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1.2. Productivity of Morphological Processes.

A morphological process is a means of changing a stem to adjust its meaning to fit its syntactic and communicational context.

Some morphological processes are very regular and more or less any lexeme of the right sort will undergo it. Thus, nearly all transitive verbs have an –able/ible form and any new transitive verb coined or imported into the language is likely to form one.

However, some processes only apply to a small number of lexemes and cannot be applied to new words, e.g. the deverbal locative noun, as in bakery from bake + ery.

Most verbs don’t have such a derivate, using any kind of suffixation or other operation. It’s very rare for a new verb to form such a noun (eatery is a rare recent coining; note that there’s no drinkery, even as a joke).

The regular processes that apply automatically to words of the appropriate category and which can be used to form new words are called productive. Processes which are no longer used to form new words are called non-productive. Some processes can be used to form new words but only under restricted circumstances and these are called semi-productive (though there is obviously a cline or gradient of productivity, rather than three water-tight classes).

Most languages that are agglutinative in any way use suffixation. Some of these languages also use prefixation and infixation. Very few languages use only prefixation, and none employ only infixation or any of the other types of morphological processes listed below.

TABLE OF CONTENTS



1. Definition of morphology.

1.2. Productivity of Morphological Processes.



2. Morphological processes.

1. Definition of morphology.

Morphology - is the field within linguistics that studies the inte
al structure of words. (Words as units in the lexicon are the subject matter of lexicology.) While words are generally accepted as being (with clitics) the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most (if not all) languages, words can be related to other words by rules. For example, English speakers recognize that the words dog, dogs, and dog-catcher are closely related. English speakers recognize these relations from their tacit knowledge of the rules of word-formation in English. They intuit that dog is to dogs as cat is to cats; similarly, dog is to dog-catcher as dish is to dishwasher. The rules understood by the speaker reflect specific patte
s (or regularities) in the way words are formed from smaller units and how those smaller units interact in speech. In this way, morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies patte
s of word-formation within and across languages, and attempts to formulate rules that model the knowledge of the speakers of those languages.