To this day, the English -er suffix prototypically derives agent nouns from verbs (rideV → rider – ‘someone who Vs’). Over the course of a millennium, the -er suffix construction has consistently extended its range of application, and from the 20th century onwards, it has further gained in variablity in that it allows for multiple attachment of -er, such as in looker-onner or stayer-onner-for-nower. The repetition of -er is accompanied by an increase in expressiveness. Additionally, internet attestations suggest there are several other English suffixes that can be repeated in the same manner as -er, consider -y in runny-outy red felt pen and -ed in kicked-upped. The systematicity of this morphosyntactic phenomenon suggests that some speakers of English occasionally choose to flout some rules to create structurally unusual, expressive, and extravagant complex words.
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