Languages & Linguistics
Derivation
Derivation refers to the process of forming new words by adding affixes, such as prefixes or suffixes, to a base or root word. This process often changes the grammatical category or meaning of the original word. In linguistics, derivation plays a crucial role in word formation and expanding the vocabulary of a language.
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10 Key excerpts on "Derivation"
- Karl Reichl(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter(Publisher)
The place of word-formation within a grammatical model rests on at least three preconditions: the definition of what is to count as a deriva-tional process, the structure of the language under investigation, and the linguistic theory one subscribes to. Crucial for the definition of a deriva-tional process is the point of view adopted. Linguist A might be studying 1 For a more detailed distinction of morphological processes-differentiating between affixation, reduplication and modification (vowel change, suppletion, subtraction)-see Matthews (1974: n6ff.); cf. also below 5.1.1. 6 the morphological structure of a given lexicon, taking the lexicon as a finite list of recorded lexical items and basing his analysis on the segmentability of the items; linguist B, while using the same lexicon and following the same technical procedure, might interpret this lexicon as an open class, which can be supplemented by new, unrecorded items. For B, but not for A, Derivational rules will have a predictive force and B will have to take phenomena like productivity or frequency of occur-rence into account when formulating his rules. Thus A and B might differ in their analysis of Modern English length, though their analysis of Old English lengdu, where -du can be regarded as a productive suffix, would presumably be identical. 2 It is often asserted that grammar, meaning in the narrow sense of the word syntax and morphology, deals with the regular formations of lan-guage and the lexicon with the irregular ones. In this case Derivational rules could be either part of grammar or of the lexicon, depending on the regularity of the Derivational structure of the language under investiga-tion.
eBook - PDFWord Knowledge and Word Usage
A Cross-Disciplinary Guide to the Mental Lexicon
- Vito Pirrelli, Ingo Plag, Wolfgang U. Dressler, Vito Pirrelli, Ingo Plag, Wolfgang U. Dressler(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
This definition of Derivation leaves us with a problem of demarcation be-tween compounding and Derivation, which hinges on the question of what we understand by ‘ lexeme ’ or ‘ base ’ as against ‘ affix ’ . Additionally, since there is the basic distinction between word-formation and inflection, there is the prob-lem of demarcation of Derivation (as part of word-formation) vis-à-vis inflec-tion. Both demarcation problems have been amply discussed in the literature (more recently, for example, by Lieber and Stekauer 2009, ten Hacken 2014), Ingo Plag, Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, English Language and Linguistics, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany Laura Winther Balling, Widex A/S, Nymøllevej, Lynge, Denmark Open Access. © 2020 Ingo Plag and Laura Winther Balling, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110440577-008 and we will briefly summarize from that literature only what is relevant for the present chapter. We start with inflection vs. Derivation. Traditionally, inflection is considered to be concerned with the encoding of syntactic information, while Derivation encodes lexical information. But what do we mean by ‘ syntactic ’ and ‘ lexical ’ ? The definition of these terms is, obviously, theory-dependent but there seems to be a growing consensus that the two notions refer to endpoints on a scale rather than to a clear-cut categorical opposition (see, for example, Dressler et al. 2014). The idea of a cline is, for example, found in the distinctions between contextual inflection, inherent inflection and Derivation (Booij 1993, and Chapter 7, Marzi et al. 2020, this volume).
eBook - PDF- Ingo Plag, Maria Braun, Sabine Lappe, Mareile Schramm(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
88 The structure of words: morphology made for any of the inflectional suffixes listed in (30) above. The Derivational suffix -er , however, behaves in a different way in this respect. It has the capac-ity to change the word-class of its bases from verb to noun. This is also the case with many other Derivational affixes, as for instance, with the Derivational suf-fix -less , which changes nouns into adjectives, as in joy (N) – joyless (A), or the Derivational suffix -en which changes adjectives into verbs, as in black (A) – blacken (V), etc. Note, however, that very few English prefixes change the word-class of the base. They are nevertheless considered Derivational be-cause they create new lexemes, and not word-forms of the same lexeme, as, for instance, semi-transparent , impossible , replay . We can conclude that when-ever an affix changes the word-class of the base, it is a Derivational affix. To summarise, we have seen in this section that affixes can be grouped into two different types according to their function: Derivational affixes, that are used to create new lexemes, and inflectional affixes, that are used to express differ-ent word-forms of the same lexeme. The two types of affixes differ in a number of properties. We will summarise these properties in the following table: Using Derivational affixes is only one of many possible ways of creating new lexemes. In the next section we will take a closer look at different processes by which new lexemes can be created. 3.7. Word-formation 3.7.1. What is word-formation? It has already been mentioned above that, among other things, morphology deals with the ways of creating new lexemes. We have also seen in the pre-vious section that one such way is adding Derivational affixes to existing bases. However, there are many other ways by which speakers can create new lexemes and thus give names to new things, abstract notions, etc.
