DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

OBAFEMI AWOLOWO UNIVERSITY

ILE-IFE.

EGL 604:
The Morphology of Present-Day English

Term Paper:
Morphological Productivity

PREPARED BY:
EJABENA Harrison Oghenerukvwe
ARP15/16/H/0191
[kingejabs007@gmail.com]

SUBMITTED TO: PROF. E.T.O BABALOLA

FEBRUARY, 2017.
What is Morphological Productivity?
Morphological productivity is a central issue in the discussion of word formation processes
because it refers to the output of a morphological process (i.e. how productive is it? and how
many words does it generate?). The productivity of word formation processes is a function of the
degree of cognitive ease with which speakers can produce or process new complex words on the
basis of the rules on which these processes operate. The concept of ‘productivity’ in morphology
and indeed grammatical sense relates to the Chomskyan concept of ‘innatism’; that is the ability
to create an infinite number of novel sentences from pre-existing rules. This innate ability equips
us to say things which have never been said before; the design feature Chomsky (1965: 6) calls
‘creativity’.
Similarly, in morphology, it is the creation or production of new lexemes and word-forms never
heard before or spoken which provides the greatest proof that productivity is also a feature of
that level of language. This degree of ease with which new words are produce is the measure of
productivity. From the foregoing, we can deduce that morphological productivity is an
instantiation of the link between linguistic competence and linguistic performance of the native
speaker, seeing that it reflects how the internalized morphological rules work by virtue of factors
that influences the way the user of a language processes it.
Furthermore, borrowing from Hockett (1987: 8) assertion that ‘the productivity of any pattern-
derivational, inflectional or syntactical –is the relative freedom with which language speakers
coin new grammatical forms by it”, we can situate the concept of morphological productivity
within the framework of the word-formation process referred to as ‘Affixation’ (which includes
prefixation, suffixation and infixation). Productivity is another property that is often said to
distinguish inflection from derivation. It is claimed that derivational processes tend to be
sporadic while inflectional processes tend to apply automatically across the board to forms
belonging to appropriate paradigm (Katamba, 1993: 207). Hence, the singular fact that affixes
can be used to make new words makes it productive in the most basic sense of the word (Di
Sciullo and Williams, 1987: 8).
The term ‘Morphological productivity’ is used as one of the features that distinguish an
inflectional affix from a derivational one. The concept of ‘Productivity’ as the focal point of the
attempt at getting a full grasp of what morphological productivity entail is best suited to a
measuring scale that presents affixes as being more or less productive in the formation of new
words in a language. However, the concept of productivity has divergent twists to its conception
by different scholars; Bauer (2001: 12) states that: “…for some scholars, particular affixes are
productive; yet for others, it is rules which are productive; for a very few, it is words that are
productive and for some it is groups of processes which are productive. While for another group
of scholars, productivity is a feature of the language system as a whole.

By and large, these various descriptions can be seen as differing but interwoven statements of a
single phenomenon. However, the over-generalization of referring to affixation as the major
instance of morphological productivity lies in the existence of some other word formation
processes which are non-affixal; but which may nevertheless be productive. For example: Bauer
(2001) highlighted instances of the reduplication of ‘ablaut’ compounds which entails the
reduplication of the segmental framework except for the stressed vowel, which is usually the /ɪ/
phoneme in the first occurrence of the compounded framework, and either /æ/ or /ɒ/ in the
second; thus:

` Chit chat Shillyshally Clip clop

Dilly dally Snip snap Flip flop
Dingle dangle Tittle tattle Ping pong
Fiddle faddle Zig-zag Slip slop
Flimflam Jingle jangle Tick tock
Mish mash Pitter patter Higgy hagga

