Internal Alpha Privative
Posted: Mon May 16, 2022 10:56 pm
In the discussion of the Good Word of the Day "anonymous" mkoplow brought up "internal alpha privative" a technical term I had never encountered before. So I looked it up and found that "alpha privative" is defined as the "prefix a- or an- expressing negation in Greek and in English" (Merriam-Webster). Thus I take it to be either a grammatical term or an etymological term and choose to post my comment here. Examples of a plain alpha privative in English are "atypical," "agnostic" and "asynchronous." But I could not find a definition for "internal alpha privative." In the absence of a definition, I assume that "internal" implies the alpha "a-" that indicates negation is not initial as in the above examples but "internal" the word.
mkoplow said that an English teacher had once said that "diamond" is one of three examples in English of an "internal alpha privative" and challenged the students to find the other two. But before looking for the other two, I want to analyze "diamond." Is it in fact an "internal alpha privative"? I think not. If it were, then "diamond" would consist of three morphemes: "di" a prefix, "a" a negative prefix internal to the word and "mond" the root or stem. but looking at the etymology of "diamond" here
https://www.etymonline.com/word/diamond
and here
https://www.etymonline.com/word/adamant ... ne_v_44101
suggests that the root is "*deme" meaning "break" in the sense of "break horses" and that a+deme would be "unbreakable"
This became "adamantem" in Latin, becoming "*adiamantem" in Vulgar Latin and "daimantem" in Medieval Latin. The alternation from -da- to -dia- appears to be a sort of back formation based on Greek models. The initial "a" is the negation and was lost in Medieval Latin, while the "a" in "dia" is not a negative morpheme. But we are now close to the modern English "diamond" which does not appear to exhibit an alpha privative at all.
mkoplow said that an English teacher had once said that "diamond" is one of three examples in English of an "internal alpha privative" and challenged the students to find the other two. But before looking for the other two, I want to analyze "diamond." Is it in fact an "internal alpha privative"? I think not. If it were, then "diamond" would consist of three morphemes: "di" a prefix, "a" a negative prefix internal to the word and "mond" the root or stem. but looking at the etymology of "diamond" here
https://www.etymonline.com/word/diamond
and here
https://www.etymonline.com/word/adamant ... ne_v_44101
suggests that the root is "*deme" meaning "break" in the sense of "break horses" and that a+deme would be "unbreakable"
This became "adamantem" in Latin, becoming "*adiamantem" in Vulgar Latin and "daimantem" in Medieval Latin. The alternation from -da- to -dia- appears to be a sort of back formation based on Greek models. The initial "a" is the negation and was lost in Medieval Latin, while the "a" in "dia" is not a negative morpheme. But we are now close to the modern English "diamond" which does not appear to exhibit an alpha privative at all.