eBook - PDF- Claudia Maienborn, Klaus Heusinger, Paul Portner, Claudia Maienborn, Klaus Heusinger, Paul Portner(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
3 Semantics of Derivational morphology 77 1999: 50). Further, such lexical affixes are often lexicalized in specific forms. Finally, in discourse such affixes often serve to designate old information. On first mention, an independent noun root will be used, but in subsequent mentions the suffix can be used to background the already mentioned item. Mithun argues further that although lexical affixes might have developed historically from com-pounding forms, the above factors suggest that they are no longer compounding forms, but constitute bona fide affixes. It should be noted that even Indo-European languages occasionally have affixes that seem to have robust lexical content. For example, French has an affix -ier that attaches to roots denoting types of fruit to derive the corresponding type of fruit tree: poire ‘pear’ ~ poirier ‘pear tree’. The conclusion we are forced to is that lexical affixes indeed present a chal-lenge to the notion that Derivation covers a rather abstract, fixed set of categories. We will see that this issue arises again in connection with the theoretical treat-ment of Derivational semantics in section 3. 1.3 Difficulties in distinguishing Derivation from inflection Just as it is difficult in some cases to delimit the semantics of Derivation with respect to compounding of bound roots, it is also sometimes difficult to cir-cumscribe those semantic categories that belong to Derivation from those that belong to inflection (cf. also article 2 [this volume] (Kiparsky & Tonhauser) Seman-tics of inflection ). The distinction between inflection and Derivation is frequently made on the basis of formal criteria: inflection, according to Anderson (1982) is what is relevant to the syntax. In other words, markings that induce or participate in syntactic dependencies such as agreement are said to be inflectional. Similarly, distinctions that are reflected paradigmatically are often said to be inflectional.
eBook - PDFMorphology
From Data to Theories
- Antonio Fábregas, Sergio Scalise(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Edinburgh University Press(Publisher)
86 5 DerivationAL PROCESSES 5.1 PROPERTIES OF Derivation Inflectional processes do not alter the properties with which an item is listed in the lexicon, but rather result in the different grammatical forms that this item adopts in different syntactic contexts. A Derivational process alters one or several of the proper-ties associated with an item listed in the lexicon, making it necessary in many cases for the new form to also be listed. Therefore, it is said that Derivation (and compound-ing, see §6) is a process that creates new words; it is a word-formation process. Derivational processes are those that alter one or several of the following properties: a) the grammatical category of the input form. The assumption is that units are listed in the lexicon with their grammatical categories, so when a morphological process changes this information, it produces a new word. Consider, for instance, whiteness , a noun created from the adjective white . b) the conceptual semantics associated with the input form. For example, the word underworld has a different meaning from the word world , from which it is formed. c) the number of arguments of a base (‘subcategorization’ of an item) and the selectional restrictions that a unit imposes on these arguments. The idea is that in the lexicon there must also be information stating that a particular word, such as read , requires two syntactic arguments: one acting as the subject and interpreted as the agent of the action, and one as the object, corresponding to the undergoer of the action ( John reads a book ). Any process that changes the number or the distribution of these arguments changes the subcategorization of the base. For instance, the verb wail takes a subject, whatever or whoever makes the sound, but the verb never takes adirect object expressing the cause of the pain (* John wailed the dead ). The verb be-wail , in contrast, requires a direct object expressing precisely this notion ( John bewailed the dead ).
