About that other presentation software…

• 

• (I’m always chasing better learning outcomes. Oh well.)

Productivity in Morphology

Dr. Will Styler - LIGN 120

Today’s Plan

• The Wide World of Words

• Morphological Productivity

• Productivity as Restriction

• Productivity as Extension

• Lexicalization

The Wide World of Words

Languages have many, many words

• The average adult speaker of a language knows 20,000-30,000 words

  • This is surprisingly hard to estimate!

A big part of learning a language is learning the vocabulary!

• These include function words

  • Pre/Postpositions, Determiners, Pronouns, Conjunctions)

• As well as content words

  • Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs

• These words range from very common (‘the’) to very uncommon (‘decimate’)

Zipf’s Law

• “In a given corpus of natural language, the frequency of a word is inversely proportional to its rank in the frequency table”

• The most common words are really common!

  • … and the rarest words are super rare

This is a double-edged sword

• We don’t need to know that many words to be functional day-to-day

• but rare words are exceedingly rare

We need to be able to interact with and understand unknown words!

• Because we probably don’t know all of the words

• … and even if we did, we need new words regularly!

New words are commonly required

• New concepts are regularly developed

• New cultural or general concepts need marked

• 

So, we need some way to be able to use and decipher new words!

We’ve talked about many morphological processes

• Affixation

• Stem modification

• Conversion

• Reduplication

To mark a meaning, the process is applied to a word

• This could be inflectional

  • e.g. kot -> koti (‘cat’ -> ‘cats’ in Russian)

• Or derivational

  • e.g. ‘thick’ -> ‘thickness’

Individual morphological processes don’t apply to every word

• Cuteness, but *quicklyness

• English plural as ‘cats’, ‘dogs’, ‘dishes’, ‘deer’, ‘oxen’, ‘foci’

  • deers and cat and dishi and dogen (as plural form)

• Speakers know what forms apply to which words

This is a glanch

• There are two ___?

• An object that is a lot like this would be ___?

• If you turn something into a glanch, you would ___ it?

• Somebody who uses a glanch would be a ____?

Morphological Productivity

Morphological Productivity

• The degree to which a grammatical process is in use by speakers

• Can we use this morphological pattern with a brand new base?

Interesting questions in Productivity

• What knowledge or abilities do speakers/listeners use to make/understand words they haven’t heard before?

• How can we characterize the productivity of a morphological process?

• How do we know what processes can and can’t work with a given word?

• Is this word form learned as a monolithic whole, or as analyzable chunks?

How do we describe productivity?

• There are two approaches in common use

• 1. Assume patterns are general, and then discuss restrictions
• 2. Assume patterns are local, and then discuss extensions

Productivity as Restriction

One approach: Assuming general patterns

• “Let’s assume that all morphological patterns are unconstrained, and then identify those unique places where it appears constrained!”

• Identify the pattern, then describe when that pattern can’t be extended to new forms

• The restrictions dictate the productivity

English -ity makes nouns from adjectives

• Sparse -> Sparsity

• Secure -> Security

• Responsible -> Responsibility

• Productive -> Productivity

English -ity doesn’t always work

• Foolish -> *Foolishity

• Sexy -> *Sexity

• Peaceful -> *Peacefulity

  • … but we have ‘Foolishness’, ‘Sexiness’, and ‘Peacefulness’ to carry the day

• -ity works with all adjectives except those ending in -ish, -y, or -ful

  • This is its productivity

Types of Restrictions on Productivity

There are three kinds of restrictions often found with productivity

• Phonological Restrictions

• Semantic Restrictions

• Morphological Restrictions

Phonological Restrictions

• The form of the base restricts the application of an affix

• English patient noun -ee works in retiree and payee

  • … but not with free -> *freeee or accompany -> *accompanyee

• English verbal -ize works with privatize and globalize

  • … but not with corrupt -> *corruptize or secure -> *securize

Phonological Restrictions

• These have no semantic or morphological basis, just simple rules based on the form of the word!

