Paragoge

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Paragoge

Postby Dr. Goodword » Mon Jun 27, 2022 8:20 pm

• paragoge •


Pronunciation: pæ-rê-go-jee • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: The addition of a sound to the end of a word, as children do when they pronounce dog "doggy".

Notes: Paragoge is a member of a series of common word changes, including its antonym, apocope. Apocope is the chopping off the final sound of a word, as French does whenever coup "blow, overthrow of a government" is pronounced coo. The adjective for paragoge is paragogic and the adverb, paragogically.

In Play: Paragoge is characteristic of many languages. In Finnish, a paragogic [ i ] is added to many borrowed words, e.g. bench became penkki and imp became imppi. All Japanese syllables must end on a vowel or [n] so, when borrowing words from languages that allow syllables to end on consonants, Japanese adds a paragogic vowel, so that hotel become hoteru while baseball becomes besuboru, with paragogic [ u ]s.

Word History: Paragoge comes to us via Latin from Greek paragoge "leading by, adding to the end", based on para "by, beside" + agein "to lead". Agein is a cognate of Latin agere "to make, do" from which we derive the English word for a doer, agent, as well as actor, acorn, and acre. The same root, PIE ag- "to drive, draw, move", may be found in Sanskrit ajati "drive" and ajirah "active, moving", and Greek axios "worthy", which underlies the English borrowing axiom. (Let us add a final note of gratitude to Luciano Eduardo de Oliveira, a long-standing editor of the Good Words, for suggesting today's unusual Good Word.)
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David Myer
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Re: Paragoge

Postby David Myer » Thu Jun 30, 2022 6:20 am

Now here’s an interesting one. A nice word for something we didn’t know there was a word for!

I wonder about the Good Doctor's claim that the antonym refers to missing sounds, for example, French coup pronounced as coo. This is a correct pronunciation. But surely apocope should be used for incorrect dropping of sounds, for example, 'doesn’t' pronounced as 'dozen'.

If the word applies to both incorrect and correct dropping of sounds, it really isn't a very useful word. There should be two words - one for each situation.


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