eBook - PDFEnglish Words and Sentences
An Introduction
- Eva Duran Eppler, Gabriel Ozón(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Suffixes attach to the right of a root, base (or stem) and can either be Derivational or inflectional. Inflectional morphemes act as syntactic glue in Chapter 3, section [3.7] 56 the construction of sentences. The following table provides you with brief definitions and examples of the most important concepts relating to mor- phology, the study of word forms. Name Definition Example Morpheme An abstract entity that expresses a single concept within a word function, dys- and -ed are morphemes Morph the concrete physical shape of a morpheme spoken or written function, dys- and -al Root the irreducible core of a word function is the root of dys-function-al Base any unit to which affixes can be attached dysfunction is a base Stem a root or base without inflectional affixes function without -s or -ing is a stem Free morpheme a root which can stand on its own function is a free morpheme Bound morpheme a morpheme which cannot stand on its own dys- and -al are bound morphemes Affix a bound morpheme which only occurs when attached to a root / free morpheme dys- and -al are affixes Prefix an affix attached to the left of a word dys- is a prefix Suffix an affix attached to the right of a word -al is a suffix Compounds words formed by adjoining two (or more) lexemes trouser press, mountain bike Key terms Morpheme; morph; root; base; stem; affix; prefix; suffix. Exercises Exercise 3.1 Activity 2.1 in the previous chapter was quite restrictive. We made the words played, beautiful, lovingly, bright, ran fit into the noun (NP) slot in the sentence How useful did ______________ seem to be? Derivational morphology 57 We are now in a position to be more creative. Rather than making the words fit the sentence, let’s build short grammatical English sentences around the words played, beautiful, lovingly, bright, ran.
eBook - PDFTypological Changes in the Lexicon
Analytic Tendencies in English Noun Formation
- Alexander Haselow(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Moreover, lan-guages differ with respect to the applicability of the terms inflection and Derivation : in languages where most grammatical marking is optional it is difficult to draw the line between the two domains (Aikhenvald 2007: 36). The inflection-Derivation continuum 243 3. The inflection-Derivation continuum A binary opposition of inflection and Derivation would suggest that affixes and thus the categories which affixes indicate are complementary and that a clear-cut classification of affixes as either inflectional or Derivational is possible. However, most of the recent approaches reject such a strict sepa-ration of morphology, due to the existence of a number of categories that show properties of both inflection and Derivation. Number, for instance, fulfils a morphosyntactic function in that it triggers agreement of the verb, but it also exhibits lexical functions, because the use of a plural marker itself is not necessarily determined by the syntactic context, but required in the semantic context ‘more than one’ and thus usually a choice of the speaker. Furthermore, the application of plural markers is not general, i.e. they do not attach to all members of the syntactic category ‘noun’, and nouns marked for plurality may develop idiosyncratic meanings, i.e. they may undergo a lexical split from the base form, which is usually considered to be a property of Derivation only (e.g. cloth – clothes, people – peoples ). Another example is the verbal category Tense, whose use is also not strictly syntactically conditioned, but determined by extra-linguistic temporal co-ordinates. Furthermore, tense-marked forms may serve as input for word-formation processes, e.g. when participle forms become the base for suf-fixation processes (e.g. drunkenness ).
eBook - PDFNetwork Morphology
A Defaults-based Theory of Word Structure
- Dunstan Brown, Andrew Hippisley(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Classification of Derivational processes may revolve around the phonological reflex of Derivation – specific affixes. This is what Kastovsky (2005: 108) discusses as the Wortbildungsmodell in the word-formation stud- ies tradition. On the other hand, classification may be based on Derivational functions or categories, the Wortbildungstyp. This approach dominates the Slavic tradition (see, for example, Vinogradov 1960; Gvozdev 1961; Šanskij 1975; Švedova et al. 1980). 18 Szymanek (1988) and Beard (1995) are differ- ent proposals of what these Derivational categories might be. In our account we are after a classification similar to the second by assuming Derivational functions. It is a different classification, however, since the emphasis is on the nature of the relation between derivative lexeme and its base lexeme where the relation is expressed by inheritance. Both the source of inheritance and its content are factors. Inheritance is from the base lexeme and a node storing the redundant information that characterizes a particular class of derivatives. And it can involve syntactic-, semantic-, phonological- and morphological-level facts. The interplay of the source and content properties of inheritance yields the four broad Derivational-relatedness classes: category-changing, conversion, transposition and category-preserving Derivation. 19 It also provides for the pos- sibility of hybrid classes, for example a transposition that has no phonological reflex, i.e. a conversion/transposition hybrid. 20 We have shown that Derivational-relatedness can be linked to canonicity, where category-changing Derivation is the canonical class since change from base to derivative is observable at every level of representation expressed as maximal inheritance from the LFT. Other classes represent various departures 282 Derivation from the canonical situation and are precisely expressed as what the exact deviations in source and content inheritance are.
