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Schema Unification and Morphological Productivity: A Diachronic Perspective

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The Construction of Words

Part of the book series: Studies in Morphology ((SUMO,volume 4))

Abstract

Unified schemas which allow for deriving multiply complex word-formation products are a central concept in Construction Morphology (CxM). Based on examples such as un-V-able formations in English, it has been argued in the framework of Construction Morphology that unified schemas (in this case: [un[V-able]A]A) can be conceived of as short cuts in coining new complex words. In this paper, we explore three prospective cases of schema unification and discuss what kind of evidence supports the assumption of unified schemas. The first two case studies are diachronic in nature. Drawing on corpus analyses of data from the Early New High German period (1350–1650) and from the early stages of New High German, we show how the developments of the complex patterns diverge from the developments of their counterparts. To this end, we analyze the frequency and productivity of the (sub-)constructions and assess the semantics of the word-formation products. Firstly, nominalization with the suffix -ung has been shown to undergo a diachronic decrease in morphological productivity. However, unified schemas such as [Be-X-ung]N or [(PREF)-X-ierung]N are shown to be still productive, e.g. Beplankung, Belaberung, Vercomedianisierung (from www.wortwarte.de, a collection of neologisms). In a similar vein, complex derivation of the type [un-V-lich]ADJ ‘un-V-able’ is shown to have remained productive for a longer period of time than its simplex parent schema [V-lich]ADJ. Moreover, many un-V-lich derivatives historically precede their unprefixed counterparts, or lack them altogether (unwiderstehlich ‘irresistible’, but *widerstehlich). Our third case study explores present day German pseudo-participles (bebrillt ‘bespectacled’) using web data. The complex pattern can be shown to diverge stylistically from its parent schemas and also to provide semantically more uniform derivatives. Overall, our results show that the concept of unified schemas can help explain important differences in the development of the individual subpatterns in terms of morphological productivity and in terms of semantic aspects of the word-formation constructions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A reviewer correctly points out that this measure is not without problems. For an in-depth discussion of this issue (including the application of additional measures) see Hartmann (2018).

  2. 2.

    On the divergent development of -lich and -ly in German and English, see Pounder (2001). The early adverbial uses of German -lich are also discussed in detail in Kempf (2016).

  3. 3.

    Note that the last period of the B[onn] corpus and the first period of the M[anchester] corpus coincide. Thus, they were both calculated against the backdrop of the first three periods. Still, the period “1650-1700 M” displays more progressive results, since the corpus contains a higher share of modern genres, i.e. newspapers and scientific texts (see Kempf forthc.).

  4. 4.

    The periods span 50 years each, except for the first two periods, where only coarse-grained dates of attestation were available, e.g. “Middle High German”.

  5. 5.

    The decline of deverbal lich-derivation can be linked, among other things, to the rise of deverbal bar-derivation, cf. Kempf (2016: 189–190) and Flury (1964).

  6. 6.

    Checked in January 2017.

  7. 7.

    “Die Bildungsmöglichkeiten solcher PsPs [=Pseudopartizipien] sind fast unbegrenzt, eine auch nur annähernde Aufstellung solcher Wörter wäre unmöglich”. Van Haeringen (1949: 187) makes the same observation for Dutch pseudo-participles.

  8. 8.

    Using the lemma information available in both the corpus and the n-gram frequency list was not an option as many pseudo-participles are not recognized by taggers and therefore lemmatized as <unknown>. We used the following search pattern: “^be.*(en|t)((er)?e(s|n|m|r)?)”

  9. 9.

    There is one single attestation of the verb bebrillen in the DTA, which dates to 1802. However, it seems unlikely that bebrillt can be regarded as an actual participle, especially given that this one instance is massively outnumbered by the occurrences of the pseudo-participle bebrillt.

  10. 10.

    This is less so with Prf/Prt-X-ung, more so with un-V-lich, and still an open question in the case of pseudo-participles, since the variants with prefixes other than be- still remain to be investigated. Still, the forms are relatively consistent compared, e.g., to suffixes with multiple grapho-phonological variants like ENHG -et/-echt/-ocht/-icht/-igt (cf. Kempf 2016: 74).

  11. 11.

    Record from DECOW; the original website http://forum.scharesoft.de/archive/index.php/t-1085.html is no longer available (2017–01-15).

  12. 12.

    Record from the GerManC corpus, text SERM_P2_NoD_1730_JubelFeste.

  13. 13.

    On paradigmatic relations between constructions, see also Norde & Trousdale (2016).

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Geert Booij and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on a previous version of this paper. Any remaining errors and shortcomings are of course ours.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Deutsches Institut, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz, Germany

    Luise Kempf

  2. Lehrstuhl für deutsche Sprachwissenschaft, Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany

    Stefan Hartmann

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  1. Luise Kempf
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  2. Stefan Hartmann
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Correspondence to Luise Kempf .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Leiden University Center of Linguistics, University of Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Geert Booij

Appendix

Appendix

Table 3 Sample of ung-derivatives arranged by first attestationa
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Table 4 Deverbal passive lich-derivatives arranged by first attestationa
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Kempf, L., Hartmann, S. (2018). Schema Unification and Morphological Productivity: A Diachronic Perspective. In: Booij, G. (eds) The Construction of Words. Studies in Morphology, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74394-3_16

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