Talk:Tmesis

message: Shouldnt this article mention at least one swear-related Tmesis. Its by far the more common example of this phenomenon than the weak examples here
Why in hell would anyone begin a word with tm? lysdexia 07:05, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I dunno, sounds good tme! 68.174.97.122 (talk) 19:05, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

text: Greek words starting with two consonants (ps-, pt- and others) are usually zero grades - see Indo-European ablaut. As such they make perfect philological sense, and yes, they were pronounced that way. --Doric Loon (talk) 18:57, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  em... 

message: I removed 
: * "how heinous e'er it be" (Shakespeare's tmesis of "however" in Richard II)
since 
* the construction makes grammatical sense without assuming it is derived from "however", and 
* it is in complete contrast to all the other examples, and needs to be discussed as an exception to the pattern they evidence, if it is in fact itself an example.
WS's intent seems to be "no matter how heinous it turns out to be", and "ever" has the force of "always" and thus "anyway".  In fact, we should cite evidence that English of that vintage treated "however" as a single word, rather than having "how ever", "what ever", "when ever", etc. as two word phrases that had not yet fused into our corresponding familiar single words.
It may be an example, but there is more work needed to show that, and still more to fit it into the article in that case.--Jerzy•t 03:57, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  how heinous e'er 

message: This article has been tagged as not citing sources for a while (since August 2006), but now there are three sources cited.  They may not all be reliable, but they are citations.  I'd say we can remove or change the tag.  --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 15:16, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Sources

message: Someon has added to our article on the split infinitive a note that the Latin infinitive could be split by tmesis. If that is true, it would be really useful to have an example of it here - in fact we could do with a whole section on Latin, if the phenomenon really does occur. --Doric Loon (talk) 18:52, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Split infinitive

message: It seems the examples are not sorted in any significant way. Alphabetical of the phrase seems to be the most readily apparent solution. 
-- 66.212.222.254 (talk) 15:20, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Examples Organization 

message: Are constructions exemplified by "the man in the car's hat" viewed as tmesis? It would appear so, because the prepositional phrase "in the car" has been inserted into "man's". This is a moderately frequent construction in English, so it should go in the article unless for some reason it's considered to be in a different category.  Duoduoduo (talk) 22:17, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: No. The English possessive marker 's is simply a clitic. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 03:41, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: The man in the car's hat

message: Are these examples in English considered to be tmesis?:
*"whatsoever" and "whosoever", with "so" inserted in "whatever" and "whoever"
*"take it over", as an example of an extremely large category of separable phrasal verbs, which have a meaning not contained in the bare verb, in which an object pronoun (and sometimes optionally a short noun phrase object) is inserted between the bare verb and the particle
Duoduoduo (talk) 22:29, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Other English examples

message: Are German separable verbs considered an example of tmesis? They consist of a prefix plus a root verb, and when they separate the root verb occurs, then intervening words, then the prefix.  Duoduoduo (talk) 22:37, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: German separable verbs?

message: The example involving Stephen Fry is dated June 2011, however there is an earlier verifiable instance dating back to 2003 where he gives examples of tmesis -- in the 4th episode of series A of the television show QI. It's described on the corresponding wiki page. Bigblah (talk) 10:41, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Stephen Fry

message: Will Self used 'dramatic tmesis' to refer to the interpolation of whole play within two parts of another. Is this standard usage?  58.153.178.87 (talk) 13:17, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  In larger chunks 

message: wouldn't the duplicating syllable rule be better expressed as insertion of a nonsense word constructed from the neighboring phonetic sound, such as "'W-eldiddly-elcome" or "'Wel-diddlyel-come" rather than "'Wel-diddly-elcome" which implies the the duplication is a separate event? can probably deduce more about what is going on with more examples and checking stressed/unstressed, voiced/unvoiced and the other usual suspects. 68.174.97.122 (talk) 19:10, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  duplication of syllable probably occurs in the insertion, no? 

message: Unlike the Latin example circum virum dare, the Ancient Greek example kata dakrua leibōn is AFAIK a true example of tmesis, as dakrua cannot be considered the complement of kata: the tears are shed, not something else from the tears. In the Latin example, it is really circum virum, "around the man", that is meant, so the ambiguity of the construction is genuine. (Only the unidiomatic use of dare may hint that something is amiss with the interpretation of circum as a plain preposition.)
The background is, of course, that in Proto-Indo-European and Early Indo-European dialects, including Hittite, the construction was NOUNObj + ADVERB + VERB, where the adverb could be interpreted as either belonging closer to the noun (hence, a postposition) or the verb (hence, a preverb). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 04:06, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Greek example 

message: "Tmesis is found as a poetic or rhetorical device in classical Latin poetry, such as Ovid's Metamorphoses. Words such as circumdare, to surround, are split apart with other words of the sentence in between, e.g. circum virum dant: "they surround the man"
This is phrased in a way that makes it sound as though circum virum dant comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses. In fact, it doesn't - I have looked through the Metamorphoses in the original Latin today, and these words are not found within this text.
I know, the above phrasing in the article doesn't explicitly say that these words come from Ovid. But it makes it SOUND as though they're from Ovid. I thought they were from Ovid, until I checked and found that they're not. A quick Google search reveals that others have fallen into the same trap as me: <a href="https://thedailygrime.wordpress.com/2013/08/03/to-infinitives-and-beyond/">this person,</a>, for instance.
Can we replace this with an example that's actually attested in Latin? I can get on the case soon, but I haven't got time at the moment. LegesRomanorum (talk) 16:21, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Example" not actually from Ovid 

message: If anyone knows what "In that sense, words such as apron and uncle may be seen as the result of tmesis of napron and nuncle" means, could you explain it in the article? I don't see how those words relate to the passage about "a whole nother". 209.6.200.194 (talk) 22:30, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Apron" and "uncle" the result of tmesis?