14. THE CHILDREN OF P-OSTE-UM

(Part of a series based upon Stiles, The Anatomy of Medical Terminology (Radix Antiqua 2015; ISBN 978-1-988941-240)

THE CHILDREN OF P-OSTE-UM

            Near the end of the "parent" Post we were looking at considerations arising from the concept of synonymity.  Synonyms will be explored more fully in another post, but for now it may be observed that apparently synonymous forms sometimes result in divergent meanings.  This can be observed in one of the synonym groups derived from P-OSTE-UM, the one in which P- denotes one of the three synonymous prefixes translated as "outside."

            Specifically, while the indirect evidence for the existence of the real words *EX-oste-um and *ECT-oste-um ("the part OUTSIDE a bone") is that both EX-ost-osis and ECT-oste-al are attested (as discussed previously), the following word shows a divergent meaning:

            ECT-ost-osis                 <defined in "the dictionary" as if

                                                = *ect-ostE-OST-osis>

            *ect-ostE-OST-osis      the ossification of

                                                something outside a bone

                                                = the *ECT-ostE-um

            Although we thus still postulate the synonymous noun we first derived from ECT-oste-al, the confusion arising here, from the (mistakenly) perceived synonymity between oste- (with osse-, as well as oss-), on the one hand, and -ost-, on the other, is the error pointed out way back in Post 2: because the dependable meaning of words of the form

            X-OST-osis       is          the ossification of X

                        (See The Anatomy of Medical Terminology, Chapter 3, numbers 2-3),

this rule or formula would traditionally have pre-empted the use of -ost- (especially in the sequence X-ost-osis) as a synonym for the other forms.

            But an even more convoluted situation arises in the (already inherently more convoluted) case of our indirectly attested word *SYN-oste-um.  As I hinted previously, some mental gymnastics are required just to get from the meanings implied by our word-parts to the dictionary definition "joint."  To do this, we need to go back a few steps and try to rewrite the "basic definition" of P-oste-um, keeping in mind our starting premises, but being willing to "torture" the English a bit:

            P-oste-um                    "a P-bone thing"

                                                = the part located in relation to a bone

                                                in the way indicated by P-

 For example:

            end-oste-um               "an INSIDE-the-bone thing"

                                                = the part INSIDE a bone

            peri-oste-um              "a surrounding-the-bone thing"

                                                = the part SURROUNDING a bone

            *ECT-oste-um              "an OUTSIDE-the-bone thing"

                                                = the part OUTSIDE a bone

This logic, applied to our word, suggests the following sequence:

            *SYN-oste-um             "a WITH-the-bone thing"

                                                (or, admittedly by a leap)

                                                "a TOGETHER-bones thing"

                                                = "a bones-TOGETHER-thing"

                                                = a joint

            Two points arise.  First, uses and abuses of the prefix syn- are one small example of some problematically-coined word-sets in medical terminology (future posts!), but "strained" "conceptual leaps" like the ones we are forced to make here are unfortunately fairly frequently necessary in contemporary Latglish.  Second, the dictionary definition "joint" for syn-oste- is probably an oversimplification: given that the usual combining form for that body-part is arthr-,  

it is likely that the term syn-oste- was originally designed to focus upon the actual, or specific, "bone-joining" which forms what is called, more generally, a "joint."

            Be that as it may, our torturous interpretation here seems to be right, as it allows us to make an effective analysis that works for both the following well-attested words:

            SYN-oste-otomy          "the cutting of a joint"

                                                = "the cutting of a bones-TOGETHER-thing"

            SYN-oste-ology            "the study of joints"

                                                = "the study of bones-TOGETHER-things."

            But the difficulty--the "convolutions"--is surely partly responsible for the fact that another set of attested words seems to point directly to X-ost-osis instead.  Here is the evidence:

            syn-ostE-osis                [see] syn-ost-osis

            syn-ostE-otic                [see] syn-ost-otic

            syn-ost-otic                  pertaining to syn-ost-osis

            syn-ost-osis                  "the fusing of bones"

Thus this definition--the dictionary one--seems to be at least "contaminated" by the concept of "ossification," if not outright derived somehow or other from

            x-ost-osis                     the ossification of x,

rather than from our hypothetical *syn-oste-um!  To put this differently, syn-ost-osis (with its dictionary definition) perhaps represents a cluster of ideas looking for a P-oste-um to hold it together--to realize it--perhaps a word like

            *syn-oste-ost-osis      the ossification of

                                                "a bones-together thing"

We might be reminded here that our speculations about the parallel case of ect-ost-osis at the beginning of this Post led us to a hypothetical

            *ect-oste-ost-osis      the ossification of

                                                something outside a bone

Perhaps the real truth is that there does exist yet another "template" or word pattern, namely

            *P-oste-ost-osis         the ossification of

                                                P-oste-um

                                                            = something located in the relation to a bone

                                                            specified by P-

--a "template" which is consistently misunderstood by its users, resulting in the anomalous forms P-ost-osis.

            But it would be very difficult to be certain about this; sadly, more and more such ill-formed words are appearing in the vocabulary, of the kind that we were calling "invalid" back in the "Fighting Words" Post.

            This particular source of confusion is perhaps worsened by what may be an overall  tendency to simplify things, manifested here by a trend towards replacing -ostE- by the shorter -ost-.  If so, like many simplifications, this one rests upon an error which is bound to result in needless confusions.

