grammaticality - How can one determine if the opposite of an agent noun exists?


We know that the employer employs the employee and that the tutor tutors the tutee, but how do we know if the shooter shot the shootee?


Is there a simple way to determine if an agent noun can be made into the object of the agent noun's action? In some cases, this is plainly obvious. We have runners but definitely not runnees and we have jumpers but not jumpees. There ought to be a way can we easily determine if the shooter shoots the shootee since a shootee is intuitively the person who gets shot by a shooter.


Note: Since the meaning of shootee can be intuitively determined by any English speaker, it isn't technically incorrect according to a descriptive linguist, but how would a prescriptive grammarian feel about it?




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

verbs - "Baby is creeping" vs. "baby is crawling" in AmE

commas - Does this sentence have too many subjunctives?

grammatical number - Use of lone apostrophe for plural?

etymology - Where does the phrase "doctored" originate?

phrases - Somebody is gonna kiss the donkey

typography - When a dagger is used to indicate a note, must it come after an asterisk?

etymology - Origin of "s--t eating grin"