Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1360674310000286How to cite this article: AKIKO NAGANO (2011). The right-headedness of morphology and the status and development of category-determining prexes in English. English Language and Linguistics, 15, pp 61-83So-called category-determining prefixes in English (befool, delouse, disbar, encage, outjockey, unsaddle) have been treated as exceptions to the Righthand Head Rule (Williams 1981). This article argues that so-called category-determining prefixation is a V (Verb)to-V prefixation which takes denominal and deadjectival converted verbs as inputs, and thus special treatment is unwarranted. The hypothesis that conversion underlies N (Noun)/A (Adjective)-to-V prefixation is examined from both diachronic and synchronic perspectives. Diachronically, it is shown that the prefixes in question all started as noncategory-determining V-to-V prefixes, and their N/A-to-V usage was established only in Modern English. With the constant productivity of conversion in the history of English, N/A-to-V usage can emerge from V-to-V usage. Synchronically, denominal/deadjectival prefixed verbs are shown to exhibit input and output properties that prove the above hypothesis: they have a converted counterpart; they are subject to the same morphological constraints as converted verbs; and their semantics is equivalent to the semantics of converted verbs modified by the semantics of V-to-V prefixation. It is concluded that there is no derivational prefix that determines the output category in English. 1 I am deeply indebted to David Denison, Masaharu Shimada and two anonymous referees for their comments on an earlier version of this paper and valuable suggestions for improvement. I am also grateful to the participants of the meeting of the Lexicon Study Circle, the 14th International Morphology Meeting, and the 27th annual conference of the Modern English Association, where parts of this study were presented. All remaining inadequacies are my own. This work is supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (no. 22720189). 62 A K I KO NAG A N OThese prefixes, which are all verb-forming, constitute a small but perplexing problem for morphologists in that they appear to violate the Righthand Head Rule (RHR) (Williams 1981: 248). A head in morphology is an element that determines the category of a complex word as a whole (Williams 1981: 247; Zwicky 1985: 15-20; Bauer 1990: 30). The RHR captures the generalization that such an element occurs in the rightmost position of a complex word. As predicted from this, English derivational suffixes and prefixes are asymmetric in that suffixation typically derives words of a single category, whereas prefixation typically derives words of multiple (more than one) categories. In fact, according to Plag (2004: section 3), only one out of 41 suffixes he investigated derives words of multiple categories, 2 and all the prefixes that derive words of a ...

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Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0022226714000024How to cite this article: AKIKO NAGANO and MASAHARU SHIMADA (2014). Morphological theory and orthography: Kanji as a representation of lexemes .Orthography has been given marginal status in theoretical linguistics, but it can offer 'visible' insights into the invisible mechanisms of grammar. Japanese kanji graphs, Chinese characters used to write Japanese, provide an excellent illustration of this perspective. Our core claim is that the kanji orthography reflects the working of lexeme-based morphology in Japanese grammar. Specifically, we show how the lexeme-based morphological framework developed by Mark Aronoff and Martin Maiden can explain apparently cumbersome and inefficient properties of the kanji usage, its dual pronunciation in particular. Among the findings of this study are the following: (i) the underlying mechanism of the kanji's dual pronunciation is suppletion, native and Sino-Japanese synonyms working as morphomic stems of the same paradigm; (ii) this suppletion emerged and developed as a paradigmatic strategy of synonymy avoidance; and (iii) the large-scale suppletive morphology has long been retained in Japanese because it has served advantageous functions in the maintenance of lexemic isomorphism and in lexical stock expansion. Our findings shed an entirely new light on the bafflingly complex nature of Japanese orthography; it is the complexity of morphology, a grammatical module that is deemed to be the locus of language-specificity.[] The original manuscript of this paper has been drastically revised following three anonymous Journal of Linguistics referees' comments and suggestions. We would like to express our deep gratitude to each of them for carefully reading our manuscript and generously providing us with ideas and data for improvement. Also, we are grateful for the comments from the participants of the ICHL  workshop 'The Role of Autonomous Morphology in Language Change' (organised by Martin Maiden and John Charles Smith, July , Osaka), where the initial idea of this paper was presented. Our special thanks go to Ewa Jaworska for invaluable editorial support. Needless to say, we are solely responsible for the contents of this paper. This study is financially supported by the Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C), No. ). Abbreviations used in this paper are:  = second person, A = adjective, ABL = ablative, ACC = accusative, Adv = adverbial, AGT = agent, C = consonant, Comp = compound, CONCL = conclusive, GEN = genitive, HON = honorific, IMP = imperative, Infl = inflection, INF = infinitive, L = lexeme, NOM = nominative, P = stem, P Adv = adverbial stem, P Comp = compounding stem, P Infl = inflectional stem, PL = plural, PRT = particle, SJ = Sino-Japanese, SG = singular, V= vowel, VOC = vocative, WFA = word-forming affix.

Marchand (1960;1969) presents a unique analysis of back-formation (e.g., editor N > edit V ) as a combination of zero-derivation (editor N > editor V ) and clipping (editor V > edit V ). This paper will take a closer look at his analysis and argue that its revised version, which uses the notion of conversion rather than zero-derivation, is superior to the mainstream analyses of back-formation. Citing a lot of instances of back-formed verbs, we will show that back-formation does not necessarily delete an affix (e.g., liaison N > liaise V ), and that it is semantically parallel not to affixation (e.g., film N > filmize V ) but to conversion (e.g., referee N > referee V ). Almost all the preceding analyses fail to deal with these facts, for they are based on the assumption that backformation deletes a (supposed) affix, or it is the reverse of affixation. Our new analysis, on the other hand, is free from this traditional assumption and can account for various properties of back-formation, including the above two, in terms of general characteristics of conversion and clipping.Keywords: affix deletion, back-formation, clipping, constructional iconicity, zero-derivation/conversion * Portions of this paper were presented at the 12th International Morphology Meeting. I would like to thank the participants for valuable comments. I am also grateful to Reiko Shimamura and my anonymous referee for sharing their knowledge and providing very helpful comments. Needless to say, all remaining inadequacies and errors are mine.

It is widely observed that relational adjectives (RAdjs) in English can be coerced into qualitative adjectives (QAdjs) rather freely ( Farsi 1968 ; Beard 1991 ; Bauer et al. 2013 ; Nikolaeva & Spencer 2013 ; Lieber 2015 ). However, the process of coercion and its output properties have not been studied extensively. This paper presents a conversion analysis of the process and discusses how it is effected in the grammar and how converted QAdjs differ from non-converted suffixal ones, such as similatives. The analysis considers the working of the truthfulness operator within a class name NP. Clearly demarcating different adjective classes, the findings of this paper contribute to research on both conversion and RAdj.