The Semantics of German Verb Prefixes is the most comprehensive study ever undertaken in this area of German grammar. Using an extensive collection of naturally occurring data, the author proposes an ...image-schematic interpretation for each of the productive prefixes be-, ver-, er-, ent-, zer-, um-, über-, unter-, and durch-. These abstract semantic patterns underlie a remarkable range of particular meanings, and they consistently account for subtle contrasts between prefixed verbs and alternative constructions such as simple verbs, particle verbs, and verbs with other prefixes. Furthermore, the author develops a schematic meaning for the prefixed verb construction itself. This grammatical meaning reflects the interpreter's perspective and attentional focus as the objective event is imagined to unfold. Underlying all of these proposals is a novel conception of meaning as a dynamic and flexible process with a constantly active role for the interpreter. This volume will be of great value to cognitive linguists as well as scholars and students of German who want to gain insights into a central and puzzling part of the morphosyntax and semantics of the German language.
This series consists of collected volumes and monographs about specific issues dealing with interfaces among the subcomponents of linguistic structure: phonology-morphology, phonology-syntax, ...syntax-semantics, syntax-morphology, and syntax-lexicon. Recent linguistic research has recognized that the subcomponents of grammar interact in non-trivial ways. What is currently under debate is the actual range of such interactions and their most appropriate representation in grammar, and this is precisely the focus of this series. Specifically, it provides a general overview of various topics by examining them through the interaction of grammatical components. The books function as a state-of- the-art report of research.
In this paper we bring evidence from English and Italian deverbal zero nominals (
>
) that zero is a possible spell-out of a nominalizer otherwise overtly instantiated in suffixed nominals (
). We ...argue in favor of a Distributed Morphology approach, a separationist theory that recognizes and easily implements zero morphology with underlying syntax-semantics. ing away from other theoretical trends and their foundational reasons to refrain from using zero suffixes, we address three properties that have been argued to fundamentally distinguish zero nominals from overtly suffixed nominals, with the implication that they instantiate a different word formation process: i) realization of verbal argument structure, ii) possibility of embedding verbalizing suffixes, and iii) semantic transparency in relation to the verb. By means of corpus data and two manually collected datasets of 561 English and 174 Italian zero nominals based on lexicographic information, we bring solid evidence against these claims, by arguing that: i) a great proportion of zero nominals do realize verbal argument structure, ii) the zero affix may embed verbalizing affixes within the limits of the selectional restrictions it independently imposes on its base, and iii) zero nominals present the same patterns of polysemy that suffixed nominals display. However, we show that zero nominals also present some idiosyncrasies to the extent that not all of them express compositional event readings with argument structure, a matter that deserves further research within the frame of their competition with suffixed nominals.
The book series Linguistische Arbeiten (LA) publishes high-quality work in linguistics that addresses current issues in synchrony and diachrony, theoretically or empirically oriented.
This study aims at testing the Iraqi EFL learners' recognition and production of the derivational suffixes in English and namely, noun, verb, adjective, and adverb. It is hypothesized that the Iraqi ...EFL learners find difficulty in forming new correct parts of speech from the roots due to their unsureness of the suitable derivational suffixes. Also, they tend to use derivational suffixes with different parts of speech depending on different factors like guessing and generalization. The sample of this study is fourth-year Iraqi students of the Department of English/ College of Education Ibn Rushd/ Universitry of Baghdad of the academic year (2014-2015). To achieve the aim of this study a test, which comprises two questions, has been constructed. A multiple-choice question at the recognition level and a completion question at the production level are constructed. The findings of the test show that Iraqi EFL university learners face difficulty in recognizing and producing the derivational suffixes of different parts of speech. In the light of the results, some conclusions have been drawn and a number of recommendations and suggestions have been presented.
In Towards a Theory of Denominals, Adina Camelia Bleotu proposes a novel spanning analysis of denominals, arguing for its explanatory superiority to incorporation/conflation or nanosyntax in ...accounting for the formation and behaviour of such verbs in English and Romanian.
This book is the most comprehensive study to date of the development of the three suffixes -hood, -dom and -ship in the history of English. Based on data from annotated corpora it provides an in ...depth investigation from Old English to Modern English and shows that structurally the three suffixes developed from syntactic heads (nouns) via morphological heads in compounds to morphological heads in derivations. Being an instance of morphologisation the rise of suffixes clearly shows that word formation is not part of the syntactic module. This development is triggered by semantic change, more precisely, by the semantics of the elements which keep their salient meanings and develop further meanings through metonymic shifts, finally leading to underspecified meanings. The findings are analysed in a revised version of Lieber`s (2004) framework to account for the diachronic facts and have far-reaching consequences for morphological theory since they show that derivational suffixes bear meaning and hence contribute to processes of lexicalisation which is clear evidence for sign-based models and against, for example, Separationist assumptions.
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