Prefix-Suffix Neutrality In Evaluative Morphology

Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 2002

In both German and English many fewer combinations of derivational suffixes exist than should be possible, given the types of selectional restrictions that have been posited in the existing literature. For each language we found a pervasive restriction that is responsible for the missing combinations: German has closing suffixes, which individually prevent further suffixation. English allows only one Germanic suffix per word. In both languages the restriction holds for inflection and for clitics as well. For German, we also found that all closing suffixes are followed by linking elements in compounds, and that this constitutes the major productive use of linking elements. For English, we also found that Latinate suffixes are much more susceptible to combination, so that the Germanic and Latinate suffixes follow complementary patterns. Our findings for English show that the often-repeated observation that English inflectional morphology is simpler than that of related languages extends to derivation as well.

The discourse potential of underspecified …, 2008

Morphology, 2010

This article extends the empirical scope of the most recent approach to affix ordering, the Parsability Hypothesis (Hay 2001, 2002, 2003) or Complexity-Based Ordering (CBO) (Plag 2002; Hay and Plag 2004; Plag and Baayen 2009), to the inflecting-fusional morphological type, as represented by the South Slavic language Bulgarian. In order to account properly for the structure of the Bulgarian word, I distinguish between suffixes that are in the derivational word slot and suffixes that are in the inflectional word slot and show that inflectional suffix combinations are more easily parsable than derivational suffix combinations. Derivational suffixes participate in mirror-image combinations of AB-BA type and can be also attached recursively. The order of 12 out of the 22 derivational suffixes under scrutiny in this article is thus incompatible with CBO. With respect to recursiveness and productivity, the Bulgarian word exhibits three domains of suffixation (in order of increasing productivity): (1) a non-diminutive derivational domain, where a suffix may attach recursively on non-adjacent cycles; (2) a diminutive domain, where a suffix may attach recursively on adjacent cycles; and (3) an inflectional domain, where a suffix never attaches recursively. Overall, the results of this study conform to the last revision of the Parsability Hypothesis (Baayen et al. 2009); and if we see the derivational suffix slot and the inflectional suffix slot of the Bulgarian word as parallel to the non-native stratum and the Germanic stratum respectively in English word-formation, we can conclude that suffixes that are closer to the root tend to exhibit idiosyncrasies and appear less parsable in both languages.

2017

This article investigates selected derivational morphological processes in English, Hausa, Igala and some other languages of the world. Morphological processes are a means of changing a word base or root to adjust its meaning and to fit into different syntactic and communicational contexts. To achieve this in a language, linguists usually utilise certain tools called morphemes or affixes or word-elements, which are added or attached to the base or root of a word. In this article, the researchers have arduously and ardently examined these languages to bring out their rich and interesting morphological processes. We have found out that derivational morphology, which is concerned with forming new lexemes, i.e. words that differ either in syntactic category or in meaning from their bases, is extremely productive in languages. Introduction This paper treats derivational morphological processes, as selected and studied in English, Hausa, Igala and some other languages of the world. As a matter of fact, morphological processes are unique and interesting phenomena in the study of languages of the world, and they usually catch the attention of linguists. For this reason, before discussing the morphological processes selected in the languages under study, we have decided to proffer the definitions of morphology, derivational morphology and morphological processes as a brief literature review for easy comprehension. Furthermore, this study, to the best of its ability, has handled prefix, suffix, infix, interfix, circumfix, transfix and suprafix or superfix, among other morphological processes in the aforementioned languages and some other languages of the world.

Studies in comparative Germanic …, 2002

In this paper we revisit V-to-I-movement in Germanic and beyond. We examine and evaluate the hypothesis that there is a correlation between richness of verbal inflectional morphology and the obligatory movement of the finite verb to Infl, which has been adopted in much recent literature. We show that this hypothesis is empirically inadequate, and that in fact V-to-I movement across languages is independent of morphology.