eBook - PDFThe French Influence on Middle English Morphology
A Corpus-Based Study on Derivation
- Christiane Dalton-Puffer(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
The reader of the following discussion will soon notice that the framework presented here is far from showing signs of aversion to eclectic methodologies. On the contrary, I have consciously embraced an eclectic ap-proach in the interest of arriving at a workable solution for the description of the Middle English data. Such heterogeneity is not necessarily in the interest of theory development, at least not in any direct sense. However, the discussion does show up some remarkable overlaps between approaches of very different theoretical standing and this is something that may very well be of theoretical interest. It would, of course, be ideal if the formal and the semantic aspects of deriva-tion could be integrated into a unified model since a formalisation of semantic information would greatly enhance comparability between affixes in one lan-guage and between Derivation in different language systems (synchronically and diachronically). Generative treatments of word formation have frequently aimed Derivational semantics 67 to do so but ended up far more successful on the first count, the formal one. Selkirk (1982) provides a semantics-slot in her formalism but fills it with only the most abstract information of the shape Semantic Rule 435, which is, in effect, no more than a dummy. Aronoff s (1976) solution of coupling one affix with one WFR (including one semantic specification) has also come under at-tack. 44 Olsen (1986) does provide a semantic description in the formal slot corre-sponding to Selkirk's SR435. For the German Agent Noun suffix -er, for instance, the semantic description reads as follows: Agens o. Instrument, das die V-Handlung ausführt. One notices immediately that this looks remarkably like the paraphrases given to account for the meaning of derived words in tradi-tional grammars. Such paraphrases are also the staple semantic food in Marchand's classic Categories and types of Present Day English word formation (1969).
eBook - PDFWord-Formation in the World's Languages
A Typological Survey
- Pavol Štekauer, Salvador Valera, Lívia Kőrtvélyessy(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
This chapter discusses the status of affixes (4.1) and reviews the role of suffixation and prefixation (4.1.1), with emphasis on recursiveness (4.1.1.1) and base modification (4.1.1.2) and then on one-to-many (4.1.2) and many- to-one relations (4.1.3) within affixation. The chapter then presents minor types of affixation (4.2), notably infixation (4.2.1), prefixal-suffixal Derivation (4.2.2), circumfixation (4.2.3), and prefixal-infixal and infixal-suffixal deriva- tion (4.2.4). 4.1 Affixation Morphology sometimes alludes to affixes as well-defined elements that in fact may vary considerably. A number of examples illustrate the difficulty in defining the boundaries of Derivational affixes with respect to inflectional affixes or to other structural units. Thus, Malkiel (1978) refers to German elements, most of which are formally and semantically paralleled by prepositions and/or adverbs (cf. Table 2.1). This might suggest that words containing these elements are compounds. However, the existence of prefixes without any corresponding lexical coun- terparts like be-, er-, ge- and ver- suggests that these words result from affixation. Malkiel (1978: 127–8) argues that it would be counterintuitive to separate be-, er-, ge- and ver- from the remainder of German prefixes with which they interact paradigmatically. A similar situation characterizes the majority of Latin verbal prefixes. In fact, as pointed out by Kastovsky (2009: 327), affixes often go back to compound members due to loss of their content. Thus, English -less goes back to Old English less meaning ‘devoid of, free from’, -ship to Old English 136 word-formation processes with bound morphemes scipe ‘form, state’ and -dom to Old English dōm ‘evil fate’. Synchronically, this source may be traced in the existence of the so-called semiaffixes (English -berry, -man, etc., cf. Marchand 1960: 290ff.).
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