“Underbussing” in Heather Cox Richardson’s “Letter from an American” on 1 December 2025. #111Words #HeatherCoxRichardson #PeteHegseth #KarolineLeavitt #LetterFromAnAmerican #Venezuela #Bombings #Underbussing #AdmiralBradley #Linguistics #WordFormation #Morphology https://111-words.ghost.io/underbussing-in-heather-cox-richardsons-letter-from-an-american-on-1-december-2025/

Nice agentive -er derivation from an adjective noun phrase in Nabokov's Lolita: "In a street called Thayer Street, in the residential green, fawn, and golden of a mellow academic townlet, one was bound to have a few amiable fine-dayers yelping at you."
#English #wordFormation

New paper on #English #wordFormation with -ity and -ness out.
What is it about? In a nutshell: What determines the choice of ity/ness
for a given adjective? And do the two affixes contribute the same
meaning? (1/9)
#morphology

Nice example for effective affix use: "a disproportionate amount of disapproval". Note the slight cline in #semanticTransparency from the first "dis" to the second.
Source: Jassy Mackenzie, Stolen Lives
#English #wordFormation

One of my favorite #English #wordFormation facts: "atone" is not a #borrowing from Latin or French, but a #MiddleEnglish conversion from "at one", according to the #OED helped by the prior existence of the verb "one" and the usage of "onement". "atone" then took the place of the verb "one".

There's "hairpiece" and there's "earpiece", but while in close proximity physically, they don't have much else in common.
#Composition #WordFormation

Getting ready to leave for #iclc16 in Düsseldorf, here a small teaser for my talk on Tuesday 14:45 on the #affix rivalry between -ity and -ness in #English:
Why to some adjectives take -ity (insular -> insularity), while others take -ness (red -> redness)? Many factors have been considered, I use #distributionalSemantics to explore the role of the adjective's meaning. Mapping the vectors on a two dimensional space with t-SNE, a dimensionality reduction technique, the resulting visualization shows that adjective meaning might indeed be a highly relevant factor. For example, even for adjectives with the same ending -ive, the bases of those taking -ity (e.g. narrativity) and those taking -ness (distinctiveness) fall into two clear clusters.
Looking forward to seeing some of you there :)
#wordformation