Pejorative Verbs and the Prospects for a Unified Theory of Slurs.

The noun "tinker", like the term "Gypsy", is a pejorative for the Roma, yet the verb "to tinker" is not pejorative. But the main point is that although the verb "to tinker" is a denominalized form of "tinker", which is a pejorative, the verb is not itself pejorative. We speculate that the denominalization of a functional noun produces a verb that picks up the function but does not, or need not, retain the derogatory features of the noun, in cases in which the noun is a pejorative. For our purposes, however, the important point is that, even on Hom's view, I fully competent i speakers would know that a pejorative noun "N" has pejorative force for they would know that it means something like 'is contemptible for having such and such features due to being N*', where "N*" is a non-pejorative term referring to the identifiable group in question. [Extracted from the article]