This 18th collection of students’ pearls of wisdom, laboriously digitised from hand-written papers, demonstrates once again how students new to the study of language speculate about grammar after having imperfectly absorbed what their teachers think they have taught them.

Test question

The word cleaner is ambiguous. Propose two alternative word-formation rules that explain the ambiguity.

Answers

• This is a verbial stem which gives another Adj with a greater intensity. Or, the affix transforms the action into a person.

• cleaner is an adjective because we can add -er to it.

• the -er in the cleaner is just a coincidence and does not certify degrees.

• The Adj describes a condition better than before.

• The suffix -er makes it comparative to another toilet.

• The -er changes the word into somebody that is doing the action.

• cleaner: N + derivational -er, meaning ‘one who engages in Ns’. Or cleaner: Adj + -er, meaning ‘one who Adj-s’.

• This forms an adjectiver word.

More to come...

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	SpecGram Vol CLXII, No 2 Contents