2009

homepage.univie.ac.at, 2008

In this paper, I test the Parsability Hypothesis (PH) against data from Slavic languages. I demonstrate an intricate relationship between derivation and inflection in the sense that inflectional suffixes serve to identify derivational suffixes but the two types of suffixes differ in respect to further suffixation, and thus suffixes should be distinguished according to their position either in the derivational or inflectional word slot. Based on synchronic and diachronic evidence, I contend that in Slavic languages, parsability holds for inflection, provided that a language stacks suffixes in the inflectional word slot, but not for derivation, though parsability may be used as a supporting criterion for establishing the +/-closing character of a suffix in the derivational word-slot. I show that different stages in the diachronic development of a language exhibit different degrees of parsability, i.e. parsability is not a constant but a tendency. I conclude that in order to account adequately for Slavic word structure, PH requires some revisions: to consider the role of the word-length and assume two different domains of parsability -derivational and inflectional, as well as to allow the same suffix to apply recursively in derivation and to undermine the role of phonotactics in derivational morphology. initial suffixes and do not blur the morpheme boundary via phonological and morphonological alternations. Thus parsability depends on different factors and occurs by gradations, which allows affixes to be ordered hierarchically according to their ability to parse.

In this paper, I will focus on negative prefixes such as English un- (and in-), as in unintelligent (and ineffective), where the negative prefix precedes and is associated with an adjective. As far as I can see, English has no corresponding negative suffix that would follow an adjective and have exactly the same interpretive effect as prefixal un-.

Word Structure, 2015

This reference work on English morphology can be qualified as the (for a long time needed) successor to Marchand's famous handbook The categories and types of present-day English word formation, of which the second and last edition was published in 1969 . The book to be reviewed here, however, has a larger scope, as it does not only deal with word formation but also with inflection. Hence, it is a comprehensive book on English morphology. The authors of this book are all senior researchers in the domain of English morphology, with an individual track record of important publications on English morphology. So it was a good idea of these authors to work together to produce an authoritative volume on English morphology. What are the main features of this book compared to Marchand's book? First of all, it incorporates the results of decades on research on English morphology since the 1960's. Second, it is based on huge corpora, of a size that was unthinkable in the time that Marchand wrote his book. The main corpus used are COCA (the Corpus of Contemporary American English), the British National corpus, CELEX, and the Google Book Corpus. In addition, various dictionaries and reverse dictionaries were used. Many examples of complex words are

Lingue e Linguaggio, 2004

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, 2017

Inflection is the systematic relation between words’ morphosyntactic content and their morphological form; as such, the phenomenon of inflection raises fundamental questions about the nature of morphology itself and about its interfaces. Within the domain of morphology proper, it is essential to establish how (or whether) inflection differs from other kinds of morphology and to identify the ways in which morphosyntactic content can be encoded morphologically. A number of different approaches to modeling inflectional morphology have been proposed; these tend to cluster into two main groups, those that are morpheme-based and those that are lexeme-based. Morpheme-based theories tend to treat inflectional morphology as fundamentally concatenative; they tend to represent an inflected word’s morphosyntactic content as a compositional summing of its morphemes’ content; they tend to attribute an inflected word’s internal structure to syntactic principles; and they tend to minimize the theor...

Studies in Language Companion Series, 2014

Basing himself largely on areal and typological arguments, Güldemann (2010) claims that neither Proto-Niger-Congo nor Proto-Bantu had more than a "moderate" system of derivational verb suffixes ("extensions"), and that both proto languages lacked inflectional verb prefixes. Although drawing largely on the same materials as Hyman (2004, 2007a,b), he arrives at the opposite conclusion that Niger-Congo languages which have such morphology, in particular Bantu and Atlantic, would have had to innovate multiple suffixation and prefixation. However, such hypotheses are weakened by two serious problems: (i) These proto languages, which possibly reach back as far as 10,000-12,000 B.P., have clearly had enough time for their morphosyntax to have cycled more than once. (ii) The areal properties of Güldemann's Macro-Sudan Belt most likely represent more recent innovations which have diffused after the Niger-Congo break-up. In this paper, I present further evidence that multiple suffixation and prefixation must have existed even in languages which have lost them. The general conclusion is that current areal distributions are largely irrelevant for long-range linguistic reconstruction.

This dissertation discusses competition in verbal affixation, specifically -en, -ate, -ify, -ize/ise, including conversion as in the interpretation of word-class change by zero affixation. The aim is to attest cases of competition in this area of English word-formation, as well as to gather as much additional information as possible on present competition in the selection of verbal affixes.