The Semantics of Derivational Morphology by Sven Kotowski

The Semantics of Derivational Morphology

Theory, Methods, Evidence

Sven Kotowski, Ingo Plag

Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf · Print & ebook · November 4, 2024

This volume brings together cutting-edge research on the semantic properties of derived words and the processes by which these words are derived.

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Who it’s for
Eight empirical articles examine how derived words acquire meaning and how forms are built.
Themes
Derivational morphology, Word form and meaning, Empirical linguistic research
Genres
Morphology, Semantics

About this book

This volume brings together cutting-edge research on the semantic properties of derived words and the processes by which these words are derived. To this day, many of these processes remain under-researched and the nature of meaning in derivational morphology remains ill-understood. All eight articles have an empirical focus and rely on carefully collected sets of data. At the same time, the contributions represent a broad variety of approaches.

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Several contributions deal with specific problems of the pairing of form and meaning, such as the rivalry between nominalizing suffixes or the semantic categories encoded by conversion pairs. Other articles tackle the more general question of how meaning is organized, e.g. whether there is evidence for the paradigmatic organization of derived words or the reality of the inflection-derivation dichotomy. The contributions feature innovative methodologies, such as representing lexical meaning as word distribution or predicting semantic properties by means of analogical algorithms. This volume offers new and highly interesting insights into how complex words mean, and offers directions for future research in an oft-neglected field.

Derived Word Meaning

Eight empirical articles examine how derived words acquire meaning and how forms are built.

Come here for

  • Rivalry between nominalizing suffixes
  • Semantic categories encoded by conversion pairs

Expect

  • Questions about paradigmatic organization of derived words
  • Debate over the inflection–derivation distinction

Where it sits

Semantics96%
Morphology83%

Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.

Publisher categories

  • German Language Study
  • Linguistics
  • Morphology
  • Syntax
Show all 5 publisher categories
  • Semantics
Authors
Sven Kotowski, Ingo Plag
Publisher
Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
Published
November 4, 2024
Format
Print & ebook
Theme
Derivational morphology · Word form and meaning · Empirical linguistic research
Reading lane
German Language Study