Productivity in English Word-Formation An Approach to N+N Compounding |
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Author:
| Fernandez-Dominguéz, Jesus |
Series title: | Europaeische Hochschulschriften / European University Studies / Publications Universitaires Européennes Ser. |
ISBN: | 978-3-03911-808-3 |
Publication Date: | May 2009 |
Publisher: | Peter Lang AG International Academic Publishers
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Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | USD $101.35 |
Book Description:
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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...
More DescriptionThis 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.