Ingo Plag

Morphological productivity across speech and writing

Claims about the productivity of a given affix are generally made without differentiating productivity according to type of discourse, although it is commonly assumed that certain kinds of derivational suffixes are more pertinent in certain kinds of texts than in others. Conversely, studies in register variation have paid very little attention to the role derivational morphology may play in register variation. This paper explores the relation between register variation and derivational morphology through a quantitative investigation of the productivity of a number of English derivational suffixes across three types of discourse in the British National Corpus (written language, context-governed spoken language, and everyday conversations). Three main points emerge from the analysis. First, within a single register, different suffixes may differ enormously in their productivity, even if structurally they are constrained to a similar extent. Second, across the three registers under investigation a given suffix may display vast differences in productivity. Third, the register variation of suffixes is not uniform, i.e. there are suffixes that show differences in productivity across registers while other suffixes do not, or do so to a lesser extent. We offer some tentative explanations for these findings and discuss the implications for morphological theory.

Acoustic correlates of primary and secondary stress in North American English

Abstract This study investigates the acoustic correlates of the distinction between primary and secondary stress in English in accented and unaccented morphologically complex words that are either left-prominent or right-prominent (e.g. ˈ vio | late vs. | vio ˈ lation ). In both accented and unaccented words, the position of primary and secondary stress significantly influences F0, intensity, and spectral balance. The effects are, however, much weaker for unaccented words. A model is presented which can, for accented words, very successfully distinguish the two stress patterns on the basis of pitch, intensity, duration, spectral balance in the two stressed syllables and the pitch slope in the left position. In contrast, the stress patterns of unaccented words cannot be successfully detected on the basis of the acoustic parameters. The findings strongly support an accent-based phonological account of the primary–secondary stress distinction. Primary and secondary stress syllables are not different from each other, unless the word is pitch-accented. In this case what is usually labeled the primary stress syllable becomes the target of a nuclear accent. Left-prominent accented words receive one accent, right-prominent accented words two accents.

The role of selectional restrictions, phonotactics and parsing in constraining suffix ordering in English

At least since Siegel (1974) there has been a debate about the principles and mechanisms that constrain the combinatorial properties of affixes, in particular of English suffixes. A classic example to illustrate the problem of combinatorial restrictions is given in (1):

Testing hypotheses about compound stress assignment in English: a corpus-based investigation

Abstract This paper tests three factors that have been held to be responsible for the variable stress behavior of noun-noun constructs in English: argument structure, semantics, and analogy. In a large-scale investigation of some 4500 compounds extracted from the CELEX lexical database (Baayen et al. 1995), we show that traditional claims about noun-noun stress cannot be upheld. Argument structure plays a role only with synthetic compounds ending in the agentive suffix -er. The semantic categories and relations assumed in the literature to trigger rightward stress do not show the expected effects. As an alternative to the rule-based approaches, the data were modeled computationally and probabilistically using a memory-based analogical algorithm (TiMBL 5.1) and logistic regression, respectively. It turns out that probabilistic models and the analogical algorithm are more successful in predicting stress assignment correctly than any of the rules proposed in the literature. Furthermore, the results of the analogical modeling suggest that the left and right constituent are the most important factor in compound stress assignment. This is in line with recent findings on the semi-regular behavior of compounds in other languages.

Categorywise, some Compound-Type Morphemes Seem to Be Rather Suffix-Like: On the Status of -ful, -type, and -wise in Present Day English

The elements -ful, -type, and -wise are productive formatives in present -day English usage as reflected in the 100 million word British National Corpus. They are, however, not satisfactorily documented in the literature on English word-formation. This paper discusses the occurrence and structural properties of the three formatives on the basis of data from the British National Corpus. This descriptive task raises questions about the grammatical status of these elements, and concerns in particular the delimitation between suffixation and compounding. It is concluded that labels such as ‘semi-suffix’ are theoretically undesirable as they do not provide additional insight into the nature of complex words and that the formations with -ful, -type, and -wise should be treated as either compounds (in the case of –type) or suffixations ( in the cases of –ful and -wise).

Compound stress assignment by analogy: the constituent family bias

Abstract This paper tests the hypothesis that stress assignment to English compounds works on the basis of analogy. In particular, the role of the constituent family, i.e. the set of compounds that share the same right or left constituent with a given compound, is investigated. On the basis of large amounts of data from three different corpora it is shown that the tendency towards a certain kind of stress pattern within the constituent families of a given compound is a strong predictor for stress assignment. This challenges rule-based approaches to compound stress assignment and lends independent evidence to exemplar-based approaches to language structure.

The polysemy of -ize derivatives: On the role of semantics in word formation

It has often been noted that derivatives involving the suffix -ize in English are extremely heterogeneous in terms of their semantics, syntax and types of bases the suffix attaches to. Thus adjectives and nouns may be verbalized by -ize, the resulting derivatives are transitive or intransitive, and they may have a whole range of different meanings, often paraphrased as ‘render x, make x, convert into x, put into the form of x, give the character or shape of x, subject to the action, treatment or process of X, subject to a process connected with X, impregnate, treat, combine with x, act in a way characterized by x, imitate the manner of x’ (cf. e.g. Jespersen (1942:319), Marchand (1969:320); X stands for the base word). Although this particular affix is generally regarded as the most productive overt verb-forming suffix in English (see, for example, Bauer 1983:222f., Baayen and Lieber 1991:830f., Lieber 19962, Plag to appear), there is only one more detailed study of the semantic heterogeneity of -ize to date. In this study, Lieber (1996) proposes four different semantic structures for -ize, which are partly considered polysemous, and partly homophonous.

Phonology and Morphology of Creole Languages

Until very recently, phonology and morphology have been neglected areas in the study of creole languages. This collection of articles presents intriguing data and new analyses from a wide range of creoles that call into question traditional claims about the nature of the phonological and morphological systems of these languages and give crucial insights into one of the major questions of creole studies, i.e. the question of how these languages and their grammars come about. The volume is organized into 5 sections, each focusing on particular aspects of the respective subsystems: >Segments and syllablesStress, tone and intonationMorphophonologyDerivational morphologyInflection<.

Prominence in Triconstituent Compounds: Pitch Contours and Linguistic Theory

According to the widely accepted Lexical Category Prominence Rule (LCPR), prominence assignment to triconstituent compounds depends on the branching direction. Left-branching compounds, that is, compounds with a left-hand complex constituent, are held to have highest prominence on the left-most constituent, whereas right-branching compounds have highest prominence on the second of the three constituents. The LCPR is, however, only poorly empirically supported. The present paper tests a new hypothesis concerning the prominence of triconstituent compounds and suggests a new methodology for the empirical investigation of compound prominence. According to this hypothesis, the prominence pattern of the embedded compound has a decisive influence on the prominence of the whole compound. Using a mixed-effects generalized additive model for the analysis of the pitch movements, it is shown that all triconstituent compounds have an accent on the first constituent irrespective of branching, and that the placement of a second, or even a third, accent is dependent on the prominence pattern of the embedded compound. The LCPR is wrong.

Morphology in Pidgins and Creoles

Although widely believed to have little or no morphology, pidgins and creoles are shown to have a significant amount of morphology. The particular characteristics of pidgin and creole morphology are described and current hypotheses concerning the nature and the emergence of morphology in these languages are introduced and discussed.