"Winningest" presents an interesting problem in language change, as Bruce suggests. The pattern in English of /Ng/ vs. /N/ alternation, where /N/ represents the velar nasal sound in "sing," lays out roughly as below: Morpheme-internally English has /Ng/, as in "finger," "dangle," or "Tonga." Before a vowel-initial inflectional suffix, English has /Ng/, as in "longer," "strongest." Before a vowel-initial derivational suffix, English has /N/, as in "singer," "hanger." Word-finally English as /N/, as in "sing," "long," etc. It could be argued that /Ng/ vs. /N/ represents a productive morphophonemic alternation. "Winningest" would support this claim, since -ing is a derivational suffix and so does not have a /g/ before an inflectional suffix. "Winninger," whether it occurs or not, would behave the same way for the same reason. In Old English there was only /Ng/ and /Nk/, no bare /N/, since /N/ was what /n/ became by assimilation to a following velar (/g,k/). In Middle and Modern English the final /g/ was lost in the contexts given above where /N/ now occurs by itself. It can thus be argued that /g/-deletion is a regular morphophonemic rule in Modern English. As a side note, this /g/-deletion is distinct from what is popularly referred to as "dropping "g," the free variation between "walking" and "walkin'." This variation, which actually has nothing to do with /g/-deletion and refers instead to an orthographic practice, probably arises from the merger in Middle English of Old English present participles in -end- and gerunds in -ing. The final /g/ of /-INg/ was lost as illustrated above, since it was word final, giving the form /-IN/, as in "walking." The loss of the final /d/ of the -end suffix produced the form /-In/, as in "walkin'." The -ing/-in' variation reflects the distinct sources of the Modern English present participle, and although our spelling makes it look like dropping of /g/, phonologically there is no /g/ to drop. The -in' form simply has a different historical source. Herb ________________________________ From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Dick Veit Sent: Saturday, February 27, 2010 9:26 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Double suffixes Another observation: participles loving, winning, and losing have superlatives but not comparatives: The Canandian women's ice hockey team was the winningest in the Olympics, even winninger than the Americans. Dick On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 3:32 AM, Webmail bdespain <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote: Just some more observations. There is a certain phonetic similarity about the two-syllable words that attract the -est suffix: they seem to end in an unstressed vowel or sonnant, e.g., able, clever, common, feeble, gentle, narrow, shallow, simple. Some single-syllables that end in -ng make the g hard, e.g., long (longest), strong (strongest). The fact that the adjective forming -ing does not seem to do this suggests a separate allophone or morphophonemic rule. Also the -y adjectives that attract -est can often have another syllable added to the front, as, unhappiest, untidiest. This does not seem to be the same for loving or winning: *"the unlovingest disciple", ?"the unwinningest team this season." Bruce To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/ To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/