Earlier this week, I introduced the productive English noun suffix “-gate,” which creates new, instantly understandable nouns that mean a “scandal,” “controversy,” or “drama” involving the word it is added to (like “Oreo-gate”).
This example shows us one natural mechanism by which new words are created in a synthetic language like English. (Linguists call a language whose words change forms to express different meanings and grammatical information a “synthetic” language—here is an old blog article I wrote about this years ago.) Namely, productive prefixes and suffixes can be added to other words to create new words whose meanings and grammatical roles are instantly understood by native speakers.
I want to add to that discussion today by showing you an example of another mechanism by which new words can be created: existing words can take on a different grammatical role to express a new, related meaning.
Again, I thought of this example organically, haha. All my inspiration for these emails comes from my daily life—because language is everywhere, and we can learn from anything if we step back and understand it in a clear, scientific, and systematic way.
The example that occurred to me is the word “forever.”
It came up because, recently, a friend of mine from Harvard who is now an independent filmmaker and film producer in Hollywood began producing a short film titled “If There’s No Forever.” She asked my husband Tyler and me (as well as other real-life couples) to film a short promotional video about “when we knew it was ‘forever’” for use on the film’s website.
Now, as you probably know, the word “forever” is a single-word adverb that means “for all time, without an end,” as in:
We will love each other forever.
However, in the title of this film, “forever” is a different version of the word that has taken on the grammatical role of a noun, meaning something like “a love that lasts forever.”
This noun version of “forever” has also become quite common in English and is readily understood by native speakers. It is a very good example that shows us how new words can be created when “old” words take on new grammatical roles and meanings.
Again, languages are constantly evolving!
今個星期較早前，我介紹了英文中具生產性的名詞字尾 -gate。這個字尾會組成一些新的、母語人士一看就明白的名詞，意思是涉及它所加入的字的「醜聞」、「爭議」或「小是非」（例如 Oreo-gate）。
這個例子讓我們看到，像英文這類「綜合語」，可以透過其中一種自然的機制組成新字。（語言學家會把字會改變字形，以表達不同意思和文法資訊的語言稱為「綜合語」——這是我多年前寫過的一篇舊 blog 文章。）具體來說，具生產性的字頭和字尾可以加在其他字上，組成意思和文法角色都可以立即被母語人士理解的新字。
今天，我想延續這個討論，跟大家分享另一種組成新字的過程：現有的字可以被給予一個新的文法角色，表達一個新的相關意思。
同樣，這個例子也是我自然而然想到的，哈哈。我寫這些電郵的所有靈感都來自日常生活，因為語言無處不在，而只要我們退後一步，以清楚、科學和有系統的方式去理解語言，就可以從任何例子中學習。
我想到的例子是 forever 這個字。
最近，我一位在 Harvard 認識、現在於荷里活擔任獨立電影製作人和監製的朋友，開始製作一套名為 If There’s No Forever 的短片。她邀請我和丈夫 Tyler（以及其他現實生活中的伴侶），拍攝一段關於「我們甚麼時候知道對方就是『forever』」的短宣傳影片，放在電影的網站上。
大家大概都知道，forever 是一個單字副詞，意思是「永遠、沒有盡頭」，例如：
We will love each other forever.
我們會永遠愛對方。
不過，在這套電影的名稱中，forever 是這個字的另一個版本，被給予了名詞的文法角色，意思大概是「一份永遠持續的愛」。
這個 forever 的名詞版本，現在也已經成為英文中頗常見的字，而母語人士也可以直接理解它的意思。這是一個很好的例子，讓我們看到當「舊」字開始擔當新的文法角色、表達新的意思時，就會變成語言中的新字。
語言是不斷演變的！