            Examination of our largest set of attested words of the form P-oste-Z (where -Z stands for any ending at all, and where none of the words show "contamination" by the concept of "ossification") shows that -oste- is still the "preferred form" (the one to which any alternate is cross-referenced), in all but two words.  Here are all of the main-entry words in questions, with (as usual) the translations we would expect our students to present:

            peri-oste-al                 surrounding a bone

                                                <students might also have--equally plausibly--generated

                                                pertaining to

                                                something surrounding a bone>

            peri-oste-oma             a tumor involving

                                                something surrounding a bone

            peri-oste-edema         the swelling of

                                                something surrounding a bone

            peri-osteo-medull-itis the inflammation of the marrow and

                                                something surrounding a bone

            peri-osteo-myel-itis    the inflammation of the marrow and

                                                something surrounding a bone

            peri-osteo-phyte         a growth on

                                                something surrounding a bone

            peri-oste-otomy          the cutting of

                                                something surrounding a bone

            peri-oste-otome          an instrument for cutting

                                                something surrounding a bone

            peri-oste-ous               pertaining to

                                                something surrounding a bone

                                                <students might also have--equally plausibly--generated

                                                surrounding a bone>

In four of these cases, an alleged synonym in peri-ost- is cross-referenced to the -ostE- form; but the two words which are cross-referenced the other way are the following (with the defined main entries included, for completeness):

            peri-ostE-itis                [see] peri-ost-itis

            peri-ostE-osis              [see] peri-ost-osis

            peri-ost-itis                  the inflammation of

                                                something surrounding a bone

            peri-ost-osis                an abnormal condition involving

                                                something surrounding a bone

            The implication will be clear to anyone who has spent too much time inside a medical dictionary: the two most frequently occurring diagnoses in all of medicine (at least as revealed by the dictionary) are those named X-osis and X-itis.  The fact that in our group, it is the "frequent flyer" words peri-ost-ITIS and peri-ost-OSIS that are edging out the older, "more correct" forms in -ostE- seems to confirm that the erroneous--and therefore alarming--trend I speculated about above is for real.

            On that note, two more dictionary entries associated with the word periosteum are worth pointing out, with commentary:

            peri-ost-oste-itis          [see] osteo-peri-ost-itis

            osteo-peri-ost-itis        <defined in the dictionary as if the word were

                                                *peri-ostE-ostE-itis>

            *peri-ostE-ostE-itis      the inflammation of a bone and

                                                something surrounding a bone

The second entry bears the additional note "also called periosteitis."  Now this is all a bit confusing.  Were the coiners shooting for something analogous to a version of the hypothetical template postulated above, namely a *peri-OSTE-ost-itis modelled upon our *P-oste-ost-osis?  If so, they missed pretty badly, not only putting the word-parts in not just one but two different wrong orders, but also getting the translation completely wrong!--

            *peri-oste-ost-itis        the inflammation of something involving

                                                the ossification of

                                                something surrounding a bone

Finally, meditate upon the future as perhaps indicated by this--

            peri-ost                        [see] peri-oste-um

                                                                        - o -

13. ONE-ROOM-SCHOOLHOUSE LATIN SUMMER-CAMP

(Part of a series based upon Stiles, The Anatomy of Medical Terminology (Radix Antiqua 2015; ISBN 978-1-988941-240)

          Once upon a time an eminent scholar of Renaissance Latin, reinvented as Dean of Humanities, horrified a rump of beleagured Classicists by suggesting that we open up, for example, our fourth-year Virgil Class to students with no Latin.  That way, she explained (and by now we knew she wasn't joking), in addition to the one or two Latinists we'd normally get we'd draw maybe twenty or more literature and history students, and the Dean's Office would be able to look more kindly down upon us.

            I am embarrassed now that our closed-mindedness shut us off from the possibilities she was raising.  The work involved would of course be immense (starting with thinking our way outside of the obvious boxes); but if we could imagine our way into a course wherein two completely disparate student groups could manage to achieve (perhaps different) course credit out of the work they and we did in one and the same run of classroom hours, we would truly be onto a new thing.  But how to even begin?

            Once upon a completely different time my mother and father attended high school in Veteran, Alberta; the time this was upon was the late 1930's, and the teacher, a Mr. Garvey, taught all subjects to (and here is the point) all grades of students at once.  For this was the famous "one-room-schoolhouse" of western Canadian myth (the road to and from which was uphill both ways, especially in winter, when it was at least five miles longer than in summer).  My parents were not notably disadvantaged by this experience; in fact they emerged better able to read, write and calculate than most first-year university students nowadays--in particular, they emerged very well-read, and (my father especially) possessing a large repetoire of English poetry, declaimable at will.

            Could some version of a "one-room-shoolhouse" work for Latin teaching?  What if we began by  narrowing the scope, and restricted the schoolroom to Latinists (so much for the Renaissance fantasy), while opening it to Latinists at all different levels?

            Once--and this is my own experience (so that it seems to me more "down in" than "up" and "on" any particular time)--I taught for three summers in a row what I called Intensive First-year Latin, and what my best cohort (a bunch of English Literature students) called Latin Summer Camp.  That particular offering became locally famous for the season because many of the students spent whole days together outside the classroom (and here is the point of this particular anecdote) working on the material, in small groups of four or five, and becoming objects of some wonderment on campus.

            This was all an outgrowth of what we did in the classroom, where they spent nearly all their time working in groups, all at more or less the same rate, on the readings and exercises furnished by our textbook.  My time was divided among the groups, in a rotation: I sat in with one group for one exercise set or one section of continuous reading, doing the usual questioning, critiquing and mini-lecturing as they worked their way through the sentences (one at a time, also in rotation); then I moved to the next group, interrupted them, and made that lot go back and do the same set or section with me as I had just done with the first group.  When I had thus worked my way around the room to the first group again, I made them go back to where I had left them at the end of our first session, and we then did the following set or section together.  In this way, during the two hours of class-time I got to work through all of the material with each group, each group had to work through all the material twice, and each student got not only lots of "stage time" but also lots and lots of feedback, both from me and from her peers.

            There were a few simple rules.  No student could do with me the very sentence she had previously done in the unattended group.  All students were expected to spend at least two hours of "homework" time outside class for every hour in class (hence the random groups of Latinists decorating the landscape), and each student was expected to come to each class having already worked through the grammar and exercises behind the material we planned to get through during class.

            The first rule encouraged a nearly unbelievable degree of concentration upon those group members not "performing" at any given moment, since there was no way of predicting who would be called upon to deal with any given sentence "in front of the prof," as well as a great deal of cooperation between members, so that they actually worked through most of the material "together" rather than separately.  This cooperation extended into their time with me, so that they helped each other even in my presence; and ultimately it led most of them into doing their homework together, often outside in public (where among other things they did a great job--by their highly visible enthusiasm--of promoting the study of Latin!).

