The main aim of this article is to provide an explanation accounting for the production of English derived nouns in -ee. In line with Barker (1998), I will argue that analyses based on the syntactic argument structure of the verbal base are unsatisfactory, and that the conditions for this derivational process must be searched for within semantics. My intention is to explore the semantic factors that might be taken to be pre-eminent in the different sets of verbs taking the suffix using the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) framework. It will be shown that a semantic analysis based on a theory of lexical representation like RRG is relevant to account for the formation of derived nouns in -ee in English.I gratefully acknowledge comments and suggestions from Robert Van Valin, Lachlan Mackenzie, and two anonymous readers of a previous version of this paper.
This article explores the use of affix-like elements of dubious status in word formation and proposes an analysis within Functional Discourse Grammar (Hengeveld and Mackenzie 2008.
Time-measurement expressions such as five-year plan, 10 years' time and 25 years service occur frequently in English. All such expressions consist of a cardinal numeral, followed by a time-noun (N1) then a second noun (N2). The time-noun has one of three orthographic forms: the bare-form, the Sform with apostrophe or the S-form without apostrophe. Using a dataset of 17591 time-measurement tokens from the British National Corpus and mixed-effects logistic regression modelling, this chapter tests the hypothesis that these three orthographic forms represent three different constructions. Our first model, using only expressions with S-form N1, shows that the presence or absence of an apostrophe is not correlated with any other formal or semantic property that would justify the recognition of two constructions. In contrast, our second model using the whole dataset, shows that bare-form N1 and S-form N1 (with or without apostrophe) are highly correlated with aspects of both form and meaning. In our dataset, 96% of tokens with bareform N1 have a countable N2 and 87% also follow a determiner. Conversely, 94% of tokens with S-form N1 have an uncountable N2, and 91% also lack a determiner. We conclude that these clusters of properties represent distinct pairings of form and meaning, and are therefore characteristic of two different constructions, which we call the TIME-MEASUREMENT COMPOUND construction and the TIME-MEASUREMENT construction respectively. The TIME-MEASUREMENT COMPOUND construction (five-year plan) has the distribution of a nominal; semantically, it denotes a kind of bounded entity (N2) with some relation to numeral-N1, usually duration. The TIME-MEASUREMENT construction (10 years' time, 25 years service) has the distribution of a noun phrase; semantically, it denotes a quantity (numeral-N1) of some unbounded entity (N2). The chapter ends with a qualitative exploration of the central and more peripheral representatives of the two constructions, including borderline cases.
The noun head is commonly found in the second position of many English noun compounds. Typically, noun compounds with head in the right are endocentric formations, that is, composite forms which designate a more specific type of the concept denoted by head (e.g. pinhead). The noun head is also found in a significant number of so called ‘exocentric’ formations with a variety of interconnected meanings (e.g. airhead, acidhead, Potterhead). The different exocentric patterns where head participates raise questions about the grammatical status of this element, which is sometimes analysed as a suffixal element, illustrating the fuzzy boundaries between derivation and compounding. In the linguistic literature there is an extensive debate as to whether processes like this one are to be regarded as cases of grammaticalization or lexicalisation. In this paper it will be proposed that exocentric formations in -head are suitable for an analysis using a schema-based approach in Ryder’s (1994) fashion, or a constructional approach (Booij, 2010a) insofar as new creations arise by analogy with the patterns that can be extracted from existing cases. The different patterns of exocentric formations with head can be conveniently characterized by postulating a hierarchical lexicon with schemas or constructions of different degree of abstraction.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.