8 Morphological Productivity and the Mental Lexicon
This chapter is based on two observations about morphology:
(1)
- Though many things are possible in morphology, some are more possible than others.
- Though there are infinitely many potential words in a language, some are more likely to become actual words than others.
These two statements, while similar, express slightly different ideas. The first (1a) is a general statement about morphological processes. We have seen that morphology can take many forms. Limiting ourselves to English, regular derivation and inflection might involve affixation, internal change (ablaut and umlaut), and category change without any overt morphological marking, to name just a few. But some of these processes are more possible than others. In the realm of verb inflection, a randomly selected verb is more likely to make its past tense by affixation than by ablaut. The second statement (1b) deals specifically with ...
Get What is Morphology?, 3rd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