            With practice, these processes quickly came to work very efficiently.  A surprise to me was how incessantly each group hummed along; I would occasionally leave the room, just to see if anyone noticed (no one ever did)!  My own work with them involved less repetition than one might expect given the situation, further indicating to me how independent the groups were of one another.  In effect, each was a separate unit, with different strengths and weaknesses, ultimately even working through the required material at slightly different rates, so that towards the end of term I had to adjust my "rotations" (not often, and not by much) to ensure that we all finished more or less together.

            A surprising revelation to all of us in this context was that, as the groups "matured"--as they became more confident and competent, in particular as they became better at mutual self-scrutiny within the group--we found that it didn't actually matter much whether I was there for all of the sentences in the set of exercises or sections of reading we were working through; in another sense altogether, I could as it were "leave the room!"  Or--and here is the point--I was free to work more with whichever group might most need extra help at any given time.

            Taken together, all these aspects of the experience showed me how a "one-room-schoolhouse" might work for a roomful of Latinists actually operating at substantially different levels of learning.  In its simplest version, I envision a minimum of three groups.  Although an ideal group size is between four and six, so long as there are enough students at any given level--say four beginners at a minimum, at least three in second year, and two or more at third-year and up, the different groups would be able to function in the same classroom in pretty much the same way as did the summer students I've been describing.

            There would be two major differences.  First, since they would all be working through different materials, the teacher would have three separate preparations.  Is there a Latinist among us (the professoriate) who could claim this to be onerous, with a straight face?  I hope not!  More seriously, my own experience suggests this wouldn't be a problem at all; occasionally my groups would get "out of synch" for various reasons, but once they realized the onus was on them to show me both where they were and where we needed to go back to every time I materialized in their unit, all was well.  As they progressed they also got very good answering my initial utterance every time I showed up, namely, "any questions?"--with specific requests: "we were wondering...."

            The second major difference grows out of the very fact that markedly different levels of knowledge would be featured in our putative "one-room-schoolhouse," allowing us to also experiment with adaptations of another excellent feature of that old system, namely, using "big kids to help teach the little kids."  A "rule" I laid onto myself, and didn't tell the students about, was that in the first week or so I worked hard to "tweak" the groups, trying to ensure that each contained a roughly equivalent mix of strong and weak students.  This led to efficiencies within each group, such that the stronger students, by helping the weaker ones, actually learned much more than if their contact had been limited to occasional in-class exchanges with me.

            Expect further details in later posts, about what this course might look like in the real world, and suggestions about how it might be integrated with an existing Latin program, and about some of the arguments that would need to be made to both Deans and Unions.

            For now, the relevant point is that we could solve at least three "Latin problems" this way: students could begin their studies as early as the beginning of May (as they currently can at only a few institutions), and--much more importantly--they could study for-credit year-round, accomplishing two years worth of traditional Latin work during one calendar year of elapsed time.  Thus someone starting in May could have credit for two full years of Latin by the end of April, while a September starter could be entering third year the following September.

            These considerations would be especially beneficial for anyone whose Latin epiphany ("that's what I need to learn!") didn't arrive until the third or even fourth year of undergrad life, as well as to all those students who currently get discouraged at the end of August by the dismal shape of their own fading memories of the Latin they last looked at during the April final (many of whom therefore "cut their losses" and don't continue).

            Meantime the Dean would be happy because the overall Latin retention rate would be better, because Introductory Summer Latin (if previously taught at all) would have more students than before, and because--best of all--the summer teaching of second- and upper-year Latin to a few tiny coteries of students wouldn't cost her anything extra!

                                                                        - o -

Variously Heavy Women:Latin Phrases (and Words) Used to Describe Pregnant Women

Note that the following terms are also presented and discussed in Chapter 19 of Stiles & Russell, Anatomy of Medical Terminology: Advanced Concepts (Radix Antiqua, 2018).

Two formulaic phrases (often abbreviated to single words) are regularly used. Many of the linguistic considerations involved are discussed in terms of one of these in this blogpost; the second (and two related formulations) will be discussed in the next post.

Note that in the algebraic formulae below, "x-" stands for either a number or a numerical adjective (for a full list, see my Advanced Medical Terminology, Chapter 19; a version of this list will be included for reference at the end of the next post).

• (femina) x-i-gravid-a = a woman pregnant for the xth time

In the real world, this basic Latin phrase will almost never be fully written out; rather, you will see it in one of two abbreviated forms, as the following examples show:

• septigravida (= septi-gravid-a) or gravida VII = a woman pregnant for the seventh time
• octigravida (= octi-gravid-a) or gravida VIII = a woman pregnant for the eighth time

Linguistically, Latin gravid-a is the feminine form of an adjective meaning "heavy," required by the Rules or Principles of Agreement (see Anatomy of Medical Terminology chapter 6 and passim) because the Latin noun femin-a is (of course) a noun of the feminine gender. This adjective is the root of many English derivatives like grave ("heavy" or "serious"), grav-ity ("heavy-ness"), and of course, grav-id ("heavy;" a euphemism for "pregnant," as in "she is heavy with child").

Although the standard form of the numerical abbreviation has always featured the Roman numeral in second position, it is likely that contemporary usage (not yet attested in Dorland's) will sometimes show the number in first position as an alternative designation (the standard examples of the parallel phrase discussed in the following post already feature this reversal); in addition, Arabic numerals are beginning to replace the traditional Roman ones in many "sets" of phrases in Medical Terminology. Hypothetical examples (marked with an asterisk) of our phrase follow:

• *VI gravida (= sexti-gravid-a) = *gravida 6, or *6 gravida = a woman pregnant for the sixth time

As a careful reader will have noted, the formulaic translation "x-th" sometimes needs to be adjusted to suit a particular numeric prefix (thus, for example, eighth, not *eight-th).

