University of Education Lahore Department of English Course Title: Morphology & Syntax Programme: BS English Course Code: ENGL2119 Morphological Productivity Morphologically Productivity is defined as ‘the possibility of creating a new word’. The property of an affix to be used to coin new complex words is referred to as the productivity of that affix. Productivity is Gradient Affixes can be more or less productive. Some affixes are highly productive Er, ness, able, ly, un Other affixes are nearly unproductive, so that it is almost impossible to form new coinages Adj + th: Noun + dom: Verb + ment: Adj + en: warmth kingdom judgement blacken Possible, Actual and Complex Words 1. Possible/ Potential Words A possible, or potential, word can be defined as a word whose semantic, morphological or phonological structure is in accordance with the rules and regularities of the language. For example, it seems that all transitive verbs can be turned into adjectives by the attachment of -able. Thus, given are all possible words. Affordable Readable Manageable These forms are also semantically transparent, i.e. their meaning is predictable on the basis of the word-formation rule according to which they have been formed. 2. Actual Words Actual words are those words that are in use. In the case of the potential words affordable, readable, manageable, these words are also actual words, because they have already been coined and used by speakers. However, when can we consider a word as being ‘in use’? Does it mean that some speaker has observed it being used somewhere? Or the majority of the speech community is familiar with it? Or it is listed in dictionaries? Mental Lexicon The problem is that there is variation between individual speakers. Not all words one speaker knows are also known by other speakers. The mental lexicon of one speaker is never completely identical to any other speaker’s mental lexicon. It is even not completely clear when we can say that a given word is ‘known’ by a speaker, or ‘listed’ in her/his mental lexicon. For example, we know that the more frequent a word is the more easily we can memorize it and retrieve it later from our lexicon. This entails that ‘knowledge of a word’ is a gradual notion, and that we know some words better than others. There is often a distinction made between the so-called ‘active’ and ‘passive’ vocabulary. The active vocabulary obviously consists of words that we know ‘better’ than those that constitute our passive vocabulary. 3. Complex words in the lexicon Idiosyncratic complex words must be stored in the mental lexicon, because they cannot be derived on the basis of rules. But what about complex words that are completely regular, i.e. words that are in complete accordance with the word-formation rule on the basis of which they are formed? In most current models of morphological processing access to morphologically complex words in the mental lexicon works in two ways: (whole-word route) ) By direct access to the whole-word representation and the word is looked up as a whole in the mental lexicon (decomposition route) By access to the decomposed elements and the parts are being looked up individually Determining Frequency of a certain Affix or a Word British National Corpus (BNC) This methodological problem can be solved with the help of large electronic text collections, so-called ‘corpora.’ Such corpora are huge collections of spoken and written texts which can be used for studies of vocabulary, syntax, semantics, etc., or for making dictionaries. For example The British National Corpus (BNC) is a very large representative collection of texts and conversations from all kinds of sources, which is available on the internet. The corpus amounts to about 100 million words. 90 million of which are taken from written sources. 10 million of which represent spoken language. (Types): The number of different words. (There were about 940,000 types in BNC). (Tokens): The overall number of words in a corpus. (The 100 million words of the BNC. British National Corpus (BNC) and the Frequently Used Affixes and Words We can look up the frequency of words in the BNC by checking the word-frequency list provided by the corpus compilers. The two most frequent words in English, for example, are the definite article the (which occurs about 6.1 million times in the BNC), followed by the verb be, which (counting all its different forms am, are, be, been, being, is, was, were) has a frequency of c. 4.2 million, meaning that it occurs 4.2 million times in the corpus. For illustrating the frequencies of derived words in a large corpus, the frequencies of some of the words with the suffix -able was observed in the BNC. How to measure Productivity? The productive suffix will create/derive new words Productivity can be measured by counting the number of new words New words will be less frequent (The larger the numbers of NEW low-frequency