(Bauer, 2001)
Reduplication as evident in the above patterns appears to fit into the ‘productive’ sense of
morphological processes of word formation. Hence, in order to avoid the one-sided conception
of morphological productivity being a function of affixation alone, (affixation itself being one of
word-formation processes) morphological productivity can be viewed from a wider perspective
as a by-product of morphological processes generally.
Furthermore, due to the relative perspective from which morphological productivity is
conceivable, it transcends word formation processes such as; affixation, blending, clipping and
acronym whose ‘produced’ or morphologically modified words seems to remain within the
purview of previously existing words. Resultantly, in a bid to avoid labels like ‘create’ or
‘produce’ which may have undesired implication, it is normal to say that a new word is ‘coined’.
The Oxford Dictionary defines the word ‘coin’ in morphological, word-formation parlance as
follows: “…to frame or invent (a new word or phrase); usually implying deliberate purpose; and
occasionally used depreciatively as if the process were analogous to that of the counterfeiter”.
In this sense, morphological productivity in its ‘productive’ sense can equally be perceived as
tilting towards the realm of coinages (nonce word) and neologisms. Bauer (2001); further states
that the distinction is basically one in terms of the degree to which the word becomes part of the
norm of speech community involved: A nonce word fails to become part of the norm, and is not
generally seen as part of the lexicographer’s brief. A nonce word (i.e. spontaneous creations by a
speaker or writer, coined for the occasion) is different from neologisms because neologism is a
word which becomes part of the norm of the language, and thus is part of the brief of a
lexicographer.
As a result of the complexities in pinning ‘productivity’ in morphology to a single definition, I
opt to identify with the school of thought that regards Concatenative morphology which entail
the super-ordinate term affixation to refer to such word formation processes that involves the
addition of prefixal or suffixal affixes to the base of words to form new words; furthermore, the
by-product of the fusion between affixes (prefixes are suffixes) leads to inflection or derivational
morphology which also has implications for the production of new words and compounding
which involves the fusion of two free morphemes to represent a singular meaning different from
the contrast in meanings they normally have while in isolation. According to Bauer (2001); “…
an affix is productive if it can be used to create new words, as a productive affix should be able
to form new words in today’s language”; there are several quantitative measures that are used for
determining the degree to which an affix is productive, an obvious measure is the size of the set
of words containing the affix, the more words an affix attaches to in the production of new
words, the more productive that affix is.

Moreso, in morphological productivity, an affix can be adjudged as productive if it satisfies the

following criterion:

• Occurs with very many bases,

• If it can easily be used with new bases to form new words,

• If it has few restrictions that would prevent coinages with new bases, and

• If its addition to a particular grammatical class gives a semantic distinctiveness to the new
words produced.

But, as regards the validity of affixes being productive or unproductive, a strict definition of
productivity could throw up some dust as to the tenability of this claim in the sense that affixes
can only be outrightly adjudged as productive in its overt sense if it reflects a rule ‘without
exceptions’; on the basis of this perspective to observing productivity as a function of affixation,
inflectional morphemes are deemed productive; while most derivational morphemes are not
productive on the flipside, as the following examples illustrate:

VERBAL roots + ‘s’ addition yields such words as: goes, walks, spinches, talks etc. compared to
the addition of the prefix ‘un-’ + ADJ in words such as unhappy, unfit but odd as in *ungreen.
As for derivational suffixes, Kastovsky (1986) states that: “the productivity of a written form of a
suffix may vary from formal spoken, and informal spoken language. Suffixes tend to be most
productive in written language and least productive in informal spoken language”. He considers
that among the various functions of derivational morphology, the reference function and the
labeling function are the most important. Hence, new words in this sense must have the capacity
of labeling a new concept or referent (i.e. to create a new name for a thing or an event) and be
able to condensate the information for the purposes of making reference easier to things
mentioned in the previous discourse.

The referential function (i.e. the creation of lexical innovations is typical of certain kind of
abstract nouns, for example: the derivatives in ‘-ness’, ‘-ity’, in abnormality, ‘-like’ in v-like,
candid-like, lost-like, chapel-like, survivor-like, Titanic-like, also ‘-ment’ in appeasement,
advancement, adornment, ‘-(t)ion’ in completion, indention, dehydration. From the foregoing,
there is a perceived feeling that morphological productivity provides mechanisms for generating
new words that are unintentional, unlimited and regular and how the broad notion of creativity is
realized in language.

