Akiko Nagano

Morphological theory and orthography: Kanji as a representation of lexemes

Orthography has been given marginal status in theoretical linguistics, but it can offer ‘visible’ insights into the invisible mechanisms of grammar. Japanese kanji graphs, Chinese characters used to write Japanese, provide an excellent illustration of this perspective. Our core claim is that the kanji orthography reflects the working of lexeme-based morphology in Japanese grammar. Specifically, we show how the lexeme-based morphological framework developed by Mark Aronoff and Martin Maiden can explain apparently cumbersome and inefficient properties of the kanji usage, its dual pronunciation in particular. Among the findings of this study are the following: (i) the underlying mechanism of the kanji s dual pronunciation is suppletion, native and Sino-Japanese synonyms working as morphomic stems of the same paradigm; (ii) this suppletion emerged and developed as a paradigmatic strategy of synonymy avoidance; and (iii) the large-scale suppletive morphology has long been retained in Japanese because it has served advantageous functions in the maintenance of lexemic isomorphism and in lexical stock expansion. Our findings shed an entirely new light on the bafflingly complex nature of Japanese orthography; it is the complexity of morphology, a grammatical module that is deemed to be the locus of language-specificity.

The right-headedness of morphology and the status and development of category-determining prefixes in English

So-called category-determining prefixes in English ( be fool , de louse , dis bar , en cage , out - jockey , un saddle ) have been treated as exceptions to the Righthand Head Rule (Williams 1981). This article argues that so-called category-determining prefixation is a V (Verb)-to-V prefixation which takes denominal and deadjectival converted verbs as inputs, and thus special treatment is unwarranted. The hypothesis that conversion underlies N (Noun)/A (Adjective)-to-V prefixation is examined from both diachronic and synchronic perspectives. Diachronically, it is shown that the prefixes in question all started as non-category-determining V-to-V prefixes, and their N/A-to-V usage was established only in Modern English. With the constant productivity of conversion in the history of English, N/A-to-V usage can emerge from V-to-V usage. Synchronically, denominal/deadjectival prefixed verbs are shown to exhibit input and output properties that prove the above hypothesis: they have a converted counterpart; they are subject to the same morphological constraints as converted verbs; and their semantics is equivalent to the semantics of converted verbs modified by the semantics of V-to-V prefixation. It is concluded that there is no derivational prefix that determines the output category in English.

Derivational Prefix Be- in Modern English: The Oxford English Dictionary and Word-Formation Theory

The derivational prefix be- productively forms deverbal, denominal and deadjectival verbs in Modern English (ModE) (e.g. beblast, bepearl, beblind). This paper re-examines the Oxford English Dictionarys (OED) description of this prefixs semantic and categorial properties in light of word-formation theory and proposes a new analysis according to which denominal and deadjectival be-verbs are based on denominal and deadjectival converted verbs (e.g. to pearl, to blind). The theoretical motivation for this analysis is the need to deal coherently with both deverbal and denominal/deadjectival be-verbs, and the analysis is empirically confirmed by the input morphology and output semantics of be-verbs. This analysis allows us to conclude that be- is a deverbal verb-forming prefix whose main function is to add the notion of total affectedness to the meaning of the base verb. This paper also shows that the ModE prefix be- provides an interesting case of the conflict between the OED and word-formation theory. Word-formation theory analyses words based on synchronic principles of language, and the results can differ greatly from the OEDs descriptions, which are based on the historical-etymological principle.