Finally, because many numeric and quantitative prefixes have alternate forms in common usage in other areas of Medical Terminology, it is likely that a few other synonymous words or phrases might occur. The following list of examples, both attested and plausible, is meant to be a fairly complete assemblage of the descriptive terms which might be found to designate a woman in her first pregnancy:

• primigravida (= "prime"-gravid-a) = gravida I a woman pregnant for the first time

      = *unigravida (= uni-gravid-a; L uni- = one)
      = *monogravida (= mono-gravid-a; G mono- one)
      = *I gravida = *1 gravida or *gravida = *G 1

NOTES re the forms not yet attested in Dorland's (some or all of which might turn up already on google searches....):

• *uni-gravida can be predicted from closely related uniparous ("bearing one offspring;" see AMT and the following blogpost)
• *mono-gravida (containing G mono- = one; widely used in Medical

Terminology and elsewhere in English, as in mono-gamy, etc.) reflects the fact the "rule" forbidding "bastard terms" (part Greek, part Latin) has long fallen into disuse (see other blogs, and the textbook Introductions)

• *I gravida, by reversing the order of standard gravida I, reflects a tendency (discussed in the textbooks and other blogs) to "rationalize" Latin word order by adapting it to the English standard of Adjective + Noun; this long ago resulted in the generation of a parallel standard form in the case of closely related x-i-para (discussed in the next post), which is abbreviated in either of two forms;
• thus both X para and para X (= deci-para) name "a woman who has borne 10 offspring."
• *gravida 1 (with *1 gravida) reflects the increasing disuse of Roman Numerals in English
• *G 1 reflects a very recent and rapidly accelerating tendency to use abbreviations instead of whole words (let alone phrases); this tendency is at least partly the result of a general loss of understanding of word-meanings on the part of medical people (see the advanced textbook, the forthcoming seminar course at USASK, and several forthcoming blog posts).

In all these matters, you may find the following midwifery textbooks useful:

• Physical Assessment of the Well Woman & Newborn
• Pharmacology Revealed
• Comprehensive Midwifery Vol. 1: Professional Roles
• Comprehensive Midwifery Vol. 2: Normal Pregnancy, Birth, Postpartum & Newborn Care
• Comprehensive Midwifery Vol. 3: Management of Complications

On questions of Medical Terminology, make sure to consult: Stiles Medical Terminology

12. P-OSTE-UM RECONSIDERED

(Part of a series based upon Stiles, The Anatomy of Medical Terminology (Radix Antiqua 2015; ISBN 978-1-988941-240)

            In Post 11 ("Wordhood Cubed?") I suggested among other things that, where P- stands for "any prepositional prefix," any word of the form P-oste-um would imply the existence of a large number of words of the form P-X-N (where X names a concrete object and -N denotes any nominative singular ending), with a predictable "standard" meaning:

                        P-X-N               =          something located in the relationship to X

                                                            specified by P.

The observation that neither P-oste-um nor P-X-N are particularly well-attested led us to consider the further postulates, first that

            any P-X-A (examples being many) presupposes a corresponding P-X-N;

and, second, that actually      

            any word of the form P-X-Z (where -Z stands for any ending at all), also

            presupposes a corresponding P-X-N.

Note that I didn't put this last postulate into so many words, but that this formulation is the logical result of our look at words of the form P-X-itis, where

                        P-X-ITIS            =        the inflammation of

                                                            something located in the relationshp to X

                                                            specified by P

                                                =          the inflammation of

                                                            P-X-N.

            The argument from P-X-A was almost parallel, but a little more convoluted.  Now I can admit that the convolution arose from putting the more difficult case first: as students of TheAnatomy of Medical Terminology know (from Chapter 13),  there is always a "Plan B" translation for any word of this shape:

                        P-X-A               =          pertaining to

                                                            something located in the relationship to X

                                                            specified by P

                                                =          pertaining to P-X-N!

            So far so good, or so I hope.  But I've been promising another look at the considerations which started this line of thought, and the example from which we began; perhaps I can put it this way:

            If a large number of words exists of the general form P-X-N, then a relatively large number of words of the specific form P-OSTE-UM (relative to the the number of specific forms of P) should also exist.  But, as we saw, only two are actually directly attested, out of more than twenty that "should" exist given that there are at least twenty productive prepositional prefixes running around out there in the real world.

            By now the plan of attack I have in mind is probably obvious; the key phrase in the preceding sentence is "directly attested," with emphasis on "directly."  What we were working with in the "Wordhood Cubed" post--the evidence arising from analogous words like P-X-A and P-X-ITIS--could be called a process of "indirect attesting" to the reality of the target words P-X-N.

            And such is the evidence that as it were "surrounds" the putative nouns of the form P-OSTE-UM.  As we have seen, end-oste-um (Post 2) is well-attested; peri-oste-um is also found "in the dictionary."  They are listed below; in aid of some of the "missing" others, so are the following words, all of the form P-OSTE-Z (where -Z denotes any ending at all; the asterisk "*" denotes that a word is not directly attested):

            WORD                         OUR TRANSLATION

            PERI-oste-um              the part SURROUNDING a bone

            END-oste-um               the part INSIDE a bone

            ECT-oste-al                  pertaining to

                                                something OUTSIDE a bone

                                                     = the *ECT-oste-um

            INTER-osse-ous           pertaining to

                                                something BETWEEN bones

                                                     = the *INTER-osse-um

                                                     = the *INTER-osTe-um

                                                (see below, on synonyms, for the skipped step)

            SYN-oste-otomy          the cutting of

                                                "bones-TOGETHER" (translated as "a joint")

                                                     = a *SYN-oste-um

                                                (by admittedly tortured logic!)

The following synonyms are also attested:

            INTRA-oste-al              <cross-referenced to INTRA-osse-ous>

            INTRA-osse-ous           pertaining to

                                                something INSIDE a bone

                                                     = the *INTRA-osse-um

                                                     = the *INTRA-osTe-um

                                                     = the END-oste-um (above; attested)

            ENT-ost-osis                <cross-referenced to EN-ost-osis>

            EN-ost-osis                  = *END-ostE-osis

                                                (see Post 2 for the gory details!)

