Some adjectives describe other words. "Bisyllabic" is an example, it describes words like "butter" and "football", but not "peg" or "antidisestablishmentarianism".
Some such adjectives have the weird property that they describe themselves: the best example is "pentasyllabic", but others include "recherche". We'll call such adjectives "autonomic", because they name themselves. If they don't name themselves, we call them "heteronomic". So "pentasyllabic" is autonomic, but "bisyllabic" is heteronomic.
The question Russell asks, put in this form: is "heteronomic" heteronomic?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
Re: A little learning....
Date: 2002-09-24 08:59 am (UTC)Some adjectives describe other words. "Bisyllabic" is an example, it describes words like "butter" and "football", but not "peg" or "antidisestablishmentarianism".
Some such adjectives have the weird property that they describe themselves: the best example is "pentasyllabic", but others include "recherche". We'll call such adjectives "autonomic", because they name themselves. If they don't name themselves, we call them "heteronomic". So "pentasyllabic" is autonomic, but "bisyllabic" is heteronomic.
The question Russell asks, put in this form: is "heteronomic" heteronomic?