Apart from the productivity of Concatenative word formation processes, Matthews (1974: 52) as
cited in Katamba (1993), recognized a special category which he calls semi-productivity to cover
such idiosyncratic affixes which inexplicably fail to attach to apparently eligible forms. The
meaning of the resulting word may be unpredictable. For example: the Latinate suffix, ‘-ant’
turns a verbal base into an agentive nominal (similar to the ‘-er’ derivational suffix) in words
like communicant, defendant, applicant, participant, assistant, dependant etc., but not in words
like *writeant, *buildant, *shoutant. However, the reason for the restriction of the use of this
affix is historical by virtue of its Latinate origin. The suffix is a modification of the Latin present
participle ‘-antem’/‘-entem’, so it attaches to Latinate bases only.

Measuring Morphological Productivity

In an attempt to measure the level of productivity of affixes, the concept of gradience comes to
the fore. Gradience in affixes reflects the extent to which affixes are more or less productive.
Some affixes are highly productive e.g. ‘-er’, ‘-ness’, ‘-able’, ‘-ly’, and ‘un-’. While other
affixes are nearly unproductive, such that it is almost impossible to form new coinages from
them e.g. ADJ + ‘th’ nominalizing combination in words like warmth, but not in *greenth;
NOUN + ‘dom’ in words like kingdom, dukedom, chiefdom but not in *wormdom; VERB +
‘ment’ in words like ‘judgement’, ‘entailment’, but not *emailment; ADJ + ‘en’ in word like
‘blacken’, but not *greenen.

Furthermore, in as much as we have defined the measurement of productivity as gradient, how

we can tell if an affix is more productive or less productive can be achieved by working on
corpora or large text collection like a library, bookshop, or an online website cataloguing a large
number of collections of words. access to these databases could help us find out how many
formations with a certain suffix there is and how many of these occur only once, these are called
‘hapax legomena’; if an affix occurs with many hapaxes, it is a sign that speakers feel free to
‘play around’ with it and form new words from them. An important measure that is related to
productivity is the type frequency of an affix, ascertaining the time frequency is a way of
knowing the number of different forms that exists as a result of the co-occurrence of a given
affix with bases.

In English, of the 20,000 most commonly used words, 20% are formed with prefixes and among
these words, 15 prefixes comprise 82% of the prefixes used. The most frequent prefixes in the
corpus are: ‘un-’, ‘re-’, ‘de-’, ‘pre-’, and ‘dis-’, while, for suffixes, the most frequent occurrence
are ‘-able’/‘-ible’, ‘-al’/‘-ial’, ‘-er’/‘-or’, ‘-ion’, ‘-ly’, ‘-ness’, and ‘-y’. For prefixes used to form
new words in academic English we have: ‘co-’, ‘dia-’, ‘fore-’, ‘hydro-’, ‘inter-’, ‘iso-’, ‘poly-’,
‘sub-’, ‘trans-’, ‘thermo-’, ‘pseudo-’ and ‘under-’ are found to be most frequently used (Betty,
Stoodt, & Burns, 1987).

In the same vein, in the British National Corpora (BNC), with an artillery of words running into
a hundred million, ADJ + ‘en’ suffixation in words like weaken, sadden etc., has a time
frequency of 44; on account of such low frequency, the ‘-en’ suffix cannot be considered
productive. By contrast, the ADJ + ‘-ly’ suffixation as we have in words like clearly, quickly,
slowly etc. has a type frequency that is in the thousands of instantiations in the above stated
corpora, with many hapaxes. Hence, it is considered a highly productive derivational suffix.

In addition to affixation being a productive process, compounding is another linear concatenative

morphological process that is very productive in the formation of new lexemes. In compounding,
the concatenation of free morphemes or bases to form a single word, with a semantic
distinctiveness is considered productive as no finite list can be drawn up containing all the
compounds of English (Katamba, 1993: 322). The English language permits the following
possible combinations like:

Noun and Noun compounds: ‘bookcase’, ‘motor-car’, and ‘water-lily’.