            *END-oste-osis            an abnormal condition involving

                                                something INSIDE a bone

                                                     = END-oste-um (above; attested)

                                                     = *EN-oste-um

                                                     = *ENT-oste-um

            Analogously, the following form presupposes a synonym for *ECT-oste-um:

            EX-ost-osis                   an abnormal condition involving

                                                something OUTSIDE a bone

                                                     = the *EX-ostE-um

                                                     = the *ECT-oste-um.

            Synonymity is itself another "multiplier" in terms of "real but unattested words" (see a forthcoming Post): as cross-listings in the dictionaries show, pretty much any synonymous combining form can be substituted for another (see also The Anatomy of Medical Terminology, passim).  In the examples above, the combining forms oste- and osse- are synonymous; therefore a "fully-expanded count" of the words we are considering here would also include those generated by a rule like

            for every P-OSTE-UM attested directly or indirectly, there is a synonym

            P-OSSE-UM; and vice versa.

            Similarly, just as end-, en-, ent- and intra- are synonymous (as we saw above), so too are prefixes denoting the opposite locational relationship, "outside," namely, extra-, ex-, and ect-.  Therefore *EXTRA-oste-um and, of course, *EXTRA-osse-um, have to join the club (along with *ECT-oste-um and *EX-oste-um, indirectly attested above).

            Nor do these "indirect attestations" exhaust the possibilities we have opened up here.  Just because no current word seems to exist suggesting that the concepts expressed by the phrases listed below denote useful objects, does that mean that one or more of the candidate words listed beside them may not someday be just as real as periosteum and the rest?

            CONCEPT/DEFINITION                       CANDIDATE WORD(S)

            something UPON a bone                    *EPI-oste-um

            something BELOW a bone                  *SUB-oste-um, *INFRA-oste-um

            something BESIDE a bone                   *PARA-oste-um

            something BEFORE a bone                 *PRE-oste-um

            There is more to say about all this.  For now, notice how we have been able to use the concepts applied to the derivation of the "meta-rule" about P-X-N in the Post "Wordhood Cubed" to considerably expand the count of arguably real words symbolized by the much more specific template P-oste-um.

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More on Stiles Medical Terminology here.

11. WOODHOOD CUBED?

(Part of a series based upon Stiles, The Anatomy of Medical Terminology (Radix Antiqua 2015; ISBN 978-1-988941-240)

             Our discussion of "wordhood" (see Posts 3 & 5) leads us to yet another consideration.  Now that we are "scaling it up," what if we move away entirely from the concept of generic words like "bone" or "tissue" which name general categories with many specific members, and consider what we might do with what could be called a generically describeable set of words exemplified by at least one well-attested specific member?  For example, any Medical Dictionary will show us (by including it) that the word

            peri-oste-um               a part surrounding a bone

is a so-called "real" word.  Now, the "generic" features of this construction are two:

            1) the termination -um, denoting a physical object, here in conjunction with osteo- naming a part somehow associated with a bone (either belonging to it, or in some other way involving it);

            2) the prepositional prefix, which by definition restricts the nature of the "association" to "locational involvement."

            It might seem that a new kind of rule can be hypothesized here, this time having at its smallest scale nothing to do with specific members of a generic category like the one called "bones," but rather with specific body-parts (or other objects) named generically by the addition of any specific PREFIX denoting LOCATION to the "word-remnant" -osteum:

                        If the set of real words in Medical Terminology includes one word of the form

                        P-oste-um (where "P" represents a PREFIX denoting LOCATION),

                        then that set also includes

                        all words of the form P-oste-um.

            Unfortunately, an actual count "in the Dictionary" reveals that only two of our postulated twenty or more words have so far been attested.  Eighteen words "missing" out of a potential set of twenty is pretty dismal arithmetic, and would seem to augur badly for our rule. To try to salvage it, we might begin by replacing "all words of the form P-oste-um" by the phrase "a large number of words of the form P-oste-um," on the grounds that by getting scrappy we might be able to convince you that some number of such words are "real" even though unattested.  But this touch-up would only return us to the (possibly circular) arguments of the "fighting words" post; therefore, now that we've seen something about the effects of change of scale, let's also try moving toward a "meta-rule" from these admittedly discouraging beginnings.

            The rule we can postulate by as it were "zooming out" from P-oste-um is of course formed by replacing -oste-um by something more general.  For -oste- we can read  -X- (designating as always "any organ or part"); and since the termination -um is only one of a number of nominative singular endings -N which all function the same way in naming real, concrete, objects, we can write our new meta-rule formulaically:

                        If the set of real words in Medical Terminology contains even one word

                        of the form P-X-N (where -N stands for any nominative singular ending),

                        then that set also includes

                        a large number of words of the form P-X-N.

            Notice that in this rule we are no longer making all-inclusive predictions: "a large number" is probably as specific as we can be.  And to prove to you that what I'm trying here is not a kind of verbal sleight-of-hand, I want you to remember that our first specific example of this very meta-rule generated a measly 2 out of a possible 20 or more predicted words--I am not trying to baffle you into forgetting this!

            Now let's make the additional observation that, at "scale," all of the words generated by our new meta-rule mean "the same thing;" that is, any word

                        P-X-N (given the definitions previously described) will name

                        a body part or other physical object involving X in the locative way

                        specified by P.

Thus, for example,

            end-oste-um                a part inside a bone

            peri-enter-on              a part surrounding the intestine

            para-cortex                 a part beside the cortex

            Note that on the dimension of translating from medical terminology into English there is nothing new here, nothing that isn't predicted in Chapter 13 of The Anatomy of Medical Terminology; what is new here is that we are using the as it were "generic" translation as the base for a "meta-rule" to generate medical words.

            Confused?  To "touch bases" with reality for a moment, a quick examination of the actually attested relevant words ("in The Dictionary") associated with just three of our locational prefixes (endo-, peri- and para-) gives us fifty words which fit our pattern (specifics available on request).  While this number is arguably "respectable," it is still discouragingly small given the huge scope of our category -X-.

