If you are a mom of young children like me and follow some “mom-fluencer accounts” on social media, you have probably heard about a recent incident called “Oreo-gate.” 😅
This incident—or “-gate” (more on this grammatical point further down)—started as some minor “drama” between the pre-school moms in a chat group and went viral on the internet, sparking heated parental debates around topics like food and nutrition, as well as parents’ rights to make independent choices for their own children.
Anyway, basically, the “drama” was this: in a pre-school mom chat group in the U.S., one mom asked the other moms not to put Oreos in their children’s lunch boxes because her daughter is not allowed to have any sweets, and she didn’t want her daughter to become jealous of her friends’ lunches and ask for the same snacks at home. 😅
Predictably, the other moms in the group—including the one who had put Oreos in her daughter’s lunch box—reacted negatively to this demand. The entire back-and-forth in the chat group (it was drawn out because that mom pressed the matter further and stood her ground) sparked many different opinions on both sides of the debate across the internet.
(There’s some indication that the entire thing might have been concocted as promotional material for an A.I. company, but, anyway, the controversy it sparked was real.)
I obviously won’t go into the debate itself—because, if I have learnt anything since becoming a mom, it is that everything around pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting is highly incendiary, with every stakeholder (and even non-stakeholder) having a different personal opinion, haha. 😅
What I want to do instead is use this viral incident as a jumping-off point to talk about the productive noun suffix “-gate” in current English, which comes up a lot in the news. This suffix neatly shows us what linguists mean by “productive” grammatical elements in a language, as well as how languages constantly evolve and change in response to different external factors in the societies in which they are spoken.
The suffix “-gate” is a noun suffix that adds the meaning of “scandal or controversy” to the word it is added to. So, for example, “Oreo-gate” is a noun formed with this suffix that means “a controversy involving Oreos.”
Linguists call a suffix like “-gate” in current English a “productive” suffix because native speakers can freely add it to words to form new words like “Oreo-gate,” which are then readily understood by other native speakers.
For example, other “gates” in recent memory include “Slapgate,” which refers to Hollywood actor Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars, and “Cakegate,” which refers to a dispute in England over a bakery’s refusal to provide a free birthday cake and cupcakes for an actress in exchange for publicity. 😂
Because of this productive suffix, terms like “Slapgate,” “Cakegate,” and now “Oreo-gate” are instantly understood by native speakers to mean scandals involving a “slap,” a “cake,” and “Oreos.” 😂
Why did “-gate” become a productive noun suffix with this specific meaning?
It came about because of the infamous “Watergate” scandal, a major political scandal in the United States in the 1970s involving people connected to President Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign breaking into the offices of their political opponents to steal information and plant listening devices. “Watergate” was the name of the building complex where the break-in took place.
Later, because English suffixes define the grammatical roles of words, native speakers “grammaticalized” the “gate” part of “Watergate,” turning it into a productive suffix—even though it was originally just part of the name of a building and not a suffix at all. Once it had been “grammaticalized” as a noun suffix, “-gate” could be added to other words to form new nouns meaning “scandals” or “controversies.”
This is an interesting and prevalent example of how new productive elements are constantly added to the grammar and vocabulary of a living language—and also of how these new elements still fit into the same overall grammatical framework.
Next time you read English news and encounter a new “-gate,” you will know that you are getting yourself into some drama 👀
如果你跟我一樣，是家中有年幼子女的媽媽，又會在社交媒體上追蹤一些「mom-fluencers」(mom 加 influencers 兩個字的合體，即媽媽網紅），你大概會聽過最近一宗叫做「Oreo-gate」的事件。😅
這宗事件——或者說，這宗「-gate」（下面會再詳細解釋這個文法重點）——原本只是美國一個學前班媽媽 What’sApp group 中的一場小事非，後來卻在網上瘋傳，更引發了家長之間的激烈辯論，討論的包括食物和營養，以及父母是否有權為自己的子女獨立作出選擇等議題。
簡單來說，這場事非是這樣的：在美國一個學前班媽媽 group 中，一位媽媽要求其他媽媽不要把 Oreo 放進子女的午餐盒，因為她不讓女兒吃任何甜食，而她不希望女兒看到朋友的午餐後感到妒忌，回家要求吃同樣的零食。😅
可以預料，group 中的其他媽媽——包括那位把 Oreo 放進女兒午餐盒的媽媽——都覺得這個要求有點霸道。這場你來我往的爭論（因為提出要求的媽媽繼續追究下去，堅持自己的立場），在網上引發了來自正反雙方的各種不同意見。
（有一些跡象顯示，整件事可能是為一家 A.I. 公司刻意編造的宣傳材料。不過是不是也好，它引發的爭議是真實的。）
我當然不會在這裏討論這場辯論本身——因為我成為媽媽後才知道了，所有跟懷孕、生產和育兒有關的事情都非常容易引發激烈爭議，每一個持份者（甚至不是持份者的人）都有自己不同的個人意見，哈哈。😅
我反而想以這宗在網上瘋傳的事件作為切入點，介紹現今英文中具生產性的名詞字尾 -gate。這個字尾在新聞中經常出現，也很清楚地讓我們看到，語言學家所說一種語言中具「生產性」的文法元素是甚麼，以及語言怎樣不斷因應使用這些語言的社會中的各種外在因素演變和加入新元素。
字尾 -gate 是一個名詞字尾，會為它所加入的字加上「醜聞或爭議」的意思。因此，例如 Oreo-gate 就是一個以這個字尾組成的名詞，意思是「一場涉及 Oreo 的爭議」。
語言學家會把現今英文中的 -gate 這類字尾稱為「具生產性」的字尾，因為母語使用者會自由地把它加在其他字後面，組成 Oreo-gate 之類的新字，而其他母語人士會直接理解這些新字的意思。
例如，近年其他以 -gate 組成的字包括 Slapgate，指荷里活演員 Will Smith 在奧斯卡頒獎禮上掌摑 Chris Rock 的事件；還有 Cakegate，指英國一家餅店拒絕免費為一位女演員提供生日蛋糕，以換取宣傳而引發的爭議。😂
正因為有這個具生產性的字尾，母語使用者看到 Slapgate、Cakegate，以及現在的 Oreo-gate 等名稱，就可以立即理解它們分別是涉及「一巴掌」、「蛋糕」和「Oreo」的醜聞或事非爭議。😂
為甚麼 -gate 會變成一個具有這個特定意思、具生產性的名詞字尾呢？
這是源自著名的「Watergate（水門事件）」醜聞。這是 1970 年代美國的一宗重大政治醜聞，涉及跟總統 Richard Nixon 競選連任團隊有關的人，闖入其政治對手的辦公室，企圖竊取資料和安裝竊聽器。Watergate 原本是發生這宗闖入事件的大廈名稱。
後來，由於英文字尾會界定那字的文法角色，母語人士便把 Watergate 中的 gate 部分「文法化」，變成了一個具生產性的字尾，但原本這只是建築物名稱的一部分，根本不是字尾。被「文法化」成了名詞字尾後，-gate 便變得可以加在其他字後面，組成意思是「醜聞」或「爭議」的新名詞。
這是一個有趣而且常見的例子，讓我們看到一種活生生的語言怎樣不斷把新的具生產性元素加入其文法和詞彙之中——以及這些新元素怎樣仍然被那語言原本的整體文法框架所規範。
下次你閱讀英文新聞，遇到一個新的「-gate」時，就會知道是關於事非的了。👀