This 39th 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—Compound Ambiguity

Discuss the ambiguity of the compound English grammarian.

Answers

• -ian is attached to the compound English grammar, not to any grammar of other languages. For the second meaning I change the noun English grammar to the person.

• One meaning is: the grammar is teaching English. Another: an Englishman is in the grammarian department. One is a land of the grammarian (the fact that he is teaching English) in endocentric analysis. This contradicts with exocentric in which it is not a land, in the context.

• English grammarian comes from English grammar and this is a endogenic compound. From the exocentric viewpoint, the grammarian is not a kind of ‘English’.

• It is ambiguous because it does not mean that the grammarian which is the noun is English.

• ‘English grammarian’ has two meanings. One is a person who likes English grammar, as in ‘English musician’. The other English grammarian is a noun which means a person who is English but does not like his grammar.

• Unlike English teacher, this is not a verbal compound which is formed with a verb and an -ed suffix, so we don’t know what the English is the object of.

More to come...

	The Real Etymology of Timothy—Eura U. Pertú
	Philologer’s Kvetchwhinge 33—Mordred Ilktost
	SpecGram Vol CLXIX, No 2 Contents