            But remember that our overall thesis here is that the set of all real words is far larger (orders of magnitude larger) than any set which will ever be found in any dictionary.  At the particular scale we are discussing here (P-X-N), we can begin with a simple (and non-controversial) observation: if there is an adjective formed by the usual Latglish method of adding an adjectival ending (like -ic or -al) to a combing form -X- denoting as always an organ or body part, then there must be a corresponding noun formed by adding a nominative singular ending (whether regular or irregular) to that same combining form.  Thus, for example

            crani-al                        presupposes                cranium, and

            cortic-al,                                                          cortex.

Though not all of these words have been attested in English (never forget that Medical terminology is a kind of English), they do exist in Latin; and I hope it can be accepted for this argument that any Latin word naming a body part is also a real word in Medical Terminology--a word "waiting to happen," perhaps.  A generation or two ago, for example, cost-a "rib" (answering to  well-attested cost-al), and clavicul-a "collar-bone" (or "clavicle;" presupposed by clavicul-ar) were not "in the dictionary;" but they are now (although my impression is, they are still not in very general usage, in comparison to words like skelet-on or thorax).

            If this observation is accepted, then we can postulate that something analogous is the case with the "locative" subset of those adjectives, the subset which is characterized by an introductory prepositional prefix P-, and the meaning "located in the prepositional relationship to X specified by P."  Here are some examples (all "in the dictionary"):

            para-ven-ous               beside a vein

            peri-ven-ous                surrounding a vein

            endo-ven-ous              inside a vein

            The word-pattern exemplified here can be written P-X-A (where -A denotes an adjectival ending).  A further proposition arises: where X names a body part, then in the real world of concrete objects (regardless of nomenclature) there will exist a body part (or other object) describable by every single adjective of the type P-X-A.  For example, we could refer to perivenous tissue, or an endovenous blockage, or a paravenous swelling.

            To put this another way--and here comes the "gotcha!" moment--if the set of real things in the real world contains all organs or body parts named -X-, then that set also contains all real parts or objects P-X-N, that is, "a body part or object located in the prepositional relationship to X specified by P-.

            Note that we are not claiming here that the particular words generated by our three examples are actually attested (in fact, they are not, despite their transparency):

            para-ven-a                  something beside a vein

            peri-ven-a                   something surrounding a vein

            endo-ven-a                  something inside a vein

--we are only claiming that the concepts so named are well-documented; and we note in passing that the Latin noun ven-a is among those (like cost-a and patell-a, discussed above) which have been or could be used in English as well.

            At this point, let's do some actual counting, restricting ourselves for this experiment to the same three prefixes as before.  Of the fifty words we found earlier, of the pattern P-X-N, ten could be said to be "predicted" by analogous P-X-A; but there are about 225 words altogether of the shape P-X-A.  In total then, the words counted here can be said to specify 265 body parts or other objects, and to at least strongly imply their names!

            If this is confusing, let's try a slightly different approach.  Other noun-endings are of course found on words beginning P-X-, terminations denoting abstract nouns naming processes, procedures and the like.  For illustrative purposes, I counted the occurence (in our same three-prefix sample) of just one of those, those formed by the addition of the abstract noun termination -itis, namely

            P-X-ITIS          the inflammation of a body part

                                    located in the prepositional relation to X specified by P-

                                    (or, the inflammation of something involving an object

                                    located in the prepositional relation to X specified by P-);

this count (omitting words of this form possessing previously counted analogues shaped P-X-A or P-X-N) amounted to more than 50 more words.  Again, such words "predict" or presuppose a concrete noun, as in the following sequence:

            P-X-ITIS            = the inflammation of (something involving) P-X-N,

            where P-X-N    = something located in the prepositional relation to X specifed by P-;

            therefore, if P-X-ITIS is a real word, so too is P-X-N.

            To sum up, I have tried to make the case here that the existence of even one word of the form P-X-N presupposes the existence of many more of the same form; supporting evidence can be marshalled by considering that for every analogous word (in our discussion, P-X-A and P-X-ITIS) there exists a word P-X-N, and without even looking very hard we've found nearly 300 examples that would be difficult to defrock as "real words."

            But what about words of the shape P-OSTE-UM?  O yeah; next post!

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10. LATGLISH 3: THE EMPERORS' NEW POLYSYLLABLES

(Part of a series based upon Stiles, The Anatomy of Medical Terminology (Radix Antiqua 2015; ISBN 978-1-988941-240)

           To sum up, the courses, textbooks and additional materials I've been involved in creating all represent an attempt to fill an educational gap caused by three features of contemporary English.  The first two have wide application to the whole of the language, while the third feature is more specifically applicable to academic English.

            1)  English is unique among modern languages in suffering a disjunction between its concrete vocabulary, which is largely native, and its abstract vocabulary, which is almost entirely borrowed from Latin and Greek.

            2) The tenuous connection between abstract vocabulary and the concrete words upon which abstract ones are built, though maintained for most of the nine hundred or so years that the problem has been with us by the near-universal learning of Latin (at least at the level of education demanded of readers and writers of "academic" material), has been broken in the last two or three generations.

            3)  To some degree at least, academics, like specialists in any area, are still more or less conscious of the benefits which come from the possession of an arcane vocabulary.

            All three features contribute to the difficulties contemporary native speakers of English have with all of their own language's abstract and technical words, but they make academic vocabularies, because of their heavy dependence on Latglish, even more difficult to learn than other specialized vocabularies or jargons.

            The first feature, at once the least understood and the most far-reaching in its implications, is perhaps the most difficult to grasp.  A further set of examples of the problem may help.  English speakers are on safe ground if we "grasp" a "point" during a discussion, because both "grasp" and "point" are concrete words used abstractly here but with clear connections of meaning to their concrete denotations.  If, on the other hand, we "comprehend" an "idea" or "perceive" the "argument," we are in a realm of abstraction without obvious connection to tangible reality.

