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Syntactic category Information and the semantics of derivational morphological rules

Syntactic category Information and the semantics of derivational morphological rules Abstract In Standard generative approaches, word-formation rules contain, among other things, Information on the semantics of the suffix and the syntactic category (or word-class) of possible bases. Based on the general assumption that word-class specification of the input is a crucial ingredient of derivational morphology, far-reaching Claims have been made. For example, the unitary base hypothesis (Aronoff 1976) states that word-formation rules can take only bases äs input that share syntactic category Information. This generative position is a reflection of the well-established traditional descriptive practice of talking about affixes äs being, for example, 'deverbal*, 'deadjectival' or 'denominal'. Thus, across the different theoretical camps, the syntactic category of the base is, implicitly or explicitly, assumed to be central to any account of affixal behavior. In the present paper this view is challenged and it is claimed that derivational morphology does not necessarily make reference to syntactic category Information in the input. It will be shown that the word-class specification of the input of word-formation rules creates numerous empirical and theoretical problems that have been largely ignored in the literature. It is argued that there are productive affixes where the syntactic category of potential base words is only a by-product http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Folia Linguistica de Gruyter

Syntactic category Information and the semantics of derivational morphological rules

Folia Linguistica , Volume 38 (3-4) – Jan 1, 2004

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References (71)

Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Walter de Gruyter
ISSN
0165-4004
eISSN
1614-7308
DOI
10.1515/flin.2004.38.3-4.193
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Abstract In Standard generative approaches, word-formation rules contain, among other things, Information on the semantics of the suffix and the syntactic category (or word-class) of possible bases. Based on the general assumption that word-class specification of the input is a crucial ingredient of derivational morphology, far-reaching Claims have been made. For example, the unitary base hypothesis (Aronoff 1976) states that word-formation rules can take only bases äs input that share syntactic category Information. This generative position is a reflection of the well-established traditional descriptive practice of talking about affixes äs being, for example, 'deverbal*, 'deadjectival' or 'denominal'. Thus, across the different theoretical camps, the syntactic category of the base is, implicitly or explicitly, assumed to be central to any account of affixal behavior. In the present paper this view is challenged and it is claimed that derivational morphology does not necessarily make reference to syntactic category Information in the input. It will be shown that the word-class specification of the input of word-formation rules creates numerous empirical and theoretical problems that have been largely ignored in the literature. It is argued that there are productive affixes where the syntactic category of potential base words is only a by-product

Journal

Folia Linguisticade Gruyter

Published: Jan 1, 2004

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