Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the first edition
- Preface to the second edition
- Principal references
- 1 What is morphology?
- 2 Word, word-form and lexeme
- 3 Inflections and word-formation
- 4 Lexical derivation
- 5 Compounds
- 6 Morphemes and allomorphs
- 7 Morphological processes
- 8 Morphophonemics
- 9 Properties and their exponents
- 10 Paradigms
- 11 Inflectional morphology and syntax
- 12 Iconicity
- Index
4 - Lexical derivation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the first edition
- Preface to the second edition
- Principal references
- 1 What is morphology?
- 2 Word, word-form and lexeme
- 3 Inflections and word-formation
- 4 Lexical derivation
- 5 Compounds
- 6 Morphemes and allomorphs
- 7 Morphological processes
- 8 Morphophonemics
- 9 Properties and their exponents
- 10 Paradigms
- 11 Inflectional morphology and syntax
- 12 Iconicity
- Index
Summary
Word-formation as ‘derivational morphology’; why this term is avoided. As process of creating new words.
Formations. Lexical formatives; formations as formal processes. Forms vs lexemes: roots; stems. Conversion; back-formation; complex lexemes without simple sources. Meanings of formations; complex lexemes both synthetic and analytic. Formations as semiproductive processes.
Productivity. Productivity a variable; competition between formatives. Productive vs unproductive; competition of -th and -ness. Negative Adjectives in English (dis-; in-; un-; non-; a(n)-); productivity variable between domains. External factors: creation inhibited by lack of need; by forms already existing. Established vs potential lexemes: semiproductivity as blocked productivity. But blocking is not absolute. Word-formation as a problem for synchronic linguistics: rules vs analogy.
What we have called word-formation is usually called ‘derivational morphology’. The formation of election or generation is thus a derivational formation, by which nouns are derived from verbs. By the same token, -ion is a derivational formative or derivational morpheme. I have avoided this terminology for two reasons. Firstly, there are lexical relations in which it is not obvious that one word is derived from the other. Let us return, for example, to the oppositions in Italian between zio ‘uncle’ and ZIA ‘aunt’ or cugina ‘male cousin’ and cugina ‘female cousin’. They too belong to lexical morphology, for the reasons which we have explored in chapter 3. But there is no strong reason for saying either that the Feminines zia and cugina are derived from the Masculines, or vice versa.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Morphology , pp. 61 - 81Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991