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Okay, this is going to be an unfortunate academic intrusion on this thread,
so if you're uninterested in dialect and etymology, hit <DELETE> now.
Tim Giles said:
>>To "dis" is to disrespect. What you are witnessing is language being
simplified by its users.
It's similar to what linguists call backclipping (like when German speakers drop
verb and article endings--it's probably the reason English no longer has verb
endings). However, it's somewhat different in that it clips off the very part
of the word that makes it comprehensible. On its own, "dis-" in standard
English is a prefix and carries no meaning other than "not" or "opposite of...."
Since it has a definite meaning of its own in African-American English dialect,
it's really an independent term. The interesting part is that "dissin'" is
created by taking "disrespect," dropping the attending verb, then adding a
present participle--pretty amazing transformation linguistically.
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