Consider the examples in (1):

In each case, we have adjectives and nouns that are derived from them (all cases of transposition, by the way). As a first pass, we might hypothesize the three rules of lexeme formation in (2):

Now consider the list of adjectives in (3). If you had to make a noun from each of these, which of the three suffixes would you choose (note that you might be able to use more than one in some cases)?

Chances are that there are some of these words that you would choose to use -ity with (I choose crude, toxic, googleable, rustic, inconsequential, maybe feline), and others that you would use -ness with (for me, lovely, cool, evil, musty, probably bovine). Your choices might be slightly different from mine, but I’d be willing to predict that you didn’t choose to use -th with any of these adjectives.

What does this mean? In some cases, we can look at words, decide that they are complex, and isolate particular affixes. But when it comes to using those affixes to create new lexemes, we have the sense that they are no longer part of our active repertoire for forming new words. We have no trouble using other affixes, however, even if we’ve never seen them on particular bases; for example, you may never have seen a noun form of the word bovine, but you have no trouble forming the word bovineness (or maybe bovinity, or maybe even both). Processes of lexeme formation that can be used by native speakers to form new lexemes are called productive. Those that can no longer be used by native speakers, are unproductive; so although we might recognize the -th in warmth as a suffix, we never make use of it in making new words. The suffixes -ity and -ness, on the other hand, can still be used, although perhaps not to the same degree. Most morphologists agree that productivity is not an all-or-nothing matter. Some processes of lexeme formation, like affixation of -th, are truly unproductive, but for those processes that are productive, we have the sense that some are more productive than others. In this chapter we will explore in some detail what we mean by productivity, and look at a number of factors that contribute to productivity. We will also look at several ways in which productivity can be measured.

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

مكتب المتولي الشرعي للشؤون النسوية يناقش استعداداته لإقامة مهرجان روح النبوة الثامن وحفل تخرج الطالبات العاشر

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وفد متحف الكفيل يطّلع على النفائس والوثائق التاريخية في متاحف العتبة الرضوية المقدسة

قسم الشؤون الطبية يواصل تنظيم ورش تدريبية لرفع كفاءة المنتسبين في الإسعافات الأولية

المزيد

الآخبار الصحية

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فاكهة خضراء.. علاج طبيعي فعّال للإمساك واضطرابات الهضم

روسيا تبدأ أولى التجارب السريرية للقاح واعد ضد السرطان

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المزيد

الآخبار التكنلوجية

رصد نوع نادر من القطط في تايلاند للمرة الأولى منذ عقود

روسيا تخطط لإقامة محطة نووية في القمر خلال العقد المقبل

كيف قاد إيلون ماسك حملة "غروك" لاختراق عرش الذكاء الاصطناعي

ألتمان: الذكاء الاصطناعي سيتجاوز البشر في 2026 !

المزيد

مواضيع ذات صلة

Constituent structure

A typology of word structure

Analyzing position classes

Representing word structure

Different kinds of morphemes

Morphemes Definition of “morpheme”

Analyzing word structure

Mirror in nominal morphology

Appendix 2: Hapax legomena from the Cobuild corpus

Appendix 1: 20th century neologisms from the OED

Morphological Productivity Structural Constraints in English Derivation Conclusion

Verbal derivation and the separation hypothesis