Linguist Forum
Specializations => Morphosyntax => Topic started by: vox on September 22, 2016, 09:34:38 AM
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Hi I’m searching for publications about the suffix -ism in english. Thank you.
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Hi Vox and welcome to the forum. Since this is a question about morphology, not about forum policy, I've moved it to the right place.
As for your question I don't know of anything in particular, but maybe more information would help someone to suggest some papers. Are you interested in etymology? In semantics? In structural properties?
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Actually, I’m interested in semantics and structural properties. I work on nouns of doctrines and theories with an -ism ending (populism, feminism, terrorism...). But that -ism also appears in alcoholism, exorcism, mechanism, journalism... So I'd like to know if any linguist has found regularity in its meaning(s) in english words and to compare with french nouns.
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Again I don't know of any research, but the contrast between two uses is especially strange to me. Consider "racism" (or "sexism") and "feminism". Those should mean the same thing (whichever), but they don't.
The different uses probably can be traced etymologically and that might explain why this happened. They might have been borrowed a little differently (maybe one was borrowed later than another or through a different language, even if the origin if the same) or they could come from two similar sources.
Etymonline is a good website start looking for the etymology of a word. In this case, it says:
word-forming element making nouns implying a practice, system, doctrine, etc., from French -isme or directly from Latin -isma, -ismus (source also of Italian, Spanish -ismo, Dutch, German -ismus), from Greek -ismos, noun ending signifying the practice or teaching of a thing, from the stem of verbs in -izein, a verb-forming element denoting the doing of the noun or adjective to which it is attached. For distinction of use, see -ity. The related Greek suffix -isma(t)- affects some forms.
http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=-ism
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Edit to add:
There's also some useful information here and in the related talk page:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-ism
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Talk:-ism
This discussion looks useful too, including the OED entry for -ism:
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/209392/what-is-the-history-and-meaning-of-the-suffix-ism
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Again I don't know of any research, but the contrast between two uses is especially strange to me. Consider "racism" (or "sexism") and "feminism". Those should mean the same thing (whichever), but they don’t.
Yes, that’s one of my issues.
Thank you for the links. They’re very helpful.