Morphology of "antidisestablishmentarianism",
an unusually long English word which means opposition to the separation of Church and State, especially in England.
According to Wiktionary,
antidisestablishmentarianism < anti- + disestablishmentarian + -ism.
The morphology is ambiguous, i.e., we could draw different trees. We could have either
antidisestablishmentarianism < anti- + disestablishmentarianism
disestablishmentarianism < disestablishmentarian + -ism
disestablishmentarian < disestablishment + -arian
or
antidisestablishmentarianism < antidisestablishmentarian + -ism
antidisestablishmentarian < anti- + disestablishment + -arian,
with another ambiguity. We could have either
antidisestablishmentarian < antidisestablishment + -arian
antidisestablishment < anti- + disestablishment
or
antidisestablishmentarian < anti- + disestablishmentarian,
disestablishmentarian < disestablishment + -arian.
According to Wiktionary, the rest of the morphology is unambiguous:
disestablishment < dis- + establishment
establishment < establish + -ment,
but a possible alternative is
disestablishment < disestablish + -ment
disestablish < dis- + establish.
The word is only slightly bastardized. Most of the roots are Latin, but the first and last are Greek:
anti- < Ancient Greek ἀντι-, and
-ism < Ancient Greek -ισμός or -ισμα.
Igel
(37,427 posts)that a variety of construction grammar makes the ambiguity unimportant, an artifact of the morphology theory used to construct the derivation.
Completely trashes bracketing paradoxes. Which is what this is a great example of.
Ed Keenan, the linguist, long gone from the world. I'm not sure about the Ed Keenan, Slavist of "Slovo" fame. He might still be kicking.
Lionel Mandrake
(4,195 posts)the historian of medieval Russia, died in 2015.
