From <i>arch-atheist to archi zinzin</i> : tracing historical and contemporary roots of evaluation and intensification in a set of cognates

Abstract In this paper, we examine a morphological phenomenon – the set of cognate prefixes including English arch- , Dutch aarts- , German erz- , and French archi- – that requires us to locate a sense of negative evaluation, if at all present, variously either in a cluster of exemplars with a negatively evaluated base or in the prefix itself, as well as in the contexts in which the prefixed words are used. In many lexicalized forms, arch- and its cognates indicate, in a non-evaluative way, that the prefixed entity occupies a hierarchically higher position than entities not prefixed with it (e.g., archangel , archbishop , archduke ). However, in current usage, the prefix is found productively with an intensifying and often negatively evaluated meaning, as in arch-manipulator , arch-neo-conservative , and arch-baddie . We here use a semantic vector-space approach for contemporary English data as a useful window through which to examine the semantic aspects of arch -prefixation, allowing for the assessment of how homogeneous or heterogeneous the bases of this pattern are. Our study shows that an evaluatively neutral marker with the meaning ‘high(est) in rank’ may develop into a negative evaluative marker and, in French, into an evaluatively neutral strengthener. We pay attention to possibly extravagant properties of arch- and its cognates.