Word-formation in English






TABLE OF CONTENTS



Introduction .......................................................................................................... 1


1. Basic concepts 4
1.1. What is a word? 4
1.2. Studying word-formation 12
1.3. Inflection and derivation 18
1.4. Summary 23
Further reading 23
Exercises 24


2. Studying complex words 25
2.1. Identifying morphemes 25
2.1.1. The morpheme as the minimal linguistic sign 25
2.1.2. Problems with the morpheme: the mapping of
form and meaning 27
2.2. Allomorphy 33
2.3. Establishing word-formation rules 38
2.4. Multiple affixation 50
2.5. Summary 53
Further reading 54
Exercises 55


3. Productivity and the mental lexicon 551
3.1. Introduction: What is productivity? 551
3.2. Possible and actual words 561
3.3. Complex words in the lexicon 59
3.4. Measuring productivity 64
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3.5. Constraining productivity
3.5.1. Pragmatic restrictions
3.5.2. Structural restrictions
3.5.3. Blocking
3.6. Summary
Further reading
Exercises


4. Affixation
4.1. What is an affix?
4.2. How to investigate affixes: More on methodology
4.3. General properties of English affixation
4.4. Suffixes
4.4.1. Nominal suffixes
4.4.2. Verbal suffixes
4.4.3. Adjectival suffixes
4.4.4. Adverbial suffixes
4.5. Prefixes
4.6. Infixation
4.7. Summary
Further reading
Exercises


5. Derivation without affixation
5.1. Conversion
5.1.1. The directionality of conversion
5.1.2. Conversion or zero-affixation?
5.1.3. Conversion: Syntactic or morphological?
5.2. Prosodic morphology
5.2.1. Truncations: Truncated names,
-y diminutives and clippings
5.2.2. Blends



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5.3. Abbreviations and acronyms
5.4. Summary
Further reading
Exercises


6. Compounding
6.1. Recognizing compounds
6.1.1. What are compounds made of?
6.1.2. More on the structure of compounds:
the notion of head
6.1.3. Stress in compounds
6.1.4. Summary
6.2. An inventory of compounding patterns
6.3. Nominal compounds
6.3.1 Headedness
6.3.2. Interpreting nominal compounds
6.4. Adjectival compounds
6.5. Verbal compounds
6.6. Neo-classical compounds
6.7. Compounding: syntax or morphology?
6.8. Summary
Further reading
Exercises


7. Theoretical issues: modeling word-formation
7.1. Introduction: Why theory?
7.2. The phonology-morphology interaction: lexical phonology
7.2.1. An outline of the theory of lexical phonology
7.2.2. Basic insights of lexical phonology
7.2.3. Problems with lexical phonology
7.2.4. Alternative theories
7.3. The nature of word-formation rules



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7.3.1. The problem: word-based versus morpheme-based
morphology
7.3.2. Morpheme-based morphology
7.3.3. Word-based morphology
7.3.4. Synthesis