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From: rob@ptsfa.UUCP (Rob Bernardo)
Newsgroups: net.flame,net.nlang
Subject: Re: A whole nother story
Message-ID: <539@ptsfa.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 29-Mar-85 14:12:29 EST
Article-I.D.: ptsfa.539
Posted: Fri Mar 29 14:12:29 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 4-Apr-85 05:44:22 EST
References: <116@hocsm.UUCP>
Reply-To: rob@ptsfa.UUCP (Rob Bernardo)
Organization: Pacific Bell, San Francisco
Lines: 49
Xref: watmath net.flame:9090 net.nlang:2845
Summary: Infixes in English

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

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