Advertisement

Word Formation Rules and the Generative Lexicon: Representing Noun-to-Verb Versus Verb-to-Noun Conversion in French

  • Fiammetta Namer
  • Evelyne Jacquey
Chapter
First Online:
Part of the Text, Speech and Language Technology book series (TLTB, volume 46)

Abstract

This paper focuses on the interface between lexical semantics and word formation. These two linguistic domains give us distinct types of intrinsic information on the semantic content of morphologically constructed words. A common formalism, called Morphological Structure Composition Schema (MS-CS), designed within Generative Lexicon Theory (GL), establishes strong links between these domains. It is illustrated in French by the representation of the Noun-to-Verb (NtoV) versus Verb-to-Noun (VtoN) conversion word formation processes. The relevance of this word formation type for lexical semantics is threefold. It consists in a non-conventional, affix-free, and hence uniquely semantics-driven mechanism. It is a topic of interest to the morphology, syntax, and semantics communities. Finally, it is both a productive and frequent phenomenon, observed in several languages. After an overview of linguistic theories related to this phenomenon, an analysis follows based on a large corpus designed to build a frequency-ranked semantics-based typology of NtoV and VtoN conversion. On the basis of such a classification, a unified GL-inspired model is proposed and illustrated through several examples

Keywords

Word Formation Argument Structure Semantic Constraint Lexical Unit Lexical Semantic 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