Noun and Verb compounds: ‘sunshine’, ‘waterproof’

Noun and Adjective compounds: ‘world-wide’, ‘user-friendly’, ‘seaworthy’ and ‘foolproof’

Adjective and Noun compounds: ‘wet-suit’, ‘fast food’, ‘soft drink’, and ‘greenfly’.

Adjective and Adjective compounds: ‘deaf-mute’, ‘bitter-sweet’, ‘short-lived’, ‘hard-hearted’,

‘good-natured’, and ‘long-winded’.

Verb and Noun compounds: ‘breakfast’, ‘pickpocket’,

Preposition and Verb compounds: ‘undersell’, ‘outstay’, ‘overrate’, and ‘upset’.

Verb and Preposition compounds: ‘look through’, ‘put through’, ‘show off’ and ‘turn off’.
Preposition and Noun compounds: ‘undergraduate’, ‘outskirts’, ‘underdog’, ‘overrate’,
‘offload’, ‘upstage’ and ‘oversight’.

However, of all the different dimensions of compounding, the Nominal compounds (i.e. Noun
and Noun) are the most productive in contrast to others; in the sense that they result in the
production of new nominal lexemes. Minkova and Stockwell (2009: 9) assert that: “…in general,
compounding is the most important source of new lexemes in the English lexicon.” In like
manner, Bauer and Huddleston (2002: 142) note that noun-noun compounding “is by far the
most productive of compounding in English, and indeed the most productive kind of word-
formation.” However, the general consensus regarding the productivity of compounds is woven
around the observation that new compounds are easily formed around the accepted into the
lexicon due to the fact that there are few rules governing the compounding of two lexemes in
English. In English, lexicographers find new compounds by examining prevalent, popular usages
(i.e. words used together relatively to denote a single, specific concept). The relative ease of
concatenating two lexemes in English has been spotted as being the sole cause of variability in
spellings as well as in their overt representation as open, hyphenated or solid.

Restrictions on Productivity

Certain factors are responsible for the incoherence of certain word formation processes that
could be uttered. For instance:

a. Pragmatic restrictions: this could surface in an attempt to form words that does not make
sense at all, and does not serve any communicative purpose that qualifies it to be usable e.g.
the following asterisked words in the syntactic constructions below are suffering pragmatic
restriction as they seem incoherent:

i. To *unmurder someone.

ii. The *onliest book I ever read.

iii. I *disgrow broccoli in my garden.

b. Structural Restrictions: In this respect, affixes only works with bases of a certain structural
kind. Furthermore, there are certain constraints on the phonological shape that the base has to
have; the base has to be bi-syllabic with the final stress on the second syllable as we have in
derivational suffixes like ‘-al’ in arrival, betrayal, denial, but not in *answeral, *stateal etc.
Similarly, in ‘-en’ derivational suffixes phonological restrictions also apply, words like
blacken, lessen, fatten, toughen, and widen etc., are tenable, but words like *finen, *dullen,
*highen, *lowen, *validen, *hilariousen, *greenen etc., are not because for such
morphological processes to be acceptable, the base of the word has to be monosyllabic and
ending in an obstruent. The rule governing the fusion of the base form to derivational
suffixes must satisfy the following phonetic conditions if structural restrictions is to be
avoided:

i. The adjective base should be monosyllabic; and

ii. The base must end in an obstruent (i.e. stop, fricative, or affricate) and optionally
preceeded by a sonorant (i.e. nasal or lateral) consonant.

c. Lexical Restrictions: in this sense, blocking takes place in certain formation of words as a
result of the prior existence of a word in the lexicon which will be equivalent in meaning
postulation to the resulting word after an affix is added. For instance, the word ‘thief’
already exists in the English lexicon to denote ‘someone who steals’ therefore it blocks the
formation of a word that could result from the fusion of a productive, agentive affix ‘-er’ to a
verb ‘steal’ to produce ‘stealer’, hence, the word ‘stealer’ cannot possibly replace ‘thief’.
Furthermore, *goodest suffers lexical restrictions because there is ‘best’, the same goes for;
*seeable because of ‘visible’, *intelligentness because of intelligence.

