a) Definition of morphological productivity
ü It is the relative freedom with which a morphological process may
occur. For example, blending is a productive process in English, but infixation
is not.
ü It is a morphological pattern or rule is productive if it can be applied
to new bases to create new words.
b) The productivity of a pattern may be limited in various ways: phonologically, semantically, pragmatically and morphologically. Here are the restrictions on word formation rules:
1.
Phonological Restriction
Phonological restriction is particularly
common with derivational suffixes, much less so with prefixes and compounding. For
the example, we can find the kind of restriction rules out repetition on
identical features. The first is the repetition of the phoneme // (spelled ll) in Spanish (which reduces the domain of the
diminutive suffix –illo.
The second is the repetition of the vowel
/i(:)/ in English (which reduces the domain of the suffix –ee.
Somewhat similar is the requirement
that the derived word must have an alternating rhythm (strong–weak–strong). As
a result, the English suffix –ize freely attaches to bases with a
strong–weak rhythm, but does not attach to bases that end in a strong (i.e.
stressed) syllable. (The suffix -ese behaves similarly, as we saw in the
previous section.)
Phonological restriction can also be
purely random. These are the examples but not one with an (obvious) phonetic
motivation.
2.
Semantic Restriction
In word formation rules may have
semantic restriction that seem quit arbitrary. For example, the Russian quality
– non suffix –stvo combines with adjectives that donate properties of
human beings, not with adjectives denoting physical properties of object. Here
are the examples and there is not intrinsic reason why –stvo should not
combine with other adjectives.
3.
Pragmatic Restriction
If we want to be phonologically and semantically well-formed, a
neologism must also be useful, and this is what the means of pragmatic
restriction. Pragmatic is study of language within a social and discourse
context. For example, we can take from the usage of female noun in German
language. There, German do not generally accept female nouns in -in denoting
lower animals (Käferin ‘female beetle’, Würmin ‘female worm’). It
seems clear that these gaps in the German lexicon are due to a pragmatic
restriction.
4.
Morphological Restriction
Some morphological patterns require
special morphological properties in the base. For example, Modern Hebrew has a
pattern for action nouns (CiC(C)uC) that is applied only to verbs of one
particular inflection class (CiC(C)eC). Verbs of other inflection classes
(CaCaC, hiCCiC, etc.) cannot form their action nouns in this way.
Then, in Russian we can find the
combination between the female-noun suffix –ja and only with bases that
are themselves derived by the suffix –un.
Some other female-noun suffix (-ka,
-ša, -inja, -isa) should be used for all of other noun. For example:
5.
Borrowed Vocabulary Strata
Sometimes a pattern is productive
only within a borrowed vocabulary stratum.
A borrowed vocabulary stratum is the
kind of borrowing a word from other language that will be the new vocabulary
for that country. The example is the word orang-utan. This word is
formed from (Malay: orang
‘man’, utan
‘forest’). the English word orangutan is monomorphemic,
although this is a compound noun in the source language. When a language
borrows many morphologically complex words from the same language, their
morphological structure may be preserved, and their patterns may become
productive in the target language.
c) Productivity and The Lexicon
The structure
of the lexicon is also a likely factor. Patterns with high memory strength (by
virtue of being frequently accessed in the lexicon) tend also to be more
productive. High frequency words can block newly coined words with the same
meaning. Finally, lexical gangs and other patterns with low token frequency can
be (quasi-) productive because they are phonologically densely clustered in the
lexicon.
d) Measuring productivity
Various
quantitative measures of productivity have been proposed; the corpus measures
based on hapax legomena (P and P*) are increasingly used.
