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About "a whole nother" vs "another": Why do you say it's epenthesis? It seems to me that "a whole nother" is a reanalysis of "another" as "a nother", where "nother" is a free morpheme.
I'm not sure if it really qualifies as tmesis, then, but I think epenthesis is way off. Thoughts?
Quincy 00:33, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Shouldnt this article mention at least one swear-related Tmesis. Its by far the more common example of this phenomenon than the weak examples here
Why in hell would anyone begin a word with tm? lysdexia 07:05, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
or more precisely, why would anyone transliterate greek using tm, since i doubt they pronounced it that way... though they did have some weird prefixes that only work mid-word, like ptero... diptera is easy to pronounce, but pterodactyl is not. ^^'
^^^^^
While there is some controversy surrounding how ancient greeks actually pronounced stuff, for the specific letters Τ and Μ, all scholars unanimously agree that they were pronounced exactly as transliterated in the above example. For what it's worth, they are pronounced the same way even today by native speakers of the language who have no problem pronouncing the word τμησις. Clearly, what is easy to pronounce and what isn't, in terms of sequences of phthongs (try pronouncing that! :P), whether in the middle of a word or at the start, depends on what your native language is. In fact we could have been spared of all those "scientific" pronounciations of classical greek (as the Erasmian pronunciation) if those researchers had been careful not to extrapolate stuff from what seems natural in the contect of their own native languages.
144.32.81.175 16:35, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
Scunthorpe? ed g2s • talk 02:29, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
I removed
since
WS's intent seems to be "no matter how heinous it turns out to be", and "ever" has the force of "always" and thus "anyway". In fact, we should cite evidence that English of that vintage treated "however" as a single word, rather than having "how ever", "what ever", "when ever", etc. as two word phrases that had not yet fused into our corresponding familiar single words.
It may be an example, but there is more work needed to show that, and still more to fit it into the article in that case.
--
Jerzy•
t 03:57, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
>Shouldnt this article mention at least one swear-related Tmesis. Its by far the more common >example of this phenomenon than the weak examples here
The point is about offending and thereby hurting others with imprudent use of language, not how common insults are infixed or how strong or weak it may be. Keep in mind that this page is meant for a general readers; that includes children. Apeman 18:51, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
This article has been tagged as not citing sources for a while (since August 2006), but now there are three sources cited. They may not all be reliable, but they are citations. I'd say we can remove or change the tag. -- Cromwellt| talk| contribs 15:16, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
All my searches have found that tmesis is restricted to the insertion of a word or words between the elements of a compound word. It does not apply to cases where an infix is inserted between the syllables of a word that is not a compound. -- EncycloPetey 18:45, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
Someon has added to our article on the split infinitive a note that the Latin infinitive could be split by tmesis. If that is true, it would be really useful to have an example of it here - in fact we could do with a whole section on Latin, if the phenomenon really does occur. -- Doric Loon ( talk) 18:52, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
It seems the examples are not sorted in any significant way. Alphabetical of the phrase seems to be the most readily apparent solution. -- 66.212.222.254 ( talk) 15:20, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
Are constructions exemplified by "the man in the car's hat" viewed as tmesis? It would appear so, because the prepositional phrase "in the car" has been inserted into "man's". This is a moderately frequent construction in English, so it should go in the article unless for some reason it's considered to be in a different category. Duoduoduo ( talk) 22:17, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
Are these examples in English considered to be tmesis?:
Duoduoduo ( talk) 22:29, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
Are German separable verbs considered an example of tmesis? They consist of a prefix plus a root verb, and when they separate the root verb occurs, then intervening words, then the prefix. Duoduoduo ( talk) 22:37, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
The example involving Stephen Fry is dated June 2011, however there is an earlier verifiable instance dating back to 2003 where he gives examples of tmesis -- in the 4th episode of series A of the television show QI. It's described on the corresponding wiki page. Bigblah ( talk) 10:41, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
Will Self used 'dramatic tmesis' to refer to the interpolation of whole play within two parts of another. Is this standard usage? [1] 58.153.178.87 ( talk) 13:17, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
wouldn't the duplicating syllable rule be better expressed as insertion of a nonsense word constructed from the neighboring phonetic sound, such as "'W-eldiddly-elcome" or "'Wel-diddlyel-come" rather than "'Wel-diddly-elcome" which implies the the duplication is a separate event? can probably deduce more about what is going on with more examples and checking stressed/unstressed, voiced/unvoiced and the other usual suspects. 68.174.97.122 ( talk) 19:10, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
Unlike the Latin example circum virum dare, the Ancient Greek example kata dakrua leibōn is AFAIK a true example of tmesis, as dakrua cannot be considered the complement of kata: the tears are shed, not something else from the tears. In the Latin example, it is really circum virum, "around the man", that is meant, so the ambiguity of the construction is genuine. (Only the unidiomatic use of dare may hint that something is amiss with the interpretation of circum as a plain preposition.)
