Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-7qhmt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-19T02:58:35.432Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - Constructional change in word formation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2013

Martin Hilpert
Affiliation:
Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Get access

Summary

This chapter turns to processes of word formation and to the question of how changes in derivational morphology can be analyzed from the perspective of Construction Grammar. Booij (2010) has recently developed a constructional approach to morphology that holds a number of important implications for the present work. Central to a constructional understanding of derivational morphology is the idea that word formation processes are represented as cognitive schemas. It is thus assumed that speakers generalize over sets of words such as baker, buyer, runner, seller, and speaker and arrive at the schema shown in (1), which allows them to produce new coinages.

(1) [[x]V er]N ‘one who Vs’ (Booij 2010: 2)

Morphological schemas are conceptually similar to word formation rules (Plag 2003: 30), but defining these schemas as constructions facilitates in several ways the description of their properties. First, word formation processes exhibit multiple restrictions in terms of form and function of their constituents; these can be inscribed directly in the constructional poles of structure and meaning. Having rich, frequency-sensitive information on form and meaning available within the schema can explain prototype effects, such as the intuition that runner is a better example of the schema in (1) than stander ‘one who stands.’ Second, re-casting word formation rules as constructions allows an analysis of the interrelations between different word formation processes, notably between schemas and their subschemas, between schemas that unify to create a new word formation process, and between paradigmatically related schemas (Booij 2010: 50). Each of these relations is briefly discussed below.

Type
Chapter
Information
Constructional Change in English
Developments in Allomorphy, Word Formation, and Syntax
, pp. 110 - 154
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×