zompist bboard

I was thinking about how English seems to have a productive process of reanalyzing portmanteau components as prefixes or suffixes, and was trying to come up with examples.

I've got:

were-
-gate
franken-
-pedia
-sploitation/-xploitation

Though I suppose some of these are rather borderline - with the question being, did the reanalysis come first, or the portmanteau? I think it can be said with some confidence that -gate, -franken, and -sploitation are true examples of this phenomenon.

Is anyone able to think of more examples? And while I know that many other languages have portmanteaus/blends, are there any that use them as a source of affixes like this?

If I understand correctly, holic.

Werewolf isn't a portmanteau, just an ordinary compound--it's just that the word were for "man" has passed out of common usage. So terms like "werecat" or "werebear" make some degree of sense as simple compounds.

Zaarin wrote:Werewolf isn't a portmanteau, just an ordinary compound--it's just that the word were for "man" has passed out of common usage. So terms like "werecat" or "werebear" make some degree of sense as simple compounds.

I didn't mean that "werewolf" was a portmanteau. I'm suggesting the view that whoever first created the first "were+other animal" word did so unaware of the etymological meaning of "were", either as a reanalysis of "were" as a prefix, or as a portmanteau which was then subsequently reanalyzed.

Porphyrogenitos wrote:I was thinking about how English seems have a productive process of reanalyzing portmanteau components as prefixes or suffixes, and was trying to come up with examples.

I've got:

were-
-gate
franken-
-pedia
-sploitation/-xploitation

Though I suppose some of these are rather borderline - with the question being, did the reanalysis come first, or the portmanteau? I think it can be said with some confidence that -gate, -franken, and -sploitation are true examples of this phenomenon.

Is anyone able to think of more examples? And while I know that many other languages have portmanteaus/blends, are there any that use them as a source of affixes like this?

...NONE of those come from reanalysed portmanteaus. Werewolf and Watergate are simple compound nouns, Frankenstein is a loanword from a proper noun, encylopaedia/cyclopaedia/hypnopaedia/etc are borrowed compound nouns, exploitation is from a prefixed verb.

Were- has been given a more specific use in compounds; -gate and -pedia have been re-analysed as suffixes (though 'wikipedia' is a portmanteau), franken- and -sploitation are elements that are sometimes seen in portmanteaus formed from their parent words. You could argue that -sploitation is sometimes used as a suffix now, but I don't think that franken- is a prefix. [What is a 'frankentable'? A 'frankenpen'? I don't know. I assume they're odd somehow, but that's no more specific than saying 'blurbletable' or 'catopplepen'.]

So OK, you could say that, while they all originated in non-portmanteaus, -sploitation has perhaps had a portmanteau stage in the process. Maybe this is true for -pedia as well, although I'm not convinced.

Salmoneus wrote:

Porphyrogenitos wrote:...

...NONE of those come from reanalysed portmanteaus. Werewolf and Watergate are simple compound nouns, Frankenstein is a loanword from a proper noun, encylopaedia/cyclopaedia/hypnopaedia/etc are borrowed compound nouns, exploitation is from a prefixed verb.

Were- has been given a more specific use in compounds; -gate and -pedia have been re-analysed as suffixes (though 'wikipedia' is a portmanteau), franken- and -sploitation are elements that are sometimes seen in portmanteaus formed from their parent words. You could argue that -sploitation is sometimes used as a suffix now, but I don't think that franken- is a prefix. [What is a 'frankentable'? A 'frankenpen'? I don't know. I assume they're odd somehow, but that's no more specific than saying 'blurbletable' or 'catopplepen'.]

So OK, you could say that, while they all originated in non-portmanteaus, -sploitation has perhaps had a portmanteau stage in the process. Maybe this is true for -pedia as well, although I'm not convinced.

I wasn't suggesting that werewolf, Watergate, Frankenstein, or any other one of the original words were portmanteaus. I'm suggesting that the "were-", "-gate", "-sploitation", and "franken-" were taken from these original words and used in portmanteaus, and because of that usage were subsequently reanalyzed as affixes.

Concerning your example of hypnopaedia, I admit that I hadn't been aware of that. But I meant "-pedia" in its contemporary usage as a suffix for "an encyclopedia about a thing", without reference to the original Greek meaning, which I doubt people are thinking of when creating words such as "Judgepedia" and "Investopedia". Also, "franken-", if not a prefix, is definitely a common portmanteau component, appearing especially in the context of GMOs ("frankenfoods", "frankenfish").

You could add -burger to the list, and maybe -kini.

"-itis", which denotes a disease. For example, Sequelitis ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FpigqfcvlM )

You could add -burger to the list, and maybe -kini.

What is "-kini"? Googling reveals nothing.

Bikini, tankini, mankini...

Speaking of which, -scape(ing) might qualify as well, as in "cityscape," "moonscape," or "manscaping."

I think Porphyrogenitos is right in considering the process to involve some kind of semantic change that could be called portmanteau reanalysis. For them to work the original compound is analysed as a whole and then a semirandom subset of syllables within the word is extracted as and used to refer to an aspect of the whole of the reanalyzed word. So that "werebadger" doesnt just mean "man-badger", but a shapechanging human badger being, and -holic means "addict", and -gate means "scandal". It is actually a really interesting semantic and morphological process and I wonder how many languages even do this. It seems a very American English and recent process likely to be fueld by media writing to me but I may be wrong.

Another example is -(o/a)rama, which I guess means "lots of this thing in one place" and originates I believe from panorama.

How about Mc-, from tonight's Jeopardy episode? Arguably i- from Apple, only since people can't agree what it stands for so you cant just say it's an abbreviation for Internet.

I was going to mention -ster, as in bankster, hipster, and gangster; but aparently it's a rather old morpheme:

From Middle English -ster, -estere, from Old English -estre (“-ster”, feminine agent suffix), from Proto-Germanic *-istrijǭ, *-astrijǭ, from Proto-Indo-European *-as-tar- (suffix). Cognate with Old High German -astria, Middle Low German -ester, Dutch -ster.

Publipis wrote:How about Mc-, from tonight's Jeopardy episode? Arguably i- from Apple, only since people can't agree what it stands for so you cant just say it's an abbreviation for Internet.

Haven't seen the Jeopardy episode, but I assume you mean "quickly and cheaply produced"?