Jay Lake (jaylake) wrote,
Jay Lake
jaylake

[language] Fun with the mother tongue

Someone (who?) recently asked me why in English we can coin neologistic nouns and and verbs, even adjectives and adverbs, but not, say, prepositions.

This topic was discussed at Rio Hondo, and we tentatively decided that particles were highly resistant to change. Try coining a new pronoun. Or worse, a new verb tense.
Tags: culture, funny, language
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