Appliquéd & Crocheted - Peculiar inflexion of borrowings

[Gulliver]

Appliquéd is an English-inflected adjective based on an already inflected French term. You do see appliqu[e/é] in English as well, but I think this is more of a nouny adjective than a verby one (I've left my brain at home next to my MA reading).

Crocheted is an English-inflected adjective based on a French noun that we have borrowed as a verb (English verbs all the nouns!) with a sort of pseudo-French pronunciation that is something like /kroʊʃeɪd/ without the tbeing pronounced as /t/.

Discuss.

[brandrinn]

What's noteworthy about either of these? Do you expect English speakers to say [kroSEtEd] ? Why would they ever do that?

[zompist]

The spellings are weird, that's about it. They're quite regular as verbs.

[linguoboy]

Appliquéd is an English-inflected adjective based on an already inflected French term. You do see appliqu[e/é] in English as well, but I think this is more of a nouny adjective than a verby one (I've left my brain at home next to my MA reading).

This has been happening for as long as English has been borrowing French verbs, it's just not always obvious from the spelling, e.g. serré > serried, levée > levied.

[Salmoneus]

English commonly derives verbs from adjectives and nouns through zero-derivation (provided the noun or verb isn't explicitly marked for its part of speech). For example, "slow" is also an adjective, yet is also a verb. And vice versa, of course, as in our noun "paint" from the french "peintier".

[Radius Solis]

Yeah, uncertain what's peculiar here. We borrow words from French, but except sometimes for morphology that we've also previously borrowed, whatever affixes happen to be on the French word as we took it is just part of a new English one-morpheme root, and we then give it regular English morphology. Isn't that the normal way we borrow words? Instances where we borrow multiple forms and maintain their distinction (cactus-cacti, index-indices) are the peculiar cases, AFAIK.

[zompist]

I wonder how many verbs there are like "crochet" where a silent final looks weirder in the past tense. The only one I can think of offhand is rendezvoused, but there must be more.

[linguoboy]

I find sautéed slightly awkward, though it's superior to the alternatives.

[Melteor]

@zompist: Another off the French pattern comes to mind--'filleted' /fI@lejd/ This is the fault of the French orthography and sandhi.

[Salmoneus]

@zompist: Another off the French pattern comes to mind--'filleted' /fI@lejd/ This is the fault of the French orthography and sandhi.

? Present tense (and noun) /fIlIt/, past tense /fIlItId/.

[brandrinn]

Sal, maybe it's an Americanism. I can confirm [fI'le] is the most common pronunciation in the states. How do you not know that after your people made that remake of Gordon Ramsay's hit American TV show?

[Salmoneus]

Sal, maybe it's an Americanism. I can confirm [fI'le] is the most common pronunciation in the states. How do you not know that after your people made that remake of Gordon Ramsay's hit American TV show?

Huh? What show? Sorry, not up on reality stuff.

Here, it's definitely with a /t/. Except when it's a clear french borrowing - fillet mignon, for instance. [Actually, that's probably the only example i can think of]

[Melteor]

@Sal: Don't the British generally use more spelling pronunciations for foreign words than Americans? 'Cause I think you do.

[brandrinn]

Well, they usually say [h]erb with the H intact. And I know some ignorant sons of bitches actually say "[paIjElla]" when referring to the classic Spanish dish.

You might be thinking of the whole "pæsta" "tæco" phenomenon, but I think that's more to do with the Brits not having [a], and having to make a hard choice about which low vowel to use instead. Obviously /A/ would be better, but whatever. It's their dialect.

[Kereb]

I wonder how many verbs there are like "crochet" where a silent final looks weirder in the past tense. The only one I can think of offhand is rendezvoused, but there must be more.

debuted

also, not relevant to silent consonants but still about weirdness of regular past tenses: the past tense of the very few verbs that end in -a gives you -aed, which is ugly as hell. Common one I can think of is subpoenaed ... but when talking of flash or photoshop one sometimes needs to use alpha as a verb. Past tense alphaed. doesn't that look weird? alphaed.

[din]

What I don't get is how French borrows gerund forms of English (sometimes non-existent) verbs, like "shampooing" (!!? for shampoo) or "camping" (for camp site)

[Neek]

What non-existent verbs are you talking? Shampoo seems to be usable as a verb, as in, "I shampoo my hair and I soap up my body." Camp is not a common verb, but you go camping, we're heading up to the woods to camp (cf., to fish, to drink, etc.) "He camps in the backyard" is a perfectively valid statement. It's also regained usage as a term for vidya gamers, to wait around hidden to cap some noob.

