "dominant", which people frequently spell "dominate" and presumably pronounce /ˈdɑmənət/. I'm guessing the spelling is by analogy with other words where -ate represents /ət/, such as "desperate" and "intricate", but is it just a misspelling or did the pronunciation come first? Here's an Urban Dictionary entry from 2011 that complains about "dominate": http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... id=5596387. To be honest it might be mostly just that particular word, but I feel like I've seen it in one or two other words that end in -ant as well.
"Symbiote"/"symbiont" is a case where both versions are actually considered standard.

With "dominant" > "dominate", one explanation that comes to my mind aside from analogy is nasal dissimilation.

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by jal »

Sumelic wrote:With "dominant" > "dominate", one explanation that comes to my mind aside from analogy is nasal dissimilation.
Wouldn't it just be that there's a verb "to dominate"?


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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by Travis B. »

My thought is this could be vowel nasalization combined with /n/ elision (something that happens very frequently in some English varieties), followed by unstressed vowel denasalization, something that apparently happens at times in English varieties (my own included), reinforced by, as mentioned, dissimilation.
Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by Travis B. »

jal wrote:
Sumelic wrote:With "dominant" > "dominate", one explanation that comes to my mind aside from analogy is nasal dissimilation.
Wouldn't it just be that there's a verb "to dominate"?
The two are not pronounced the same. The verb has /eɪ/ where this has /ə/ or /ɨ/.
Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by KathTheDragon »

But there is a productive rule governing the pronunciation of words ending in -ate, where verbs have /eɪ/ and adjectives have /ə/. It's therefore reasonable to suppose that we don't have a direct change of "dominant" to "dominate", but the creation of an adjective "dominate" from the verb.

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by Travis B. »

KathTheDragon wrote:But there is a productive rule governing the pronunciation of words ending in -ate, where verbs have /eɪ/ and adjectives have /ə/. It's therefore reasonable to suppose that we don't have a direct change of "dominant" to "dominate", but the creation of an adjective "dominate" from the verb.
Tis true.
Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

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linguoboy
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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by linguoboy »

KathTheDragon wrote:But there is a productive rule governing the pronunciation of words ending in -ate, where verbs have /eɪ/ and adjectives have /ə/. It's therefore reasonable to suppose that we don't have a direct change of "dominant" to "dominate", but the creation of an adjective "dominate" from the verb.
Is this productive? What are some examples without parallel formations in -ant/-ent?

I doubt this explanation because I've heard similar pronunciations of words like permanent and pregnant. (I even remember seeing the latter respelled "pregnit" in a comic from the 80s.)

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by Travis B. »

linguoboy wrote:I doubt this explanation because I've heard similar pronunciations of words like permanent and pregnant. (I even remember seeing the latter respelled "pregnit" in a comic from the 80s.)
As have I; I sporadically use such pronunciations myself.
Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by KathTheDragon »

Ah, well, I didn't have the advantage of knowing of those additional examples.

And yes, it is productive - try to think of a verb in -ate pronounced /-ət/, for example. I don't actually know if there are any such examples of homonymous verbs and adjectives; I did spend a while looking, though.

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by linguoboy »

KathTheDragon wrote:And yes, it is productive - try to think of a verb in -ate pronounced /-ət/, for example.
Um...I thought the productive process was deriving adjectives in /-ət/ from verbs, not verbs in /-ət/ or /-eːt/ from adjectives. And I can think of plenty of verbs in /-eːt/ without corresponding adjectives--assassinate, levitate, meditate, reinstate, etc. In fact, having a corresponding adjective in /-ət/ seems to be the exception, not the rule.

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by KathTheDragon »

What? I think you've misunderstood me. I'm not saying that there's a synchronic association or derivational rule between verbs and adjectives in -ate, but rather that if a word in -ate is a verb it's pronounced /eɪt/, and if it's an adjective it's (usually) pronounced /ət/.

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by jal »

Some I can think of from the top of my head:
- subordinate
- coordinate
- concatenate
- expatriate
- attenuate
- federate
- aggregate

There are probably much more.


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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by sanskacharu »

All I can think of for this is dominate [dɑwmɪnejt] and dominant [dɑwmɪnænt]... no schwa there for me. "Dominate" cannot possibly be considered an adjective for me, so part of me had no idea what you guys were on about for a while.
jal wrote: Some I can think of from the top of my head:
- subordinate
- coordinate
- concatenate
- expatriate
- attenuate
- federate
- aggregate
Here's a good list. subordinate [səboɹdɪnejt], and subordinate [səboɹdɪnɪt] are definitely a pair... though for me, the second one is both a noun and an adjective. All of the [...ət] versions are ambiguously nouns or adjectives, to be honest, and I think I'd prefer to pronounce ˈcoordinateˈ as [...ænt]. Coordinant. Spell check says that isn't a word -- how'd it get into my idiolect?
My conlang family:
  • Ukumusi & Mupuasa -- Two peas in a pod. Tired of your nonsense.
  • Ku Ṣili -- Lonely Misfit. Can't make up its mind.
  • Ayakadiya -- Standoffish, self-important. Needs More Lexicon.

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linguoboy
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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by linguoboy »

KathTheDragon wrote:What? I think you've misunderstood me. I'm not saying that there's a synchronic association or derivational rule between verbs and adjectives in -ate
Then you've misused "productive", because that's what that means in this context.

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by KathTheDragon »

What word should I be using, if not productive?

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