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From: Tony Xenos and company <ax823092@oak.cats.ohiou.edu>
Subject: Re: Tendency of Inflections to Disappear - Why?
In-Reply-To: <4tgg3h$9t9@carrera.intergate.bc.ca>
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To: cardano <cardano@intergate.bc.ca>
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Date: Mon, 29 Jul 1996 06:44:20 GMT
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On 28 Jul 1996, cardano wrote:

> >Unbe-fuckin-lievable!
> 
> I have only heard Un-fuckin_believable. This sounds "natural" to me,
> but your rendition does not. Is this just my personal quirk, or is there
> more to it? And why does the one sound natural and the other not?  We're
> not talking about a feeling that's based on learning to hear it a
> particular way and not the other, rather I think on some deeper algorithm
> that we have internalized unconsiously for how to go about making
> constructions like this. Anybody know anything specific about this?
> How does it work in other languages?

I would like to dispute that this is dystmesis.  (Perhaps it is, but I
have another thought.)  Unbefuckinlievable is an example of the only infix
in Modern English--the only morphological unit inserted within a word
rather than before (prefix) or after (suffix).

Now, on the question of it's placement, we must distinguish between
syllables and morphemes.  Note:

   un-be-liev-ab-le
   un-believ-able

When adding a morpheme, such as the intensifier, -fuckin-, one naturally
avoids splitting up a multisyllabic morpheme, which might confuse the
meaning.  Note that increfuckindible is impossible, while infuckincredible
works just fine.

The nature of this intensifier is multifaceted.  First, it is derived from
the word FUCK, the most shocking work in the English language.
Unfortunately for those of us who sometimes really need to shock someone,
it has become so overused that it is now rather week.  It has become every
part of speech.  In order to find some last smidgeon of force, it has
adopted a grammatical form entirely foreign to English, the infix.

This form having become common, and not at all rebellious, youth culture,
or whoever uses this word, broke the last rule they could find to extend
the usefulness of this word, they split a morpheme.

Thence, unbefuckinlievable.

--
Tony Xenos                                                     Craig A. Butz
10 Hocking Street              ?                           2498 Mineral Road
Athens, Ohio 45701                           New Marshfield, Ohio 45766-9747
614.593.8746                                                    614.664.6401


