On the double nature of productivity in inflectional morphology

Abstract

Inflection is generally considered to be more productive than derivation. To justify such an assumption, the syntactic function of inflectional morphology is contrasted with the mainly lexical function of derivational morphology. In this paper, the whole question will be carefully discussed with the help of recently developed quantitative approaches to productivity. On the basis of data taken from Italian, it will be shown that a quantitative approach to productivity can shed light on this intricate question by revealing the double nature of inflectional morphology, which on the one hand sides with derivational morphology because of its lexically conditioned inflectional classes. On the other, it scores very high productivity rates for the single inflectional categories in accordance with its syntactic function. Furthermore, the productivity rates of the inflectional categories considered are shown to be not uniform: several factors may influence their productivity, as for instance the substitutive usage of periphrases with modals, even in a language like Italian in which the latter are far less grammaticalized than in others.Parts of this paper were presented at the XI International Morphology Meeting held in Vienna, 14th-17th February 2004, and in lectures given at the Universities of Graz, L'Aquila, Marburg, Roma Tre, and Salerno. I wish to express my gratitude to the people who discussed with me the ideas contained in the paper, and in particular to my colleague and friend Davide Ricca, who has been sharing with me the pleasure and the hard work of conducting quantitative investigations on Italian morphology. Many ideas contained in the paper are the result of constant and animated discussions with him. Finally, I am very much indebted to the editor Ingo Plag and two anonymous reviewers for remarkable observations and comments. Needless to say, I carry the full responsability for errors and misunderstandings contained in the paper.

Variation in the Productivity of Adjective Comparison in Present-Day English

“…Our goal is therefore to extend previous work that has challenged the strict separation of derivation and inflection. While Gaeta (2007) found a cline between the productivity of inflectional and derivational affixes, we wish to see if there is variation and change within the productivity of individual inflectional affixes (in our case, in the use of the -er comparative strategy) and if so, whether it is similar to that discovered in derivational affixes (e.g. Säily 2014).…”

“…To give an example, some nouns in English cannot be pluralised because their semantics does not allow for the addition of an affix meaning 'more than one instance of'. Along the same lines, Gaeta (2007) studies a range of derivational and inherently inflectional affixes in Italian and shows not only that the potential productivity of the affixes forms a cline from derivation to inflection but also that inflectional productivity varies across both affixes and entire inflectional categories. The study also suggests that some of this variation may be due to competing periphrastic forms.…”

45. Rules, patterns and schemata in word-formation

“…The main relevance of Gaeta (2007) for the topic under discussion here, however, concerns the sharp contrast which emerges in quantitative productivity data among the productive verb class of -are verbs, and the other two conjugations (-ere and -ire verbs). Dressler and Thornton (1991) merge the latter into a single essentially unproductive Brought to you by | University of Michigan Authenticated Download Date | 7/3/15 2:39 AM macroclass, a theoretical and descriptive proposal shared also outside the framework of natural morphology (cf., e.g., Vincent 1988: 294;Maiden 1992: 309).…”

“…A different approach to the productivity of inflectional classes is taken by Gaeta (2007), who for the first time applies the quantitative, corpus-based methodology sketched in section 2 systematically to the domain of inflection. Some of his results concern inflection proper, and appear to strongly support the validity of the "variable corpus" method developed in Gaeta and Ricca (2006).…”

“…-erebbe) has an impact on the productivity values (see Gaeta 2007 for its evaluation) but interestingly the different values are all ranked above those of the most productive derivational affixes, another linguistically meaningful result not matched by the other measures.…”