Productivity in Construction Morphology
Claudio Iacobini -- University of Salerno (Italy) -- ciacobini@unisa.it
Productivity is a central issue in Construction Grammar since constructional schemas can be
defined in terms of (semi-)productivity, but so far little attention has been devoted to morphological
productivity. Construction grammar is not mentioned among the relevant theories in the literature
on morphological productivity (cf. Bauer 2005).
Barðdal (2008) provides a significant contribution to the definition of productivity in a
constructionist perspective, but focusing on the syntactic aspect of productivity.
Although Construction Grammar provides a framework in which the commonalities of
word level and phrase level constructs are highlighted, morphological productivity (i.e. the
productivity of schemas at word level) shows some peculiarities with respect to syntactic
productivity, since it is based on subschemas (i.e. schemas that are more specific in contrast to
higher ranked, more general schemas) which may be abstracted from the paradigmatic relations of
(more or less) idiomatic and conventionalized words and phrases present in the lexicon.
The aim of this talk is that of giving a contribution to the improvement of the issue of
morphological productivity in the framework of Construction Morphology as developed by Booij
(2010) by showing that this theoretical approach allows a proper explanation of phenomena difficult
to account in an output-oriented approach of productivity based on individual specific restrictions or
constraints on affix ordering (cf. Plag 1991).
The case studies presented here concern the revitalization of two prefixes (co- and auto-) of
the Italian language and the recent recovery in productivity of a compound pattern N + V > V
attested in the early stages of Romance languages but which has not been productive in Italian for
centuries (e.g. capovolgere 1597 ‘to overturn’ videoregistrare 1985 ‘to videorecord’). The common
feature of these cases is the resumption of productivity of processes that were available at the
linguistic system level but not accepted in the norm until recent times. The degree to which the
potential of these word-formation patterns is exploited varies diachronically. We argue that their
actual higher degree of productivity cannot be accounted in terms of changes in the number of
restrictions, but rather in terms of rearrangement of the paradigmatic relations between (sets of)
complex words.
Our analysis of the reasons of change in productivity of the cases investigated shows the
limits of the idea of productivity as the inverse of the number of constraints applying to particular
affixes, and shows that the basic tenets of Construction Morphology (namely, the claim that both
individual complex words and abstract generalizing schemas are part of the lexicon; the hierarchical
organization of the lexicon with layers of subgeneralizations linked through default inheritance;
and, above all, the paradigmatic relations between (sets of) complex words) form a theoretical
framework that allows to explain not only the systematic restrictions (which determine availability
of coinage), but also the changes in the norm, which are at the root of the differences in the
rentability of word formation processes, and hence of the changes in productivity in a diachronic
perspective.
Bibliographical References
Barðdal, Jóhanna. 2008. Productivity: Evidence from Case and Argument Structure in Icelandic.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Bauer, Brigitte. 2011. Word Formation. In M. Maiden, J. Ch. Smith, A. Ledgeway (eds.), The Cambridge
History of the Romance Languages, vol. I Structures. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 532563.
Bauer, Laurie. 2001. Morphological productivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Bauer, Laurie. 2005. Productivity: Theories. In P. Štekauer, R. Lieber (eds.) Handbook of Word-Formation.
Springer: 315-334.
Booij, Geert. 2009. Compounding and Construction Morphology. In R. Lieber, P. Štekauer (eds), The Oxford
Handbook of Compounding. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 201-216.
Booij, Geert. 2010. Construction Morphology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Coseriu, Eugenio. 1952. Sistema, norma y habla (con un resumen en alemán), Revista de la Facultad de
Humanidades y Ciencias, Montevideo 9, 113-181 Reprinted in Teoría del lenguaje y lingüística
general. Cinco estudios, Madrid; 2nd ed. Madrid 1967; German transl. System, Norm und Rede. In
Eugenio Coseriu, Sprachtheorie und allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft. 1975 München: Wilhelm Fink,
11–101.
Goldberg, Adele. 2006. Constructions at Work. The Nature of Generalization in Language. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Goldberg, Adele. 1995. Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Klingebiel, Kathryn. 1989. Noun + verb compounding in Western Romance. Berkeley, University of
California Press.
Plag, Ingo. 1999. Morphological productivity: Structural constraints in English derivation. Berlin: Mouton
de Gruyter.
Rainer, Franz. 2005. Constraints on Productivity. In P. Štekauer, R. Lieber (eds.) Handbook of WordFormation. Springer: 335-352.
Vogel, Irene, Napoli, Donna J. 1995. The verbal component in Italian compounds. In J. Amastae, G.
Goodall, M. Montalbetti (eds.), Contemporary research in Romance Linguistics. Amsterdam /
Philadelphia, Benjamins. Benjamins. 369-81.