2018/10/19 by Benjamin Slade · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies #Linguistic Variation and Morphology #Swearing, Euphemism, Multilingualism #Syllable #Morpheme #Linguistics #Word (group theory) #Scrutiny #Salient #History #Philosophy #Theology
paper · doi:10.1075/jpcl.00017.sla
openalex publication_date 2018/10/19 · openalex created_date 2018/10/26 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract This study examines two distinctive neologistic processes within Rasta Talk. (1) Overstanding is morphological refashioning of a word that replaces morphemes (actual or perceived) which are misaligned with respect to the connotations of the word itself. Thus the word understanding, bearing positive connotations, is repaired by transforming the negatively mis-connotating sub-component under- into over-. (2) Iformation is the targeting of (depending on a word’s structure) either the first syllable or the first segment for replacement by /ai/ or /j/; e.g. ancient and food become I-cient and yood, respectively. These two processes contribute greatly to the salient properties of Rasta Talk, and involve a large degree of complexity which merits detailed scrutiny.