Morphology of "antidisestablishmentarianism",

[Lionel Mandrake]

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 ἀ???-, and

-ism < Ancient Greek -???ό? or -????.

[Igel]

1. In Ed Keenan's mathematical linguistics class he pointed out

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]

2. Edward L. Keenan,

the historian of medieval Russia, died in 2015.