Word formation in english

Word-formation in English by Ingo Plag Universität Siegen in press Cambridge University Press Series ‘Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics’ Draft version of September 27, 2002 i TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Basic concepts 1.1 What is a word? 1.2 Studying word-formation 1.3 Inflection and derivation 1.4 Summary Furthe r rea ding 23 Exercises Studying complex words 2.1 Identifying morphemes 2.1.1 The morpheme as the minimal linguistic sign 2 Problems with the morpheme: the mapping of form and meaning 27 2.2 Allomorphy E s t a b l i s h i n g w o r d-formation rules 2.4 Multiple affixation 2.5 Summary Further reading Exercises Productivity and the mental lexicon 3.1 Introduction: What is productivity? 551 3.2 Possible and actual words 3.3 Complex words in the lexicon 3.4 Measuring productivity Pages 55-57 appear twice due to software-induced layout-alterations that occur when the word for windows files are converted into PDF ii 3.5 Constraining productivity 73 3.5.1 Pragmatic restrictions 3.5.2 Structural restrictions 3.5.3 Blocking 3.6 Summary Further reading 85 Exercises A ffi x a t i o n 4.1 What is an affix? 4.2 How to investigate affixes: More on methodology 4.3 General properties of English affixation S u ffi x e s 4.4.1 Nominal suffixes 4.4.2 Verbal suffixes 4.4.3 Adjectival suffixes 4.4.4 Adverbial suffixes 4.5 Prefixes I n fi x a t i o n 4.7 Summary F u r t h e r r e a d i n g E x ercises D e r i v a t i o n w i t h o u t a ffi x a t i o n 5.1 Conversion 5.1.1 The directionality of conversion C o n v e r s i o n C o n v e r s i o n : o r m o r p h o l o g i c a l ? 5.2 Prosodic morphology 5.2.1 Truncations: Truncated names, -y diminutives and clippings 5.2.2 Blends o r z e r o-affixation? S y n t a c t i c iii 5.3 Abbreviations and acronyms 5.4 Summary F u r t h e r r e a d i n g Exercises Compounding 6.1 Recognizing compounds 6.1.1 What are compounds made of? M o r e o n t h e s t r u c t u r e o f c o m p o u n d s : t h e n o t i o n o f h e a d 6.1.3 Stress in compounds 6.1.4 Summary A n i n v e n t o r y o f c o m p o u n d i n g p a t t e r n s 6.3 Nominal compounds 6.3.1 Headedness 6.3.2 Interpreting nominal compounds 6.4 Adjectival compounds 194 6.5 Verbal compounds 6.6 Neo-classical compounds 6.7 Compounding: syntax or morphology? 6.8 Summary F u r t h e r r e a d i n g Exercises Theoretical issues: modeling word -formation I n t r o d u c t i o n : t h e o r y ? W h y 7.2 The phonology-morphology interaction: lexical phonology 7.2.1 An outline of the theory of lexical phonology 7.2.2 Basic insights of lexical phonology 7.2.3 Problems with lexical phonology A l t e r n a t i v e t h e o r i e s 7.3 The nature of word-formation rules 2 iv 7.3.1 The problem: word -based versus morpheme-based morphology morphology M o r p h e m e -based 7.3.3 Word-based morphology F u r t h e r Exercises References S y n t h e s i s r e a d i n g 4 v ABBREVIATIONS AND NOTATIONAL CONVENTIONS A adjective AP adjectival phrase Adv adverb C consonant I pragmatic potentiality LCS lexical conceptual structure n1 hapax legomenon N noun N number of observations NP noun phrase OT Optimality Theory P productivity in the narrow sense P* global productivity PP prepositional phrase PrWd prosodic word SPE Chomsky and Halle 1968, see references UBH unitary base hypothesis UOH unitary output hypothesis V V verb vowel VP verb phrase V extent of use WFR word formation rule # word boundary syllable boundary | in the context of vi < > orthographic representation / / phonological (i.e underlying) representation [ ] phonetic representation * impossible word ! possible, but unattested Introduction: What this book is about and how it can be used The existence of words is usually taken for granted by the speakers of a language To speak and understand a language means - among many other things - knowing the words of that language The average speaker knows thousands of words, and new words enter our minds and our language on a daily basis This book is about words More specifically, it deals with the internal structure of complex words, i.e words that are composed of more than one meaningful element Take, for example, the very word meaningful, which could be argued to consist of two elements, meaning and -ful, or even three, mean, -ing, and -ful We will address the question of how such words are related to other words and how the language allows speakers to create new words For example, meaningful seems to be clearly related to colorful, but perhaps less so to awful or plentiful And, given that meaningful may be paraphrased as ‘having (a definite) meaning’, and colorful as ‘having (bright or many different) colors’, we could ask whether it is also possible to create the word coffeeful, meaning ‘having coffee’ Under the assumption that language is a rule-governed system, it should be possible to find meaningful answers to such questions This area of study is traditionally referred to as word- formation and the present book is mainly concerned with word formation in one particular language, English As a textbook for an undergraduate readership it presupposes very little or no prior knowledge of linguistics and introduces and explains linguistic terminology and theoretical apparatus as we go along The purpose of the book is to enable the students to engage in (and enjoy!) their own analyses of English (or other languages’) complex word s After having worked with the book, the reader should be familiar with the necessary and most recent methodological tools to obtain various relevant types of data (introspection, dictionaries, basic electronic text collections, psycholinguistic experiments, internet resources), should be able to systematically analyze their data and to relate their findings to theoretical problems and debates The book is not written in the perspective of a particular theoretical framework and draws on insights from various research traditions Word-formation in English can be used as a textbook for a course on word - formation (or the word-formation parts of morphology courses), as a source-book for teachers, for student research projects, as a book for self-study by more advanced students (e.g for their exam preparation), and as an up-to-date reference concerning selected word -formation processes in English for a more general readership For each chapter there are a number of basic and more advanced exercises, which are suitable for in-class work or as students’ homework The more advanced exercises include proper research tasks, which also give the students the opportunity to use the different methodological tools introduced in the text Students can control their learning success by comparing their results with the answer key provided at the end of the book The answer key features two kinds of answers Basic exercises always receive definite answers, while for the more advanced tasks sometimes no ‘correct’ answers are given Instead, methodological problems and possible lines of analysis are discussed Each chapter is also followed by a list of recommended further readings Those who consult the book as a general reference on English word formation may check author, subject bibliography in order to quickly find and what affix they indices need and Chapter the introduces most recent developments in research methodology, and short descriptions of individual affixes are located in chapter As every reader knows, English is spoken by hundreds of millions speakers and there exist numerous varieties of English around the world The variety that has been taken as a reference for this book is General American English The reason for this choice is purely practical, it is the variety the author knows best With regard to most of the phenomena discussed in this book, different varieties of English pattern very much alike However, especially concerning aspects of pronunciation there are sometimes observable remarkable, though perhaps minor, differences between different varieties Mostly for reasons of space, but also due to the lack of pertinent studies, these differences will not be