Franz Rainer

Constraints on Productivity

The repeated morph constraint (multiple application constraint Lieber) prevents the same affix to be applied twice in succession. I n this form, this constraint is too strong, because there are cases contradicting this restrict ion: re-re-write in English, Ur-urgrossvater in german, etc. In many cases, the constraint appears to apply to h omophonous affixes as well as to identical affixes. For instance, -ly at the end of * month-ly creates A, but cannot usually have the ly that creates Adverbs added to it. In the sense tha t they create two different parts of speech, these must be seen as two distinct affixes, and yet one constraints the other. See also the case with * sillily . (also *joyfulful, *helplessnessness

Inflection inside derivation: evidence from Spanish and Portuguese

The venerable1 issue of whether morphology should be viewed as a single component of grammar or be split into two distinct components, inflection and derivation, has again become a hot topic of theoretical morphology in the wake of Anderson’s (1992) forceful defense of the latter view — “Split Morphology” in Perlmutter’s (1988) terms. One of the main arguments of the dichotomist position has always been that it could account elegantly for the ordering relation derivation inside inflection, which can be observed in so many languages that it has had the honour of being promoted to Universal 28 by Greenberg (1966). And just as often defenders of the opposite view have adduced cases of violation of this (supposed) language universal as evidence against the splitting of morphology.

Semantic change in word formation

Abstract The present article seeks to provide an answer to the following question: according to which mechanisms may a pattern of word formation develop a new meaning? In order to keep the task to a manageable size only changes will be considered, the result of which stays within the same type of pattern (affixation, compounding, etc.). Hence, we will not discuss how affixes develop out of compounds or similar phenomena. The only scholar who, to the best of my knowledge, has addressed this issue in a systematic and comprehensive manner is Jaberg (1905), who claimed that semantic change in affixation is always the result of semantic change in individual words plus reanalysis. Our study will reveal, however, that, though this is in fact the most common scenario, there is yet another, hitherto ignored mechanism of semantic change in word formation where no lexical change is involved. This mechanism, which will be called “approximation,” allows a mismatch to arise between a word formation pattern and a neologism formed according to it, if the distance is bridged by metaphor or metonymy.

Word-formation : an international handbook of the languages of Europe

This handbook comprises an in-depth presentation of the state of the art in word-formation. The five volumes contain 207 articles written by leading international scholars. The 16 sections of the handbook provide the reader in general articles and individual studies with a wide variety of perspectives. The final section contains 74 portraits of word-formation in the individual languages of Europe and offers an innovative perspective.

Instrument and place nouns: A typological and diachronic perspective

Abstract Most patterns of word formation convey more than one meaning. Although multifunctionality is such a widespread phenomenon, only a limited number of topics, such as the polysemy of diminutives, action nouns and agent nouns, have received special attention in the theoretical literature. The present article focuses on instrument and place nouns, which are expressed by means of one and the same derivational pattern in more than half of the languages expressing these two concepts morphologically. The empirical assessment of this syncretism provides the starting point for an in-depth discussion of multifunctionality in word formation. After a review of the literature on monosemy, polysemy and homonymy, diachronic pathways leading to syncretism of instrument and place nouns are described in detail. It turns out that the syncretism is not due to a particular semantic affinity of the concepts ‘instrument’ and ‘place’, as sometimes assumed in the literature, including the recent semantic-maps approach. Instead, five different processes can be discerned which lead to the multifunctionality of the respective markers: reanalysis, concretization of action nouns, ellipsis, homonymization, and borrowing.

Agent-noun polysemy in a cross-linguistic perspective

Abstract According to a widely held opinion, agent-instrument polysemy in derivational morphology is the result of semantic extension from agent to instrument meaning. In the present paper we set out to explore the cross-linguistic distribution of patterns of polysemy along the agent-instrument axis. It turns out that about forty percent in a sample of 82 languages expressing both agent and instrument meaning by derivational morphology have markers that are polysemous for the categories in question. A closer look at the data reveals, however, that many of these prima-facie cases of agent-instrument polysemy have arisen not by semantic extension from agent to instrument meaning, but in a number of different ways.

The agent-instrument-place “polysemy” of the suffix ‑tor in Romance

Abstract The Latin suffix ‑tor was purely agentive, while its Romance counterparts, in the standard languages, all also have an instrumental, and some additionally a locative meaning. Traditionally, this state of affairs has been attributed to a meaning extension during the Proto-Romance stage, when instruments are said to have been conceptualized metaphorically as agents. It is the aim of this paper to show that there has never been any such meaning extension. It will be argued that the multifunctionality of Romance ‑tor is due instead to a combination of factors such as sound change, borrowing, ellipsis, and analogy.

Head-operations in Spanish morphology

Though morphological rules normally operate on a base as a whole, it is not true that the internal make-up of a complex base is completely opaque to them. Any serious theory of morphology has to provide an account of this fundamental trait of localness of morphological rules by restricting their faculty to refer to the structure or to single morphemes of complex bases as much as possible. More than half a dozen such theories of locality in morphology have been proposed over the last fifteen years. In chronological order, these include Siegel’s (1977) and Allen’s (1978: 44–50) ‘Adjacency Condition’, Williams’ (1981: 253) ‘Atom Condition’, Kiparsky’s (1982: 11) ‘Bracket Erasure Convention’, Broselow’s (1983) ‘Subjacency Condition’, Hoeksema’s (1985: 50) ‘head operations’, Anderson’s (1990) ‘A-morphous Morphology’, the prosodic approach of Booij and Lieber (1990), and Hammond’s (1992) ‘morphemic circumscription’. This is not the place for the detailed history of locality theories and their critical assessment. In accordance with the topic of this paper, I shall concentrate rather on Hoeksema’s device of a head-operation (henceforth HO).

Del nombre de agente al nombre de instrumento y de lugar en español: ¿cuándo y cómo?

Todos los manuales dedicados a la historia de la formación de palabras en español mencionan, por lo menos de paso, el hecho de que el sufijo español -dor, contrariamente a su étimo latino -tore(m), puede referirse no solo a un agente sino también a un instrumento y, aunque más raramente, a un lugar.

El origen del patrón (tener Buenas) Tragaderas

Das Spanische kennt ein Wortbildungsmuster, das anderen romanischen Sprachen unbekannt ist, namlich Worter des Typs (tener buenas) tragaderas ›alles uber sich ergehen lassen‹, wortlich in etwa ›gute Hinunterschluckfahigkeiten haben‹. Das Muster ist zuerst im Siglo de Oro belegt und scheint zu jener Zeit eine gewisse Popularitat genossen zu haben (vgl. [tener buenas] absolvederas ›leicht die Absolution erteilen‹, [tener buenas] predicaderas ›gut predigen konnen‹ und ahnliche Wendungen). Heute gibt es neben tragaderas und entendederas ›Verstand‹ kaum noch gelaufige Bildungen. Im vorliegenden Aufsatz wird nach einem Literaturuberblick zuerst die Verwendung des Musters vom Siglo de Oro bis heute beschrieben und dann eine Hypothese zur Entstehung vorgeschlagen. Diesem Vorschlag zufolge entstand das Muster, indem in der schon im Mittelalter ublichen Redewendung tener buen estomago ›einen guten Magen haben‹, im ubertragenen Sinn ›viel aushalten‹, das Wort estomago ›Magen‹ durch das expressivere tragaderas ›Rachen‹ ersetzt wurde. Der Rest der Bildungen ist durch lokale Analogie zu diesem Leitwort ‒ oder besser: dieser Leitredewendung, denn die Bildungen kommen meistens in Verbindung mit tener buenas oder tener malas vor ‒ entstanden.