devine@asgb.UUCP (Robert J. Devine) (06/05/85)
> The addition of a middle word, even in the middle of a word, to add > emphasis is quite common in English and many other languages. The > phrase that pops to mind is "big f-cking deal", and most of us (at > least most of me :->) have heard someone say something like > "out-f-cking-rageous!". > > Ken Arnold As opposed to being "quite common", I can't think of any other word besides "fucking" that is inserted into another word (infix?). You can attempt to shoehorn a different word in the same manner, but it doesn't sound right. Assuming that "out-fucking-rageous" sounds right.... Bob Devine
steiny@idsvax.UUCP (Don Steiny) (06/06/85)
> > > > The addition of a middle word, even in the middle of a word, to add > > emphasis is quite common in English and many other languages. The > > phrase that pops to mind is "big f-cking deal", and most of us (at > > least most of me :->) have heard someone say something like > > "out-f-cking-rageous!". > > Ken Arnold > As opposed to being "quite common", I can't think of any other > word besides "fucking" that is inserted into another word (infix?). > You can attempt to shoehorn a different word in the same manner, > but it doesn't sound right. Assuming that "out-fucking-rageous" > sounds right.... > Bob Devine A woman in the linguistics program I was in did a squib on "fucking." I never read it, but from talking to her about the paper I got the idea that she believed that the ability of "fucking" to go most anywere in a sentence was unusual and unique to the word. Fan-fucking-tastic. Fucking fantastic. Fantastic fucking (different meaning, notice?) pesnta!idsvax!steiny Don Steiny @ Computational Linguistics - C/UNIX 109 Torrey Pine Terr. Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060 (408) 425-0832
nather@utastro.UUCP (Ed Nather) (06/06/85)
> > The addition of a middle word, even in the middle of a word, to add > > emphasis is quite common in English and many other languages. The > > phrase that pops to mind is "big f-cking deal", and most of us (at > > least most of me :->) have heard someone say something like > > "out-f-cking-rageous!". > > > > Ken Arnold > > As opposed to being "quite common", I can't think of any other > word besides "fucking" that is inserted into another word (infix?). > > Bob Devine "C'est la stinkin' vie" is a phrase I'm fond of. I first heard it in the US Navy, so its unlikely to be a "cleaned up" version of a phrase more pungent ... "Let's bring this sh*t to a focus!" -- Ed Nather Astronony Dept, U of Texas @ Austin {allegra,ihnp4}!{noao,ut-sally}!utastro!nather nather%utastro.UTEXAS@ut-sally.ARPA
arnold@ucsfcgl.UUCP (Ken Arnold%CGL) (06/07/85)
>> = me > = Bob Devine >> The addition of a middle word, even in the middle of a word, to add >> emphasis is quite common in English and many other languages. The >> phrase that pops to mind is "big f-cking deal", and most of us (at >> least most of me :->) have heard someone say something like >> "out-f-cking-rageous!". > As opposed to being "quite common", I can't think of any other >word besides "fucking" that is inserted into another word (infix?). >You can attempt to shoehorn a different word in the same manner, >but it doesn't sound right. Assuming that "out-fucking-rageous" >sounds right.... Well, to be truthful, I have heard this in English only with cuss words in general. They are often used as power-inducing words, but, if you like, I have also heard "out-god-damn-rageous" and similar constructions. By "quite common", however, I meant that it is commonly known, not that it is very commonly used. I thought that was obvious from context, but nothing ever is around here. Ken Arnold
apm@iclbra.UUCP (Andy Merritt) (06/07/85)
> > As opposed to being "quite common", I can't think of any other > word besides "fucking" that is inserted into another word (infix?). > > Bob Devine Here in England, 'bloody' is often used in this manner, e.g. 'too bloody right' or 'fan-bloody-tastic' Just thought I'd mention it. /^^^\ ( o o ) --w---U---w-- UUCP: ...!ukc!stc!iclbra!apm "Wot, no news?" MAIL: Andrew Merritt, ICL, Lovelace Rd, Bracknell, Berkshire
mmar@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Mitchell Marks) (06/09/85)
Linguists have published a body of fairly serious work on "English expletive
infixation". Some have examined the phenomenon as interesting for its
own sake, and some have used it as evidence for something else.
For instance, here I have "Where You Can Shove Infixes" by
James D. McCawley from Syllables and Segments, A. Bell and J.B. Hooper, eds,
______________________
North Holland Publishing Company 1978. This is an offprint, and the book
must have merged bibliographies at the end, so I can't interpret McCawley's
references to previous literature: Siegel 1974, Aronoff 1976,, and
McCarthy 1977. The Aronoff is Word Formation in Generative Grammar,
---- --------- -- ---------- -------
published by MIT Press as Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 1.
English is a suffixing and prefixing language, so it's peculiar
that infixing is possible for the special case of expletives. But
f*ckin is by no means the only one which will work. Reportedly, speakers
of British English, if they normally say 'bloody' at all can use it
as an infix. I can easily get 'goddam' as an infix. And apparently
most people who do this at all can accept a range of infixes.
The major interest that linguists have taken in the subject is not
in what the infix can be but in where it can go. There seems to be general
agreement by now that it's based on syllable structure and stress pattern,
but the details of that have been subject to dispute. For example, note
the difference between Pennsyl-f_ckin-vania and *Penn-f_ckin-sylvania. Most
people accept the first and reject the second.
If you think you have a good account of how syllable structure
affects where infixes can go, you can turn around and use data about
infixation as evidence for syllable structure. For instance, in the
article cited above, McCawley claims that some speakers have "ambisyllabic
segments" in some words; that is, sounds which they apparently count as
part of both the previous syllable and the following one. The first
[l] in 'illegible' and the [s] in 'transcription' seem to be ambisyllabic
for some speakers, for instance--a claim that McCawley bases on the popularity
of the infixed forms il-f_ckin-legible and trans-f_ckin-scription.
-- Mitchell Marks
I have no idea of my path, except that it ends
gargoyle!sphinx!mmartd@alice.UUCP (Tom Duff) (06/10/85)
Another English word usable as an infix is `whole', as in ``But it's a-whole-nother year.'' This is only semi-interesting, since what is really happening is noncing and resplitting of the compound word an-other into a-nother. Nevertheless, at least formally this is an infix that isn't `fucking', `bloody' or their semantic equivalent.
msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader) (06/14/85)
> > As opposed to being "quite common", I can't think of any other > > word besides "fucking" that is inserted into another word (infix?). > > > Here in England, 'bloody' is often used in this manner, e.g. 'too bloody right' > or 'fan-bloody-tastic' Can all you people really not think of any other example whatsoever? ^^ Mark Brader
zben@umd5.UUCP (06/19/85)
In article <668@lsuc.UUCP> msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader) writes: >> > As opposed to being "quite common", I can't think of any other >> > word besides "fucking" that is inserted into another word (infix?). >> > >> Here in England, 'bloody' is often used in this manner, e.g. 'too bloody >> right' or 'fan-bloody-tastic' > >Can all you people really not think of any other example whatsoever? > ^^ >Mark Brader > Actually, now that I think about it, the granddaddy of all of these must have been "that's a whole nother story", which I was using before I even KNEW any cusswords... For an interesting side topic, why is it "a whole nother" rather than the more logical "an whole other"? Perhaps because of the pain it causes to say "an whole", and your amygdalus/angular gyrus rearranges the syllables to shift the "n" from before the "whole" to after it? -- Ben Cranston ...{seismo!umcp-cs,ihnp4!rlgvax}!cvl!umd5!zben zben@umd2.ARPA