d. Semantic Restrictions: in semantic restrictions, we could have a scenario whereby an affix

only works with bases of a certain kind. For instance, the ‘-ee’ nominalization which only
works with bases that refers to a sentient human being as in: employee, trainee, interviewee
but not in *eatee, *peelee etc. Secondly, if there are two semantically similar affixes which
 bring the words of same grammatical class and one of them is more productive than the other
one, the blocking will take place with the less productive affix. This is reflected in cases of
affixes like ‘-ity’ and ‘-ness’ in English. Aronoff (1976) has shown that the suffixation of ‘-
ness’ is more productive compared to the suffixation of ‘-ity’ to the base form of adjectives.
He states further that where there is an existing noun that has been derived from an adjective
and the base that ends in ‘-ous’, it is not possible to create a new noun by adding the ‘-ity’
suffix. However, in such cases, the suffixation of ‘-ness’ to those adjective bases are possible.
Thus, ‘-ness’ is treated are being more productive than ‘-ity’. This is reflected as follows: the
suffixation of ‘-ity’ to the adjectival base ‘acrimonious’ yields *acrimoniousity instead of
‘acrimoniousness’, the same goes for: *gloriousity > gloriousness; *fallaciousity >
gloriousness; *spaciousity > spaciousness; and *furiousity > furiousness.

e. Morphological Restrictions:

The morphological properties of a base may prevent the application of morphological rules.
Often native morphemes behave differently from foreign morphemes. Some affixes are
typically added either to native bases or to bases of foreign origin. For example: ‘-ant’
derivational suffixes is suffixed to bases of French origin. Similarly, the rule of velar
softening which changes /k/ (usually spelled with the letter ‘c’) to [s] is essentially restricted
to words of Latin and French origin.

Velar softening:

/k/ [s] before a suffix commencing with a non-low vowel (e.g. ‘i’); the effects of velar
softening can be seen in the following:

Cynic, cynical to cynicism,

Critic, critical to criticism, criticize
Fanatic to fanaticism
Ascetic to asceticism
Sceptic to skepticism
Conclusion

Generally, all word formation processes are productive, but the salient need to place the
processes on a scale of gradience to ascertain which processes are more productive, the semi-
productive ones and the less productive ones will enable us capture the real essence of the
word ‘productive’. However, morphological productivity hinges on the open-endedness of
the lexicon of a language. One of the goals of morphological theorizing according to
Katamba (1993) is “to account for the ways in which speakers both understand and form not
only ‘real’ words that occur in their language, but also potential words which are not
instantiated in use in utterances.” Productivity in this sense entail the internalization of the
features and rules of the language which in turn equips the speaker to achieve communicative
competence and enable him to come up with entirely new words made up on the spur of the
moment. So morphology does not only throw more light on the processes that informs the
production of established words, it should also explain how coined neologisms such as ‘snail-
mail’ (meaning postal service, a synonym for the modern electronic mail), ‘stool pigeon’,
‘redlegs’, ‘facebooking’; comprised of two distinct free morphemes: ‘face’ and ‘book’ and an
inflectional suffix ‘-ing’, are created and incorporated into the lexicon. Similar to these are
other newly invented words like: ‘tweeting’, ‘blogging’, ‘InfoTech’ etc., these words are
created out of other existing words as a result of the advent of Information technology in this
particular regard. Finally, morphological productivity is closely-knitted with the dynamic
nature of language to introvertly and extrovertly expand its lexicon by virtue of the formation
of words from previously existing lexemes and the loaning, borrowing or pillaging of words
from other languages to be adopted and incorporated into the borrowing language.
References

Bauer, L. (2001). Morphological productivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University press.

Bauer, L and Huddleston, R. (2002). Lexical word-formation. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press

Booij, G. (2007). The grammar of words: An introduction to linguistic morphology (second

edition). Oxford University Press.

Kastovsky, D. (1986). The problem of productivity in word formation: In Linguistics 24. (p.
585- 600).

Katamba, F. (1993). Morphology. Modern linguistics series. St. Martin’s press, Inc. New
York.

Lieber, R. (2009). Introducing morphology. Cambridge University press.

Minkova, D and Stockwell, R. (2009). English word: structure and history. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.