            Let's consider only the verbs.  When we "grasp" an idea, the metaphorical extension of meaning from the physical act of "grasping" an object is clear and appropriate; its clarity and appropriateness are further helped by the existence of well-known cognate or parallel abstractions such as "grapple with," "seize on," "take hold of" and "come to grips with."

            When we "comprehend," on the other hand, we may be dimly aware that our action is related to that expressed by the word "apprehend," but we have no way of knowing, without special training in Latin or etymology, that both words derive from Latin "prehendo" meaning "I grasp" or "I seize," and that we are therefore using the same metaphorical extension of meaning as in the previous example.  Similarly, if we "perceive," or "conceive," or understand a "concept," we are making use of a nearly identical metaphor ("-ceive-" and "-cept-" derive from Latin "capio" meaning "I seize" or "I take"), but again without being able to connect it by meaning to a physical act denoted by a cognate word in the world of concrete objects.  The native speaker of Latin, to put this another way, would not suffer the English speaker's disjunction between abstract "comprehend," "apprehend" and "conceive" on the one hand and the concrete act of physically "grasping" or "seizing" on the other, because "prehendo" and "capio" were used of that physical act as well as in their metaphorically extended senses.           Similarly, a contemporary German speaker would find no disjunction between the abstract verb "begreifen" ("to comprehend" or "to understand") and cognate concrete words like "greifen" ("to grab" or "to grasp") and "Griff" ("handle; thing grasped").  Finally, French "comprendre" ("to comprehend") clearly derives, with no disjunction, from "prendre" ("to take").

            Thus native speakers of English are often handicapped, in a way that speakers of the above-mentioned languages are not, if confronted with an unfamiliar word from the same root as one we already know ("prehensile" may serve as an example in the present context) or even by a word we do know if it is used in an unfamiliar way ("reprehensible," for example): since our language lacks a cognate concrete word, or a use of the same root to denote something physical and real, we have no image to refer back to in order to guess the meaning of a word or in order to remember its meaning once learned.  We must rely upon context alone if we are to guess, and memory alone if we are to remember.  Even so, the lack of a "root" and unifying concept can result in memory and context seeming to run counter to one another, as in the following examples:

            He comprehends the problem.

            He apprehends the criminal.

            He is apprehensive.

            The book is comprehensive.

            The action is reprehensible.

            My second point, that the disjunction between English abstract and concrete vocabulary has been worsened by the cessation of that almost universal knowledge of latin that prevailed until very recently among those who claim to be educated, need not be labored.  It does however need to be pointed out.  This is because the advantages of knowing Latin in terms of the enhancement of one's understanding of English vocabulary are, for most of those few people who do know Latin, unconscious ones, while for those who do not know Latin those advantages are, by definition, not knowable at all.  Latin has dropped out of the curriculum, almost silently; where a clamor has arisen, the vital problem of disjunction between abstract and concrete vocabulary has not formed a large part of the protest.  This is not to suggest that the resuscitation of Latin would in itself solve the problem: a knowledge of Latin provides only the material from which connections may be drawn between words in English, but does not in itself confer the ability to explicate Latglish.  In practice, the only solution to this growing problem of communication--this gap, this disjunction--is going to be specialized study of English etymology, of the kind this blog is dedicated to fostering.

            My final point, that academic vocabularies to a greater extent than other jargons confer benefits of some kind upon their initiates, may be disputed.  But words do have power, and always have had.  Some, in contemporary English, have so much power that few of us can bring ourselves even to utter them, in "polite company" at least.  Again, the idea in primitive magic that learning the name of something gives one power over it may persist in what used to be our fairly widespread reluctance to share our middle, or secret, names, except with intimates.

            So practitioners of academic specialities, knowing the special names of things, may have in the eyes of many of the rest of us a kind of power over the things themselves; in addition, in order for the special names to be efficacious they must remain secret or arcane, the property of a select few....or is it perhaps just that the Emperors' new clothes are no clothes at all, and that in academia we sometimes find ourselves pretending that we all--students and professors alike--really can see through to the meanings inherent in the lovely Latglish we clothe ourselves in?

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9. LATGLISH 2: FLIPPING THE TOGA?

(Part of a series based upon Stiles, The Anatomy of Medical Terminology (Radix Antiqua 2015; ISBN 978-1-988941-240)

            So "orth-odont-ist-s" rub shoulders with "dent-ic-ian-s," while "in-dent-at-ion-s" (and plain old "dents" in your fender) frolic among the "dan-de-lion-s"-- an earlier age might have called all these tooth-words "Latin-ish."  "Latglish," by contrast, is a word new and harsh enough to give offence--which the semantic problem we are talking about here ought to do.  For it is not just that 60% of our vocabulary consists of word parts inconsistently borrowed and stuck together from foreign sources; the real problem is illustrated by several contrasting features of Latin and English vocabulary, which (as I could put it if I wanted to baffle you with Latglish) Latglish vocabulary mediates nonsymmetrically:

LATIN WORDS                LATGLISH WORDS        "PURE" ENGLISH WORDS

mostly poly-syllabic               mostly poly-syllabic                mostly mono-syllabic

highly inflected                       partly inflected                        mostly un-inflected

both concrete and abstract     mostly abstract                       mostly concrete

            Don't be alarmed by the Latglish bafflegab.  In (mostly) plain English, let's say that observable contrasts in terms of three features (word-length, degree of inflection, and degree of abstraction) are distributed unevenly over a range of word-types which can be represented as follows (the added examples will with any luck make these observations clearer; note that "--" indicates that no word occupies this set of coordinates):

PURE                             PURE                    MIXED                   PURE

LATIN                       LATGLISH            LATGLISH             ENGLISH

crani-um                      crani-um                    crani-um/skull             skull

fract-ura crani-alis        crani-al fract-ure        skull fract-ure             skull break

carp-us                        --                               --                              wrist

os carp-al-e                 --                               carp-al bone              wrist bone

oss-a carp-al-ia           "carp-al-ia"                 carp-al-s                    wrist bones

--                                 skelet-on                   --                               --

            To guide you through this list, the first line reflects the fact that the Latin word "cranium" (borrowed early from Greek "kranion" and fully "Latinized") was borrowed into English where it can be used on its own (as a fully "Englished" word) or as a synonym coexisting with the native English word "skull."  Notice in examining the second line that while you can say "skull fracture" in a mixture of English and Latglish, you would normally say "crani-al fracture" rather than "crani-um fracture" in the very best Latglish; but you would never say "skull-ish break" even in the purest of English.