References

  1. Adams, V. (1973). An introduction to modern English word-formation. London: Longman Group Limited.Google Scholar
  2. Anscombre, J.-C. (1979). Délocutivité benvenistienne, délocutivité généralisée et performativité. Langue Française, 42, 69–84, Paris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  3. Aronoff, M. (1976). Word formation in generative grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
  4. Aronoff, M., Oehrle, R., Kelley, F., & Stephens, B. W. (Eds.). (1984). Language sound and structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
  5. Aurnague, M., & Plénat, M. (1996). La préfixation en é- et la relation de partie à tout. In D. Genthial et al. (Eds.), Seminaire Lexique. Représentations et outils pour les bases lexicales. Morphologie robuste (pp. 43–52). Grenoble: CLIPS-IMAG, Université de Grenoble.Google Scholar
  6. Aurnague, M., & Plénat, M. (1997). Manifestations morphologiques de la relation d’attachement habituel. In D. Corbin, G. Dal, B. Fradin, B. Habert, F. Kerleroux, M. Plénat, & M. Roché (Eds.), Silexicales 1: Mots possibles, mots existants (pp. 15–24). Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses de l’Université de Lille III.Google Scholar
  7. Benveniste, E. (1966). Problèmes de linguistique générale. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
  8. Bybee, J. (1988). Morphology as lexical organization. In M. Hammond & M. Noonan (Eds.), Theoretical morphology (pp. 119–141). San Diego: Academic.Google Scholar
  9. Corbett, G. (1991). Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  10. Corbin, D. (1987). Morphologie dérivationnelle et structuration du lexique (2 Vols.). Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen (2nd ed.). Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires de Lille.Google Scholar
  11. Corbin, D. (2001). Préfixes et suffixes: du sens aux catégories. Faits de langue, 15, 41–69, Ophrys, Paris.Google Scholar
  12. Corbin, D. (2004). French (Indo-European: Romance). In G. Booij, C. Lehmann, & J. Mugdan (Eds.), Morphology. An international handbook on inflection and word formation (Vol. 1). New York: Walter de Gruyter, art. 121.Google Scholar
  13. Cornulier, B. d. (1976). La notion de dérivation délocutive. Revue de linguistique romane, 40, 116–144, Champion, Paris.Google Scholar
  14. Cruse, D. A. (1986). Lexical semantics. London: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  15. Dal, G. (1997). Du principe d’unicité catégorielle au principe d’unicité sémantique: incidence sur la formalisation du lexique construit morphologiquement. In P. Greenfield, H. Madec, P.-A. Buvet, & S. Cardey (Eds.), Actes de Fractal’97, BULAG numéro spécial (pp. 105–115). Besançon: Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté.Google Scholar
  16. Di Sciullo, A.-M., & Williams, E. (1987). On the definition of word. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
  17. Fradin, B. (2003). Nouvelles approches en morphologie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
  18. Fradin, B., & Kerleroux, F. (2003a). Quelles bases pour les procédés de la morphologie constructionnelle ? In B. Fradin, G. Dal, N. Hathout, F. Kerleroux, M. Plénat, & M. Roché (Eds.), Silexicales 3: Les unités morphologiques (pp. 76–84). Villeneuve d'Ascq: SILEX: CNRS & Université de Lille 3.Google Scholar
  19. Fradin, B., & Kerleroux, F. (2003b). Troubles with lexemes. In G. Booij, J. De Cesaris, A. Ralli, & S. Scalise (Eds.), Topics in morphology. Selected papers from the third mediterranean morphology meeting (pp. 177–196). Barcelona: Institut Universitari de lingüistica aplicada, Univertat Pompeu Fabra.Google Scholar
  20. Hale, K., & Kayser, S. J. (1993). On argument structure and the lexical representation of syntactic relations. In K. Hale & S. J. Kayser (Eds.), The view from building 20: Essays in linguistics in honor of Sylvain Bromberger (pp. 53–110). Cambridge, MA/Cambridge, UK: MIT Press.Google Scholar
  21. Haspelmath, M. (2002). Understanding morphology. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
  22. Jacquey, E., & Namer, F. (2003). Morphosémantique et modélisation: les verbes dénominaux préfixés par é-,in: Actes de la seconde conférence “Représentation du sens linguistique”, Montréal.Google Scholar
  23. Katamba, F. (1993). Morphology. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
  24. Kerleroux, F. (1996a). La coupure invisible: études de syntaxe et de morphologie. Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion.Google Scholar
  25. Kerleroux, F. (1996b). Représentations de l’absence de suffixe dans les noms déverbaux processifs du français. In Travaux linguistiques du CERLICO, n°9 (pp. 141–170). Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.Google Scholar
  26. Kerleroux, F. (1997). De la limitation de l’homonymie entre noms déverbaux convertis et apocopes de noms déverbaux suffixés. In D. Corbin, G. Dal, B. Fradin, B. Habert, F. Kerleroux, M. Plénat, & M. Roché (Eds.), Silexicales 1: Mots possibles, mots existants (pp. 163–172). Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses de l’Université de Lille III.Google Scholar
  27. Kerleroux, F. (1999). Identification d’un procédé morphologique: la conversion. Faits de langues, 14, 89–100. Ophrys, Paris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  28. Kerleroux, F. (2004). Sur quels objets portent les opérations morphologiques de construction ? In Lexique 16 (pp. 85–124). Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion.Google Scholar
  29. Kiparsky, P. (1982). Lexical phonology and morphology. In I.-S. Yang (Ed.), Linguistics in the morning calm (pp. 3–91). Seoul: Hanshin.Google Scholar
  30. Koenig, J.-P. (1999). Lexical relations. Stanford: CSLI publications.Google Scholar
  31. Larcher, P. (2003). La dérivation délocutive: Histoire d’une notion méconnue. Historiographia Linguistica, 30(3), 389–406(8), John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam.MathSciNetCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  32. Lieber, R. (1992). Deconstructing morphology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
  33. Marchand, H. (1969). The categories and types of present-day English word-formation. Munich: C.H. Beck Verlagsbuchhandlung.Google Scholar
  34. Meinschäfer, J. (2003). Remarques sur l’interprétation des déverbaux sans affixe en français. In B. Fradin, G. Dal, F. Kerleroux, N. Hathout, M. Plénat, & M. Roché (Eds.), Silexicales 3: Les unités morphologiques (pp. 118–125). Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses universitaires de Lille.Google Scholar
  35. Mel’cuk, I. (1996). Cours de morphologie générale (Vol. 3). Montréal/Paris: Presses de l’université de Montréal -CNRS.Google Scholar
  36. Mel’cuk, I. (1997). Cours de morphologie générale (Vol. 4). Montréal/Paris: Presses de l’université de Montréal -CNRS.Google Scholar
  37. Namer, F. (2003). Automatiser l’analyse morpho-sémantique non affixale: le système DériF. In Cahiers de Grammaire 28 (pp. 31–48). Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Mirail.Google Scholar
  38. Namer, F., & Jacquey, E. (2003). Lexical semantics and derivational morphology: The case of the popular ‘é-’ prefixation in French. Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Generative Approaches to the Lexicon, Geneva, pp. 115–122.Google Scholar
  39. Plénat, M., & Roché, M. (2004). Prosodic constraints on suffixation in French. In G. Booij, J. De Cesaris, A. Ralli, & S. Scalise (Eds.), Topics in morphology. Selected papers from the third Mediterranean morphology meeting (pp. 285–299). Barcelona: Institut Universitari de lingüistica aplicada, Univertat Pompeu Fabra.Google Scholar
  40. Pustejovsky, J. (1995). The generative lexicon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
  41. Pustejovsky, J. (1996). Lexical shadowing and argument closure, ms. Boston: Brandeis University.Google Scholar
  42. Sanders, G. (1988). Zero derivation and the overt analogue criterion. In M. Hammond & M. Noonan (Eds.), Theoretical morphology: Approaches in modern linguistics (pp. 155–175). San Diego: Academic.Google Scholar
  43. Selkirk, E. (1982). The syntax of words, Linguistic Inquiry Monograph. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
  44. Shieber, S. M. (1986). An introduction to unification-based approaches to grammar (CSLI Lecture Notes Series, Vol. 4). Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Authors and Affiliations

  • Fiammetta Namer
    • 1
  • Evelyne Jacquey
    • 1
  1. 1.UMR 7118 ATILF CNRS & Université de LorraineNancyFrance

Personalised recommendations

Cite chapter

Buy options