The background is, of course, that in Proto-Indo-European and Early Indo-European dialects, including Hittite, the construction was NOUNObj + ADVERB + VERB, where the adverb could be interpreted as either belonging closer to the noun (hence, a postposition) or the verb (hence, a preverb). -- Florian Blaschke ( talk) 04:06, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
-- ESP ( talk) 05:34, 11 October 2015 (UTC)
The second of those is also not tmesis. Infixation and tmesis are not the same thing. Kokoshneta ( talk) 17:01, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
"Tmesis is found as a poetic or rhetorical device in classical Latin poetry, such as Ovid's Metamorphoses. Words such as circumdare, to surround, are split apart with other words of the sentence in between, e.g. circum virum dant: "they surround the man"
This is phrased in a way that makes it sound as though circum virum dant comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses. In fact, it doesn't - I have looked through the Metamorphoses in the original Latin today, and these words are not found within this text.
I know, the above phrasing in the article doesn't explicitly say that these words come from Ovid. But it makes it SOUND as though they're from Ovid. I thought they were from Ovid, until I checked and found that they're not. A quick Google search reveals that others have fallen into the same trap as me: <a href=" https://thedailygrime.wordpress.com/2013/08/03/to-infinitives-and-beyond/">this person,</a>, for instance.
Can we replace this with an example that's actually attested in Latin? I can get on the case soon, but I haven't got time at the moment. LegesRomanorum ( talk) 16:21, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
If anyone knows what "In that sense, words such as apron and uncle may be seen as the result of tmesis of napron and nuncle" means, could you explain it in the article? I don't see how those words relate to the passage about "a whole nother". 209.6.200.194 ( talk) 22:30, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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About "a whole nother" vs "another": Why do you say it's epenthesis? It seems to me that "a whole nother" is a reanalysis of "another" as "a nother", where "nother" is a free morpheme.
I'm not sure if it really qualifies as tmesis, then, but I think epenthesis is way off. Thoughts?
Quincy 00:33, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Shouldnt this article mention at least one swear-related Tmesis. Its by far the more common example of this phenomenon than the weak examples here
Why in hell would anyone begin a word with tm? lysdexia 07:05, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
or more precisely, why would anyone transliterate greek using tm, since i doubt they pronounced it that way... though they did have some weird prefixes that only work mid-word, like ptero... diptera is easy to pronounce, but pterodactyl is not. ^^'
^^^^^
While there is some controversy surrounding how ancient greeks actually pronounced stuff, for the specific letters Τ and Μ, all scholars unanimously agree that they were pronounced exactly as transliterated in the above example. For what it's worth, they are pronounced the same way even today by native speakers of the language who have no problem pronouncing the word τμησις. Clearly, what is easy to pronounce and what isn't, in terms of sequences of phthongs (try pronouncing that! :P), whether in the middle of a word or at the start, depends on what your native language is. In fact we could have been spared of all those "scientific" pronounciations of classical greek (as the Erasmian pronunciation) if those researchers had been careful not to extrapolate stuff from what seems natural in the contect of their own native languages.
144.32.81.175 16:35, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
Scunthorpe? ed g2s • talk 02:29, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
I removed
since
WS's intent seems to be "no matter how heinous it turns out to be", and "ever" has the force of "always" and thus "anyway". In fact, we should cite evidence that English of that vintage treated "however" as a single word, rather than having "how ever", "what ever", "when ever", etc. as two word phrases that had not yet fused into our corresponding familiar single words.
It may be an example, but there is more work needed to show that, and still more to fit it into the article in that case.