            Again, although Latglish "cranium" and English "skull" are used interchangeably (although an anatomist might give you an argument about this, in terms of the potentially different scopes of the two words), the second group of lines illustrates the fact that an English speaker wouldn't understand you if you called a body part the "carpus;" medical people actually do call the bones which make up the wrist the "carpals" but few of them would recognize "carpalia," and fewer still would understand that the word "carp-al-s" is using the regular English plural morpheme "-s" to translate the Latin neuter plural adjectival ending "-alia."

            Finally, if the latter sequence suggests that there might actually be three "grades" of Latglish (from purest Latglish to most English-ed, these would be represented by "carpalia," "carpals" and "carpal bones," respectively), the opposite extreme is exemplified by "skeleton," a Greek neuter adjective (describing a thing which is "dried up") borrowed almost directly into Latglish (though we usually call such words "Neolatin"), with no Latin or English equivalent at all.

            A shared feature of the Latglish nouns is that (unlike their English equivalents, where these exist) when they are used as adjectives their endings usually change: just as we would never call something a "wrist-y" problem in English, we would be much more likely to refer to skelet-al disorders than "skeleton" ones.  To mention one last complication in this particular context, however, this aspect of Latglish is changing in our lifetimes so that an increasing number of non-inflected adjectivalizations are becoming normal.  A few examples follow, showing this particular feature in terms of the "purity" of the Latglish:

PURE LATGLISH                      ENGLISHED LATGLISH

skelet-al problems                          skelet-on problems

cancer-ous tissue                            cancer research

muscul-ar dystrophy                       muscle tissue

hyperglycem-ic syndrome               hypercalcemia syndrome

            It bears repeating that this set of contrasts represents change-in-progress, in the same way as the plural forms of Latglish nouns are changing before our eyes and might invite all kinds of dispute: as, you might say "formulae" where I would say "formulas;" your "radiuses" are my "radii;" today I say "indexes" and tomorrow "indices;" and no one believes me when I get up on my pedantic high horse and assert that if it is one octopus then it must be two "octopodes," even though I might be quite happy counting my platypuses.

            This is all the more worth mentioning because, while the (mostly pedantic and therefore trivial) distinctions between Latin and English concrete-noun plurals rarely cause problems of interpretation, the blurred distinction between nouns and adjectives can be especially confusing, particularly in the case of polysyllabic abstract Latglish nouns, which as we will see by means of the next set of examples are both the most numerous and the most all-around troublesome of all Latglish words.

            Before proceeding, note in relation to the previous lists that while "cranium" and "skull" are in wide usage as synonymous terms, and while most people if they gave it a moment's thought would probably realize that "fracture" and "break" mean the same thing, it takes special training in scientific or medical terminology to recognize that the "carpal" bones (or "carpals") have anything at all to do with the wrist.  We might say, therefore, that there is no "pure English" word that can be called "interchangeable with" or "equivalent to" Latglish "carpals" (although of course we have a pure English "translation," namely "wrist-bones").  With this distinction in mind, let's look at another set of Latglish words, from which arise a further set of troubles:

LATIN                     LATGLISH          ENGLISH              TRANSLATION

WORD                       WORD           EQUIVALENT       OF THE LATGLISH

                                                                 WORD                      WORD

test-is 1                       --                                  --                       "a witness"

test-is 2                       test                                --                       "witnesser"

test-ament-um             test-ament                      --                     "a witnessing"

--                                test-amon-ial                  --                       "a witnessing"

in-test-at-us                 in-test-at-e                    --                       "un-witness-ed"

--                                in-test-ac-y                    --                       "un-witness-ed-ness"

pro-test-ari                  pro-test                         --                       "forth-witness"

--                                pro-test-or                     --                       "forth-witness-er"

--                                pro-test-at-ion-s            --                       "forth-witness-ings"

at-test-ar-i                   at-test                           --                       "toward-witness"

con-test-ans                con-test-ant                   --                       "together-witness-ing"

de-test-abil-is              de-test-abl-e                 --                       "down-witness-able"

--                                de-test-abil-ity              --              "down-witness-able-ness"

            Notice here among other things that while a few (mostly abstract) Latglish words do not have actual Latin antecedents (and many of the Latin antecedents that do exist are rare and/or late), none of them have obviously synonymous and commonly used English equivalents.  Notice especially that although the Latglish words listed here are only a small subset of all of the words in English made from this Latin root, no Latglish word "test" exists that easily anchors all of the compound forms: you cannot say, "the *TEST testified about the testimony of the protestor," you have to say "the WITNESS" did so.

            As for the word designating the kind of "witness-er" that you write to get into Law School, while it is a concrete enough word it's meaning has been abstracted far enough from the root idea of "witness" that it doesn't serve very well to clarify the meanings of the others in the group.  And how far would you get if you tried to figure out what the male body part called a "witness-let" or "witness-ling" (Latglish "test-icle," from Modern Latin "glandula test-icul-aris;" the Romans called the body part simply "testis," or "the witness," ) had to do with getting into Law School?

            Don't feel too bad if you don't have a quick answer, by the way; no one else does either. The two leading theories are that, 1) because women were not allowed to "test-ify" (to "make witness") in court, a quick flip of the toga--a flashing, as it were--might sometimes be required (the "testimony" of slaves was unadmissable too, unless of course they were tortured; but that's a whole different story); or 2) that since there were no bibles yet in the Roman world, the "test-ifi-er" would have to grab something or another, to swear by--take your pick!

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