bob@cadovax.UUCP (Bob "Kat" Kaplan) (03/22/85)
From ck@ima.UUCP: > Why should anybody expect today's students to learn proper grammar > when they are exposed to improper grammar everywhere they go? > [...] > Take, for example, the phrase "a whole nother," as in "that's a > whole nother story." I have heard this countless times, and I > cringe every time. When I was in college, I had a linguistics professor who used the phrase "a whole nother." Other than that, he was a great professor and it was a fascinating class (diachronic linguistics). This class and a few others almost caused me to change my major to linguistics, but that's a whole nother story. -- Bob Kaplan "Where is it written that we must destroy ourselves?"
barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold) (03/24/85)
Back when I taught Exposition at UCLA I ran into a number of students who used the transition "anotherwards." Upon interrogation, it turned out that they had heard the phrase "in other words," deciphered it incorrectly, and... Another instance of misheard idiom resulted in "I am a pole apart from him." --Lee Gold
cjh@petsd.UUCP (Chris Henrich) (03/25/85)
[] Mathematicians sometimes use the phrase "abuse of language" to mean a slightly wrong use of a term or phrase, which is nevertheless helpful in getting an idea across. Hence they occasionally say: "Proof: (by abuse of language) ..." Once upon a time a colleague of mine saw on someone's homework "Proof by abusive language:" Well, why not? It works in net.politics ... Regards, Chris -- Full-Name: Christopher J. Henrich UUCP: ..!(cornell | ariel | ukc | houxz)!vax135!petsd!cjh US Mail: MS 313; Perkin-Elmer; 106 Apple St; Tinton Falls, NJ 07724 Phone: (201) 870-5853
pad@hocsm.UUCP (p.a.dunkin) (03/26/85)
(libation to the line-eater) Reference: <515@ima.UUCP>, <492@cadovax.UUCP> Prefixes and suffixes are common parts of words in English and related languages. "A whole nother" is an example of a whole nother kind of grammatical phenomenon - the infix. Webster's New Collegiate says that an "infix" is "a derivative or formative element ... inserted in the body of a word." "A whole nother" stretches this point a bit, since it consists of a whole word inserted in another word, but I think that "whole" is still considered an infix. Infixes (or, according to some article I read a long time ago, *printable* infixes) are rare in the English language but more common in others, like Latin. (Perhaps it is because there are so few polite examples of infixes that high school teachers do not consider the construction proper. :-) ) Are there any language scholars out there who know whether infixes are correct-but-unusual or incorrect in English? Pat Dunkin (...!houxm!ahuta!hocsm!pad)
benson@dcdwest.UUCP (Peter Benson) (03/27/85)
Rather than an infix, I think "a whole nother story" is an
example of "noncing". Noncing is where a word is mis-divided
into its constituents, commonly in English on an 'n'. Good
examples are "apron" <- "a napron", orange <- derived from
Arabic "naranj", and in the other direction, newt <- "an ewt",
nickname <- "an eke name". So I would suggest "nother" <-
"an other".
A whole nother source for this phrase might be the "swooping"
phenomena so common in modern English. This is where an
intensifier, like "fucking" gets swooped into a word or
phrase, as in "un-fucking-believable".
--
_
Peter Benson | ITT Defense Communications Division
(619)578-3080 | 10060 Carroll Canyon Road
decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!benson | San Diego, CA 92131
ucbvax!sdcsvax!dcdwest!benson | jc@mit-athena.UUCP (John Chambers) (03/29/85)
What's all this about infixes? I missed the start of this one, but I can't resist.... It seems fairly obvious that "another" is just a run-together word pair, analogous to "upstairs" or "doghouse" or "into". The grammatically correct place to attach an adverb in a phrase like "an other" is before the thing it modifies: "a whole other". This is a routine phrase in English writings over many centuries. But what happened to the 'n'? Look up the etymology of "orange". According to at least one handy dictionary, it had an initial "n" originally (in Spanish). But in English, "a norange" sounds a whole lot like "an orange", so.... Anyhow, I think "a whole nother" is kinda cute. I betcha that's why it caught on. What do you make a napple pie out of? Ready??? Pie napples, of course! -- John Chambers [...!decvax!mit-athena] If you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the precipitate.
rob@ptsfa.UUCP (Rob Bernardo) (03/29/85)
In article <116@hocsm.UUCP> pad@hocsm.UUCP (p.a.dunkin) writes: > >(libation to the line-eater) >Reference: <515@ima.UUCP>, <492@cadovax.UUCP> > >Prefixes and suffixes are common parts of words in English and related >languages. "A whole nother" is an example of a whole nother kind of >grammatical phenomenon - the infix. > >Infixes (or, according to some article I read a long time ago, *printable* >infixes) are rare in the English language but more common in others, like >Latin. (Perhaps it is because there are so few polite examples of infixes >that high school teachers do not consider the construction proper. :-) ) >Are there any language scholars out there who know whether infixes are >correct-but-unusual or incorrect in English? > The term infix is traditionally used to refer to word-level constructions, not phrase level constructions (e.g. 'a whole nother'). Like other affixes (suffixes and prefixes), they are used with a word root to form a whole word. In this traditional use of the word 'infix', English does not possess any. English only has suffixes and affixes. However, Proto-Indo-European (from which English descended) did have infixes, and this shows up as irregularities in English. The one example I know of is the infix -n-, which was often inserted in verb roots to form certain verb forms (but not others). It occurs in 'stand', whose past tense and past particle 'stood' lack the infix. However, English does not possess any true infixes that have meaning and are used productively, like true suffixes, such as the plural suffix, which has a certain meaning and can be used (in its variety of forms) with most any noun . The issue of correctness in language is not a scholarly (i.e. linguistic) issue; it is an issue of aesthetics and etiquette; that is the approach taken by linguists (read: those who professionally and study language as a social science, as opposed to language as an art). -- Rob Bernardo, Pacific Bell, San Francisco, California {ihnp4,ucbvax,cbosgd,decwrl,amd70,fortune,zehntel}!dual!ptsfa!rob _^__ ~/ \_.\ _ ~/ \_\ ~/ \_________~/ ~/ /\ /\ _/ \ / \ _/ \ _/ \ \ /
das@ucla-cs.UUCP (03/31/85)
The rhetorical term for the "infix" phenomenon is the wonderful (for word
games) word "tmesis" (tuh-MEE-sis), from a Greek root meaning "to cut"
(related to the medical suffix "-tomy"). The example Webster's gives is
the rather artificial "what person soever" for "whatsoever person". Fowler's
Modern English Usage gives a few more examples. I think (but don't have a
copy with me to check) Fowler says the term includes insertion of phrases,
not just words, as in "It was a -- shall we say -- revitalizing experience."