--
Jerzy•
t 03:57, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
>Shouldnt this article mention at least one swear-related Tmesis. Its by far the more common >example of this phenomenon than the weak examples here
The point is about offending and thereby hurting others with imprudent use of language, not how common insults are infixed or how strong or weak it may be. Keep in mind that this page is meant for a general readers; that includes children. Apeman 18:51, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
This article has been tagged as not citing sources for a while (since August 2006), but now there are three sources cited. They may not all be reliable, but they are citations. I'd say we can remove or change the tag. -- Cromwellt| talk| contribs 15:16, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
All my searches have found that tmesis is restricted to the insertion of a word or words between the elements of a compound word. It does not apply to cases where an infix is inserted between the syllables of a word that is not a compound. -- EncycloPetey 18:45, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
Someon has added to our article on the split infinitive a note that the Latin infinitive could be split by tmesis. If that is true, it would be really useful to have an example of it here - in fact we could do with a whole section on Latin, if the phenomenon really does occur. -- Doric Loon ( talk) 18:52, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
It seems the examples are not sorted in any significant way. Alphabetical of the phrase seems to be the most readily apparent solution. -- 66.212.222.254 ( talk) 15:20, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
Are constructions exemplified by "the man in the car's hat" viewed as tmesis? It would appear so, because the prepositional phrase "in the car" has been inserted into "man's". This is a moderately frequent construction in English, so it should go in the article unless for some reason it's considered to be in a different category. Duoduoduo ( talk) 22:17, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
Are these examples in English considered to be tmesis?:
Duoduoduo ( talk) 22:29, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
Are German separable verbs considered an example of tmesis? They consist of a prefix plus a root verb, and when they separate the root verb occurs, then intervening words, then the prefix. Duoduoduo ( talk) 22:37, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
The example involving Stephen Fry is dated June 2011, however there is an earlier verifiable instance dating back to 2003 where he gives examples of tmesis -- in the 4th episode of series A of the television show QI. It's described on the corresponding wiki page. Bigblah ( talk) 10:41, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
Will Self used 'dramatic tmesis' to refer to the interpolation of whole play within two parts of another. Is this standard usage? [1] 58.153.178.87 ( talk) 13:17, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
wouldn't the duplicating syllable rule be better expressed as insertion of a nonsense word constructed from the neighboring phonetic sound, such as "'W-eldiddly-elcome" or "'Wel-diddlyel-come" rather than "'Wel-diddly-elcome" which implies the the duplication is a separate event? can probably deduce more about what is going on with more examples and checking stressed/unstressed, voiced/unvoiced and the other usual suspects. 68.174.97.122 ( talk) 19:10, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
Unlike the Latin example circum virum dare, the Ancient Greek example kata dakrua leibōn is AFAIK a true example of tmesis, as dakrua cannot be considered the complement of kata: the tears are shed, not something else from the tears. In the Latin example, it is really circum virum, "around the man", that is meant, so the ambiguity of the construction is genuine. (Only the unidiomatic use of dare may hint that something is amiss with the interpretation of circum as a plain preposition.)
The background is, of course, that in Proto-Indo-European and Early Indo-European dialects, including Hittite, the construction was NOUNObj + ADVERB + VERB, where the adverb could be interpreted as either belonging closer to the noun (hence, a postposition) or the verb (hence, a preverb). -- Florian Blaschke ( talk) 04:06, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
-- ESP ( talk) 05:34, 11 October 2015 (UTC)
The second of those is also not tmesis. Infixation and tmesis are not the same thing. Kokoshneta ( talk) 17:01, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
"Tmesis is found as a poetic or rhetorical device in classical Latin poetry, such as Ovid's Metamorphoses. Words such as circumdare, to surround, are split apart with other words of the sentence in between, e.g. circum virum dant: "they surround the man"
This is phrased in a way that makes it sound as though circum virum dant comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses. In fact, it doesn't - I have looked through the Metamorphoses in the original Latin today, and these words are not found within this text.
I know, the above phrasing in the article doesn't explicitly say that these words come from Ovid. But it makes it SOUND as though they're from Ovid. I thought they were from Ovid, until I checked and found that they're not. A quick Google search reveals that others have fallen into the same trap as me: <a href=" https://thedailygrime.wordpress.com/2013/08/03/to-infinitives-and-beyond/">this person,</a>, for instance.
Can we replace this with an example that's actually attested in Latin? I can get on the case soon, but I haven't got time at the moment. LegesRomanorum ( talk) 16:21, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
If anyone knows what "In that sense, words such as apron and uncle may be seen as the result of tmesis of napron and nuncle" means, could you explain it in the article? I don't see how those words relate to the passage about "a whole nother". 209.6.200.194 ( talk) 22:30, 26 May 2020 (UTC)