30.03.2017, 17:58
So I have a task from my University and need some help with it...
If someone has some free time I will be really grateful! We can, of course, communicate trough skype or discord.
The tasks are:
English word formation
Task 1:
For this exercise, you will need an informant who is a native speaker of English. (“Informant” or “consultant” are terms used by linguists for native speakers of a language.) The informant should not be yourself. The informant’s job, under your instruction, is to construct novel words by the process of expletive infixation.
Some examples of expletive infixation are these:
fan-fuckin-tastic un-fuckin-believable Ala-fuckin-bama Cali-fuckin-fornia kanga-fuckin-roo
Other expletives may be substituted if you and/or the informant are offended by this one (flippin' and friggin' or bloody are popular substitutes).
Once you’ve established that your informant is familiar with this process, you should elicit some data. Random selection of words is unlikely to yield much insight. Instead, you need to proceed systematically. For example, go through the following list of words with the informant, and ask whether the result is good or not when the expletive is placed in each of the spots indicated by a hyphen:
fan-ta-stic a-bra-ca-da-bra A-la-ba-ma ca-ta-ma-ran se-ren-di-pi-ty a-po-stro-phe can-teen
Ask the informant to grade his/her judgments on a 1-2-3 scale, where 1=”fine”, 3=”horrible”, and 2 is somewhere in between. Report your results as follows: a-bracadabra 3 (i.e., the informant thinks “a-bloody-bracadabra” is horrible) abra-cadabra 1 (i.e., the informant thinks “abra-bloody-cadabra” is fine) Be sure the informant says the word aloud before passing judgment. Also, make sure that the informant is familiar with the uninfixed word and how it is pronounced.
Now comes the hard and interesting part. What’s the generalization? Look over the cases that all have a 1. Do they have anything in common? What about the cases that all have a 3? Do they have anything in common? When searching for commonalities, be sure to consider the syllables that immediately precede and immediately follow the expletive.
Task 2.
Schm- reduplication is a form of reduplication in which the original word or its first syllable (the base) is repeated with the copy (the reduplicant) beginning with schm-, IPA [ʃm]. The construction is generally used to indicate irony, derision or scepticism with respect to comments about the discussed object:
He's just a baby! Baby-schmaby. He's already 5 years old!
1. Which of the following words does it sound natural to apply schmreduplication to? (If you don’t use or hear these expressions yourself, ask someone who does.)
revenge
pirouette
ballerina
indiscretion
poster
Alabama
bartender
butterfly
dance
banana
police
complaint
apple
map
table
survey
2. What do the words that take schm- easily have in common?
3. What is the rule for creating schm- forms? Give your answer in the form of instructions that would enable someone who didn’t know this construction to correctly produce it.
If someone has some free time I will be really grateful! We can, of course, communicate trough skype or discord.
The tasks are:
English word formation
Task 1:
For this exercise, you will need an informant who is a native speaker of English. (“Informant” or “consultant” are terms used by linguists for native speakers of a language.) The informant should not be yourself. The informant’s job, under your instruction, is to construct novel words by the process of expletive infixation.
Some examples of expletive infixation are these:
fan-fuckin-tastic un-fuckin-believable Ala-fuckin-bama Cali-fuckin-fornia kanga-fuckin-roo
Other expletives may be substituted if you and/or the informant are offended by this one (flippin' and friggin' or bloody are popular substitutes).
Once you’ve established that your informant is familiar with this process, you should elicit some data. Random selection of words is unlikely to yield much insight. Instead, you need to proceed systematically. For example, go through the following list of words with the informant, and ask whether the result is good or not when the expletive is placed in each of the spots indicated by a hyphen:
fan-ta-stic a-bra-ca-da-bra A-la-ba-ma ca-ta-ma-ran se-ren-di-pi-ty a-po-stro-phe can-teen
Ask the informant to grade his/her judgments on a 1-2-3 scale, where 1=”fine”, 3=”horrible”, and 2 is somewhere in between. Report your results as follows: a-bracadabra 3 (i.e., the informant thinks “a-bloody-bracadabra” is horrible) abra-cadabra 1 (i.e., the informant thinks “abra-bloody-cadabra” is fine) Be sure the informant says the word aloud before passing judgment. Also, make sure that the informant is familiar with the uninfixed word and how it is pronounced.
Now comes the hard and interesting part. What’s the generalization? Look over the cases that all have a 1. Do they have anything in common? What about the cases that all have a 3? Do they have anything in common? When searching for commonalities, be sure to consider the syllables that immediately precede and immediately follow the expletive.
Task 2.
Schm- reduplication is a form of reduplication in which the original word or its first syllable (the base) is repeated with the copy (the reduplicant) beginning with schm-, IPA [ʃm]. The construction is generally used to indicate irony, derision or scepticism with respect to comments about the discussed object:
He's just a baby! Baby-schmaby. He's already 5 years old!
1. Which of the following words does it sound natural to apply schmreduplication to? (If you don’t use or hear these expressions yourself, ask someone who does.)
revenge
pirouette
ballerina
indiscretion
poster
Alabama
bartender
butterfly
dance
banana
police
complaint
apple
map
table
survey
2. What do the words that take schm- easily have in common?
3. What is the rule for creating schm- forms? Give your answer in the form of instructions that would enable someone who didn’t know this construction to correctly produce it.