passerby becomes passersby
Aha - an English infix! Most people are familiar with prefixes and suffixes, but the infix is a rare construction in English (and presumably rare in most of the languages English-speaking students study, since so few English speakers seem to know about them).
30 seconds of Google use uncovered "spoonsful" and "cupsful" as companions of "passersby" — can anyone think of others?
5 comments:
How about BurritosSupreme
Does mothers-in-law count?
So Beth pointed out that the thing being pluralized is not the 'by' or the 'ful', but the noun itself. Almost like it is pluralized and then given its respective suffix (spoon --> spoons --> spoons+ful).
So does it work universally? Handsful? I think I tend to say handfuls, as well as spoonfuls. Maybe this is a ignorant adaption on my part.
Grant/Mom:
I think those are all separate words combined together, so they don't count.
Dano:
When "ful" is used as a suffix, it is a derivational suffix. The same seems to be true for "by", although it appears to be less frequent. Usually derivation means it takes a word of one category and transforms it into a word of another category; i.e. "lust" (a noun) becomes "lustful" (an adjective). In the "lust" case, "ful" is definitely being used as a derivational suffix. More rare is what happens in this case: it does not change word category, but only creates a new lexeme.
The problem with treating this as "spoon --> spoons --> spoonsful" is that you can't derive new words from an inflected form of a word; rather, you inflect the new word which was derived from the original. There are two separate root words here: "spoon" and "spoonful". Yes, "spoonful" is derived from "spoon". However, derivation (as opposed to inflection) requires that "spoonful" is a new, unique lexeme and is not considered an inflected form of "spoon". This is why "spoon" and "spoonful" have separate dictionary entries, while "spoon" and "spoons" do not; they are separate root words.
My assertion is that you can't derive from an inflected form, but you are able to inflect a derived form. This is because a derived form is a new root word, while an inflected form is merely a conjugation, tensing, et cetera for the original root word.
So, the conclusion I come to is that "ful" and "by" in these words are derivational affixes (indeed, they are listed as such, and can only be considered this way), and that the inflection (pluralization) of the lexeme "spoonful" is indeed taking place via an infix.
"Handsful" and "spoonsful" are valid according to Merriam-Webster, but so are "handfuls" and "spoonfuls". Interestingly enough, these "-ful" nouns seem to originate quite a while ago (14th century for spoonful, 12th century for cupful, and 12th century for handful). These three all have the same sort of meaning: what can be held by the related, separate noun. I think the pluralization-via-infix is an older construction, or one that has been integrated from another language. It's not universal, though -- Merriam-Webster contains "carfuls" but not "carsful". Age of origin seems to be the key.
smarty, smarty, 2X4, can't fit his head through the front door
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