words, the more productive a given affix will be (The new/low frequency words in the corpus can also be checked in the dictionary. The absence of the new word in the dictionary can be a proof that the word has been recently derived) How to measure Productivity? The lowest number of words can be counted The lowest number is 1 and it is referred to as hapax in the corpus. So we will count the number of Hapaxes= (words with a given affix that occur only once in the corpus) Formula: P= stands for ‘productivity in the narrow sense,’ n1aff= the number of hapaxes with a given affix Naff= stands for the number of all tokens with that affix Measuring Productivity: Examples Major Functions of word-formation 1. Labeling or Referential Function 2. Syntactic re-categorization/ Condensation of Information 3. To Express an Attitude/Feeling 1. Labeling or Referential Function In such cases, a new word is created in order to give a name to a new concept or thing. Example: The Time Patrol also had to unmurder Capistrano’s great-grandmother, unmarry him from the pasha’s daughter in 1600, and uncreate those three kids he had fathered. (from Kastovsky 1986: 594 • the writer in given example needed three words to designate three new concepts, namely the reversal of the actions murdering, marrying, and creating. 2. Syntactic re-categorization/ Condensation of Information The motivation for syntactic re-categorization is often the condensation of information. Example: Yes, George is extremely slow. But it is not his slowness that I find most irritating. Longer phrases and even whole clauses can be substituted by single complex words, which not only makes life easier for speakers and writers. (i.e. his clumsiness vs that he was always so clumsy and awkward in handling things) Serves to create stylistic variation. 3. To Express an Attitude/Feeling It refers to the fondness of the person or animal referred to by the derivative). Examples a. Come here, sweetie, let me kiss you. b. Did you bring your wonderful doggie, my darling? Restrictions on Morphological Productivity Not all potentially useful words are actually created and used. It means that there must be certain restrictions at work. What kind of restrictions are conceivable? We must distinguish between: • the general possibility to apply a word-formation rule to form a new word. • the opportunity to use such newly coined derivatives in speech. Kinds of Restriction on Morphological Productivity 1. Pragmatic Restrictions 2. Structural Restrictions 3. Lexical Restrictions 4. Semantic Restrictions 1 Pragmatic Restrictions If a certain word formation does not work. Restrictions that originate in problems of language use. A formation that has no sense according to the meaning. • Examples: • Unmurder someone • The onliest book • Disgrow broccoli Perhaps the most obvious of the usage-based factors influencing productivity is fashion. The rise and fall of affixes like mega-, giga-, mini- is an example of the result of extra-linguistic developments in society which make certain words or morphological elements desirable to use. 2 Structural Restrictions Restrictions that originate in problems of language structure. Stress and Syllable Structure related restrictions. For example • Arrive + al • Betray + al • Deny + al • Answer + al __________ __________ __________ __________ arrival betrayal denial *answeral Note: Base has to be bi-syllabic with final stress. For example • Black __________ Blacken, • Fine __________ *Finen, • Valid __________ *Validen, Fat __________ fatten, wide __________ widen Dull __________ *dullen, High __________*highen Expensive __________ *expensiven Note: Base has to be monosyllabic and ending in an obstruent. (Suffixation of verbal -en is subject to a segmental restriction. The last sound (or ‘segment’) of the base can be /k/, /t/, /θ/, /s/, /d/, but must not be /n/, /ŋ/, /l/, or a vowel. 3 Lexical Restrictions The formation means something for which there already is a very frequent word • Steal+ er : stealer* • Good + est : goodest* • See + able : seeable* Note: the process is called blocking 4 Semantic Restrictions The affix only works with bases of a certain semantic kind • • • • • Employ+ ee : employee Interview + ee : interviewee Train + ee : trainee Eat + ee : eatee * Peel + ee : peelee Note : this formation has to refer to a sentient human being References • Plang.I,2003.’Word formation in English’. S.R.Anderson. • http://www.taalportaal.org/taalportaal/topic/pid/topic15033092767688360 • https://www.ukessays.com/essays/english-language/morphologicalproductivity-of-engl • http://pkdas.in/MORPHO/prd1.pdfish-word-formation-englishlanguage-essay.php • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphological_Productivity • https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265185978_New_ways_of _investigating_morphological_productivity_1 • https://muse.jhu.edu/article/46729/pdf