15 Derivational networks in English

Abstract

This chapter covers the investigation of English derivational networks. Detailed descriptions of English derivation can be found in the work of, amongst others, Marchand (1969), Bauer (1983), Adams (2001), and Plag (2003. The preparation of the data sample was based on searches in the British National Corpus (BNC), the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), and the internet. Words marked as rare, obsolete or regional (e.g. nameling, adname, foretooth, cutty) in the OED were not included. On the advice of the project team, some unproductive patterns (forgive, knowledge) were left out too. Working with corpora and dictionaries meant that some derivatives, such as ones based on very productive patterns (e.g. prefixation with unor suffixation with -ness), could go under the radar. Every attempt was made to test productive patterns against the words in the sample. This brought to the surface the issue of attested vs. possible words. For example, many of the verbs in the sample give rise to sequences like pull > pullable > unpullable > unpullability. But in some cases, it was difficult to find attestations, e.g. searches on Google returned no results, and so forms like ungiveability or unsewability were not included.Another methodological issue centred around distinctions like affix, affixoid, and combining form. The guidance was to include only affixes and follow the categorization of an authoritative grammatical description. Accordingly, the chapter relies on the Oxford Reference Guide to English Morphology (Bauer et al. 2013), which in turn refers to theoretical principles laid down by Dalton-Puffer and Plag (2000). Words like stoneware or waterscape were excluded since -ware and -scape are classified as splinters, while others like eyelike and firelike were left out because -like is considered a compound form. Some forms (e.g. multi-, super-) were excluded despite being classified as prefixes by Bauer et al. (2013), either because they were on the list of combining forms recommended by the project, or in the interest of bringing the English data set into line with the work done on other languages.

Derivational networks of onomatopoeias in English and Slovak

“…This section compares the results obtained for the individual parameters of OW-based derivational networks with the data on derivational networks for 'standard' (i.e., noniconic) words in English (Popova 2020) and in Slovak (Ivanová 2020). This makes it possible to assess the position of onomatopoeias in the wordstock and, in this way, contribute to the discussion of whether or not it represents a 'unique species' (Körtvélyessy 2020(Körtvélyessy , 2021a).…”

“…Section 4 presents and discusses the results obtained from an analysis and comparison of English and Slovak networks by the individual parameters. The data available for the English (Popova 2020) and Slovak (Ivanová 2020) NIW-based derivational networks 2 make it possible to draw conclusions on similarities and differences between NIW-based and OW-based derivational networks (section 5); these networks are compared by the individual parameters introduced in section 3. Section 6 summarizes the fundamental observations and findings of our research.…”