By far, most instances of tmesis in English involve the ever-popular "fucking"
or its variants:
big fucking deal
Jesus fucking Christ (At Caltech we used "Jesus h-bar fucking Christ")
whoopie-fucka-doo
etc.
I wonder why other "naughty" words aren't used this way. Any subscribers to
Maledicta out there?
-- David Smallberg, das@ucla-cs.ARPA, {ihnp4,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!dasnather@utastro.UUCP (Ed Nather) (04/01/85)
> I wonder why other "naughty" words aren't used this way. Any subscribers to > Maledicta out there? > > -- David Smallberg, das@ucla-cs.ARPA, {ihnp4,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!das A fovorite (slightly cleaned up for public use:) "C'est la stinkin' vie." -- Ed Nather Astronony Dept, U of Texas @ Austin {allegra,ihnp4}!{noao,ut-sally}!utastro!nather
gdvsmit@watrose.UUCP (Riel Smit) (04/01/85)
I found it interesting that in Afrikaans there is an expression
"dit is heeltemal 'n ander storie", or directly translated:
it is completely a different story.
Since "complete" can also mean "whole", and "a different" can also mean
"another", my initial reaction to "a whole nother story" was that it is
an awkward translation of "heeltemal 'n ander storie":
a whole another story --> a whole 'nother story.
--
Riel Smit +1 519 888 4004
UUCP: ...!{ihnp4,decvax,allegra,clyde,utzoo}!watmath!watrose!gdvsmit
CSNET: gdvsmit%watrose@waterloo.csnet BITNET: rs@watcsgmorris@Shasta.ARPA (04/02/85)
> By far, most instances of tmesis in English involve the ever-popular "fucking" > or its variants: > big fucking deal > Jesus fucking Christ (At Caltech we used "Jesus h-bar fucking Christ") > whoopie-fucka-doo > etc. > I wonder why other "naughty" words aren't used this way. Any subscribers to > Maledicta out there? > > -- David Smallberg, das@ucla-cs.ARPA, {ihnp4,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!das It's common in Australia to use 'bloody' in this way. For example, there's a humorous book 'They're a Weird Mob', by Nino Cullotto (not his real name...) which describes an Italian immigrant's first experiences in Australia. A taxi driver takes him to 'Kings-bloody-Cross' -- needless to say, he later gets into all sorts of trouble using this expression.
das@ucla-cs.UUCP (04/02/85)
Well, I checked Fowler last night, and my memory was incorrect -- he defines
tmesis specifically as an insertion into a compound word (as in
"hoo-bloody-ray" (which is one answer to my question of what other naughty
words participate in tmeses)).
-- David Smallberg, das@ucla-cs.ARPA, {ihnp4,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!dasallen@osu-eddie.UUCP (John Allen) (04/03/85)
> A whole nother source for this phrase might be the "swooping" > phenomena so common in modern English. > Peter Benson The technical for what you call "swooping" is infixation, so the person who said that this was an infix was correct. John Allen allen@osu-eddie
benson@dcdwest.UUCP (Peter Benson) (04/04/85)
John Allen from osu-eddie writes that what I called swooping
is properly infixation, as in un-fucking-believable. I don't
want to get embroiled in a terminological dispute so I will
say that, for the most part, I agree. Swooping is
a form of infixation. I call it swooping because John
Grinder(1), another graduate student in linguistics with me in
the eary '70's called it that. It seems on par with, but
certainly not equivalent to, the device whereby people make
clear a misheard word by repeating word with the misheard
syllable emphasized, e.g., "IM"migration not "EM"migration.
That is, swooping seems to operate on a word without regard
for its morphological analysis. One could imagine, for
example, immi-fucking-gration, where I am assuming the root
analysis would be im-migr-ation. (Excuse me, Latin scholars,
for any gross errors). Thus, the noncing of a whole nother
story is similar because it too disregards the morphological
analysis of the word. Perhaps, re-analyzes would also work
here.
So the distinction I was trying to make was between a process
that worked within the standard morphological analysis of a
word and one which either ignores that analysis or
re-analyzes.
--
(1) Yes, the same guy who brings you Neurolinguistic
Programming.
__
--
_
Peter Benson | ITT Defense Communications Division
(619)578-3080 | 10060 Carroll Canyon Road
decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!benson | San Diego, CA 92131
ucbvax!sdcsvax!dcdwest!benson |