Measuring Productivity in Word Formation

Measuring Productivity in Word Formation PDF

Author: Shmuel Bolozky

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2017-07-03

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 9004348433

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Morphological productivity is the likelihood of a morphological pattern being used or comprehended in new word formation. Three methods of measuring productivity of word formation are proposed productivity tests (open-ended and judgment tasks), dictionary comparison (newer with older dictionaries, supplements with earlier versions), and the ratio of hapax legomena to tokens in corpora. Processes which score highly by all three criteria can safely be regarded as productive. The model is examined in light of data from Israeli Hebrew, which as a Semitic language offers a rich array of discontinuous and linear derivation patterns. The Hebrew data also support the claims that in essence, lexical formation is semantically based; that it is constrained by a requirement for distinctiveness; and that it may vary significantly with the type of derivation base.

Productivity in English Word-formation

Productivity in English Word-formation PDF

Author: Jesús Fernández Domínguez

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 9783039118083

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book is a contribution to the study of morphological productivity, that is, the property of word-formation processes whereby new words are created to satisfy a naming need. It presents an up-to-date picture of this phenomenon, characterising its major attributes and addressing neighbouring theoretical concepts like availability, profitability or lexicalisation. Links are also established between those notions and N+N compounding, a word-formation process regarded as very productive but traditionally overlooked in studies of this type. Unlike other productivity surveys, mostly directed at affixation, a corpus of N+N compounds is here compiled to which the mainstream models of productivity are applied. This allows to detect the pros and cons of those proposals and to propose a model of productivity. Two measures, Indicator of Profitability (π) and Trend of Profitability (Π), are introduced which can be applied across word-formation processes and are able to compute their productivity based on semantic categories.

Morphological Productivity

Morphological Productivity PDF

Author: Laurie Bauer

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2001-05-28

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1139428721

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Why are there more English words ending in -ness than ending in -ity? What is it about some endings that makes them more widely usable than others? Can we measure the differences in the facility with which the various affixes are used? Does the difference in facility reflect a difference in the way we treat words containing these affixes in the brain? These are the questions examined in this book. Morphological productivity has, over the centuries, been a major factor in providing the huge vocabulary of English and remains one of the most contested areas in the study of word-formation and structure. This book takes an eclectic approach to the topic, applying the findings for morphology to syntax and phonology. Bringing together the results of twenty years' work in the field, it provides new insights and considers a wide range of linguistic and psycholinguistic evidence.

Word-Formation in English

Word-Formation in English PDF

Author: Ingo Plag

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2003-10-30

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 9780521525633

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This textbook provides an accessible introduction to the study of word-formation, that is, the ways in which new words are built on the bases of other words (e.g. happy - happy-ness), focusing on English. The book's didactic aim is to enable students with little or no prior linguistic knowledge to do their own practical analyses of complex words. Readers are familiarized with the necessary methodological tools to obtain and analyze relevant data and are shown how 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, reflecting important methodological and theoretical developments in the field. It is a textbook directed towards university students of English at all levels. It can also serve as a source book for teachers and advanced students, and as an up-to-date reference concerning many word-formation processes in English.

Yearbook of Morphology 1992

Yearbook of Morphology 1992 PDF

Author: Geert Booij

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-06-29

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 940173710X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A revival of interest in morphology has taken place during recent years and the subject is seen now as a relatively autonomous subdiscipline of linguistics. As one of the important areas of theoretical research in formal linguistics, morphology has attracted linguists to investigate its relations to syntax, semantics, phonology, psycholinguistics and language change. The aim of the Yearbook of Morphology, therefore, is to support and enforce the upswing of morphological research and to give an overview of the current issues and debates at the heart of this revival.

The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology

The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology PDF

Author: Rochelle Lieber

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2014-09-25

Total Pages: 768

ISBN-13: 019165177X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology is intended as a companion volume to The Oxford Handbook of Compounding (OUP 2009) Written by distinguished scholars, its 41 chapters aim to provide a comprehensive and thorough overview of the study of derivational morphology. The handbook begins with an overview and a consideration of definitional matters, distinguishing derivation from inflection on the one hand and compounding on the other. From a formal perspective, the handbook treats affixation (prefixation, suffixation, infixation, circumfixation, etc.), conversion, reduplication, root and pattern and other templatic processes, as well as prosodic and subtractive means of forming new words. From a semantic perspective, it looks at the processes that form various types of adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and verbs, as well as evaluatives and the rarer processes that form function words. The book also surveys derivation in fifteen language families that are widely dispersed in terms of both geographical location and typological characteristics.

Corpus Linguistics

Corpus Linguistics PDF

Author: Anke Lüdeling

Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 804

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This handbook provides an up-to-date survey of corpus linguistics. Spoken, written, and multimodal corpora serve as the bases for quantitative and qualitative research on many issues of linguistic interest. The two volumes together comprise 61 articles by renowned experts from around the world. They sketch the history of corpus linguistics and its relationship with neighbouring disciplines, show its potential, discuss its problems, and describe various methods of collecting, annotating, and searching corpora, as well as processing corpus data.

Word-Formation in the World's Languages

Word-Formation in the World's Languages PDF

Author: Pavol Štekauer

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-04-23

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 052176534X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Fills a gap in cross-linguistic research by being the first systematic survey of the word-formation of the world's languages. Data from fifty-five world languages reveals associations between word-formation processes in genetically and geographically distinct languages.

Expanding the Lexicon

Expanding the Lexicon PDF

Author: Sabine Arndt-Lappe

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2018-01-22

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 3110498162

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The creation of new lexical units and patterns has been studied in different research frameworks, focusing on either system-internal or system-external aspects, from which no comprehensive view has emerged. The volume aims to fill this gap by studying dynamic processes in the lexicon – understood in a wide sense as not being necessarily limited to the word level – by bringing together approaches directed to morphological productivity as well as approaches analyzing general types of lexical innovation and the role of discourse-related factors. The papers deal with ongoing changes as well as with historical processes of change in different languages and reflect on patterns and specific subtypes of lexical innovation as well as on their external conditions and the speakers’ motivations for innovating. Moreover, the diffusion and conventionalization of innovations will be addressed. In this way, the volume contributes to understanding the complex interplay of structural, cognitive and functional factors in the lexicon as a highly dynamic domain.

The Cambridge Handbook of Morphology

The Cambridge Handbook of Morphology PDF

Author: Andrew Hippisley

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-11-24

Total Pages: 1442

ISBN-13: 1316712451

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The Cambridge Handbook of Morphology describes the diversity of morphological phenomena in the world's languages, surveying the methodologies by which these phenomena are investigated and the theoretical interpretations that have been proposed to explain them. The Handbook provides morphologists with a comprehensive account of the interlocking issues and hypotheses that drive research in morphology; for linguists generally, it presents current thought on the interface of morphology with other grammatical components and on the significance of morphology for understanding language change and the psychology of language; for students of linguistics, it is a guide to the present-day landscape of morphological science and to the advances that have brought it to its current state; and for readers in other fields (psychology, philosophy, computer science, and others), it reveals just how much we know about systematic relations of form to content in a language's words - and how much we have yet to learn.