Words are borrowed into English as full, inflected forms, however are not used as such--which is unusual, but okay, we'll go with it. Affadavit, for instance, is a noun, even though it's third person singular perfect active indicative form of affido, "I swear." There are plenty of others out there.

The interesting ones, however, is when we reanalyze a word as having an inflection. French pease (singular) gives English peas, which is plural. Now that's fun! I wonder if there were any words ending in -t or -ed that were analyzed as past tense formations, and we backformed a present from it...

[Gulliver]

What non-existent verbs are you talking? Shampoo seems to be usable as a verb, as in, "I shampoo my hair and I soap up my body." Camp is not a common verb, but you go camping, we're heading up to the woods to camp (cf., to fish, to drink, etc.) "He camps in the backyard" is a perfectively valid statement. It's also regained usage as a term for vidya gamers, to wait around hidden to cap some noob.

Words are borrowed into English as full, inflected forms, however are not used as such--which is unusual, but okay, we'll go with it. Affadavit, for instance, is a noun, even though it's third person singular perfect active indicative form of affido, "I swear." There are plenty of others out there.

The interesting ones, however, is when we reanalyze a word as having an inflection. French pease (singular) gives English peas, which is plural. Now that's fun! I wonder if there were any words ending in -t or -ed that were analyzed as past tense formations, and we backformed a present from it...

Pease pudding is a thing made with split peas, I think. But anyway, I've jokily described a ninja as someone who *ninjes (-a sounding like -er), and it's not uncommon for acquiring English children assume that a hammer *hams things like a chopper chops things or a cooker cooks things. I can't think of any -ed ones, though really boring backformations are bound to exist...

Footing as French for "jogging" is the best example of a quasi-made-up one. Yes, footing is a word in English, but I think the French word comes from foot+ing as a made-up verb. (Footing the bill is also unlikely as its source). Cf Fr lifting - a face lift.

[brandrinn]

When I was a kid, I thought "fetid" was a past participle of a verb "to fet." There may be some other morons who were similarly confused about "pallid" or "squalid." But I don't even know if those are loan words.

[AnTeallach]

Well, they usually say [h]erb with the H intact. And I know some ignorant sons of bitches actually say "[paIjElla]" when referring to the classic Spanish dish.

You might be thinking of the whole "pæsta" "tæco" phenomenon, but I think that's more to do with the Brits not having [a], and having to make a hard choice about which low vowel to use instead. Obviously /A/ would be better, but whatever. It's their dialect.

Probably the majority of BrE speakers do have [a], and use it in "pasta" and "taco".

[Terra]

@Sal: Don't the British generally use more spelling pronunciations for foreign words than Americans? 'Cause I think you do.

Is this where the leading /i/ in "evolution", "economy", and "p(a)edophilia" come from?

[linguoboy]

@Sal: Don't the British generally use more spelling pronunciations for foreign words than Americans? 'Cause I think you do.

Is this where the leading /i/ in "evolution", "economy", and "p(a)edophilia" come from?

Aren't these simply examples of preserving etymological vowel length? If you compare cognates in other Western European languages, then American English is really the odd man out here.

[din]

What non-existent verbs are you talking? Shampoo seems to be usable as a verb, as in, "I shampoo my hair and I soap up my body." Camp is not a common verb, but you go camping, we're heading up to the woods to camp (cf., to fish, to drink, etc.) "He camps in the backyard" is a perfectively valid statement. It's also regained usage as a term for vidya gamers, to wait around hidden to cap some noob.

I said that some of the examples come from non-existent verbs -- I just failed to give a good example. Gulliver did, though.

And I very much doubt that the French picked up on 'to shampoo' or 'to camp', because as you said yourself, they're hardly very common as verbs.


What I think is what happened is that they just borrowed -ing, and add it to other English borrowings to make them more English than they already are. I seriously see strange -ing coinages on a daily bases.

[Salmoneus]

@Sal: Don't the British generally use more spelling pronunciations for foreign words than Americans? 'Cause I think you do.

Is this where the leading /i/ in "evolution", "economy", and "p(a)edophilia" come from?

Aren't these simply examples of preserving etymological vowel length? If you compare cognates in other Western European languages, then American English is really the odd man out here.

N.B. 'economy' has a short vowel.

Brandrin: in SSBE, the -id adjectives are -/Id/, rather than participle /-@d/.

[Ser]

Brandrin: in SSBE, the -id adjectives are -/Id/, rather than participle /-@d/.

(Relating to a recent discussion on schwi vs. schwa...) Wait- what?