• -ee only attaches to words without final /i/

• -ize only attaches when there would be an alternating rhythm

Semantic Restrictions

• The meaning of the base restricts the application of an affix

• Russian “quality noun” affix -stvo only works with people-describing adjectives

• bogatyj ‘rich’ -> bogatstvo ‘richness’

• znakomyj ‘acquainted’ -> znakomstvo ‘acquaintance’

• udaloj ‘bold’ -> udal’stvo ‘boldness’

• lukavyj ‘wily’ -> lukavstvo ‘cunning’

• vjalyj ‘withered’ -> *vjal’stvo

• priemlemyj ‘acceptable’ -> *priemlemstvo

Morphological Restrictions

• The grammatical or morphological nature of the base restricts the application of an affix

• The English -ee only attaches to verbs

  • Retire -> Retiree, but quickly -> *quicklyee

• The -ando progressive aspect in Spanish only attaches to ‘-ar’ verbs

  • caminar -> caminando, but subir -> *subiando

Productivity as Extension

Alternative Approach: Assuming locality

• “Let’s assume that all morphological patterns are constrained, and then identify those unique places where it appears to extend!”

• Identify the pattern, then describe what forms it extends to.

• The extent dictates the productivity

English -ity works best with some forms

• “English -ity is typically used to make nouns from adjectives ending in -able and -ive”

  • responsible -> responsibility, productive -> productivity, available -> availability, payable -> payability

  • creative -> creativity, inclusive -> inclusivity, responsive -> responsivity

• “Sure, maybe it works with some other words, but that is where it’s always productive”

  • sparse -> sparsity, secure -> security, horrible -> ?horriblity

There’s often ambiguity here

• There isn’t always just one form

Something that tastes like almonds tastes…

A: Almondy

B: Almondish

C: Almondtacular

D: Almonderiffic

E: of almond

There’s also sometimes competition

• Especially when many morphemes are borrowed and the ‘proper’ form depends on the language

• “Was this borrowed from Latin? Greek? Is this Germanic?”

This is an octopus. Now there are two of them. There are two…

A: Octopus

B: Octopuses

C: Octopi

D: Octopodes

E: Hexadecapus

Productivity is about patterns

• We can ask these same questions for other patterns of morphological change

  • Stem modification, reduplication, and more

• How often does this process occur for new words?

• How regularly (and where) does it occur for existing words?

We’re very productive!

• Humans are excellent at finding and extending patterns

• Let’s give it a try

What do these memes have in common? Where do they differ?

I made my own!

Success Kid Memes

Bad Luck Brian has his own grammar

Seeming success -> Unexpected twist of fate leaving the success hollow

Many other memes have productive and unproductive domains

• Keysmashing (asdf;lkj)

• SpOngEBoB MemE!

• 

Lexicalization and Fossilized Forms

Sometimes, forms completely cease being productive

• -en is no longer a productive plural for English

  • oxen, children, women, *wugen, *thoten

• Ablaut is no longer a productive process

  • sit -> sat, sing -> sang, sting -> stung, ding -> *dung, yeet -> *yote

A process which is no longer productive has been ‘lexicalized’

• We view ‘children’ as a quirk of ‘child’

  • … not as the expression of a working process

• We view ‘brethren’ as a separate word

  • … not as the plural of ‘brother’

• We consider `strong’ (ablauted) verbs to be ‘irregular’

  • … rather than another way to make a past tense

At this point, the affix is fossilized

• You may find it in old words

• Speakers may be vaguely aware of the affix

• It’s no longer active

• It is lost to the language

… and some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend, legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the morpheme passed out of all knowledge.

Until, when chance came, it ensnared another bearer.

… but that’s next week!

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Wrapping Up

• There are a great many words, but we always need more

• Some affixes are productive, available to use for new words

• We can define productivity in terms of restriction, or extension

• When a form completely ceases to be productive, it is lexicalized

• … until it is discovered once more

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For Next Time

• Some fun data, then we’ll get creative

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Thank you!