Measuring Productivity

By: Omar Rabea

Productivity is a gradable property of
morphological rules. Thus, for each rule we may
want to ask how productive it is – i.e. we want
to measure the degree of productivity of word-
formation rules.
Acceptability judgements
Speakers tend to be more reluctant
to accept new words than to accept new
sentences, maybe because they
do not encounter new words very often in
ordinary life. Let’s take an example in the next
slide.
Consider the set of adjectives bearded (having a
beard), winged (having wings), pimpled (having
pimples), eyed (having eyes). The last word in
this set, eyed, seems
odd, and speakers may judge it unacceptable.
But does that mean that it
is truly ungrammatical – i.e. not allowed by the
morphological system?
People would judge ‘eyed’ to be odd because not
all creatures have beards, wings and pimples,
but virtually all have eyes, so one would rarely
describe a person or an animal as eyed. Though,
in different context, ‘eyed’ would be plausible,
say in entomology.
 (I) The number of actual words (type frequency).

Productivity The concept of "type frequency" measures the

number of actual words formed following a specific
measurments pattern in a language. It can be easily determined by
examining a relible comprehensive dictionary. For
example, the English suffix "-ment" has a high type
frequency because there are many words like
"investment" and "fulfilment" that follow this
pattern, but it is not productive as it doesn't generate
many new words. On the other hand, the suffix "-
ese" may not have many existing words, but it is
productive because it can be freely used to create
new words that describe a specific language or
jargon, like "journalese."
(II) The number of possible words
Measuring the number of possible words formed by a specific
pattern is challenging, as it requires identifying all pattern
restrictions accurately. Even then, the set of possible words
doesn't necessarily reflect the likelihood of coining new
words. There are unproductive rules without clear limitations,
such as en-/em- prefixation in English, which should work
with container-like nouns but it is not productive; because we
have words like (entomb and embody), but we don’t have
*embox or *encar.
(III) The ratio of actual words to possible words (also called
the degree of exhaustion). Is a challenging concept to measure.
This is because counting all possible words is impractical,
especially when it involves complex words formed
productively. For example, in languages like English or
German, N + N compounds can be created freely without
restrictions, and the compound members themselves may also
be compounds. This results in an almost infinite set of possible
N + N compounds, making the degree of exhaustion for them
low, even though many actual N + N compounds exist, and the
pattern is highly productive.
(IV) The number of neologisms (newly coined words)
observed over a specific period, known as diachronic
productivity, can be assessed with the help of a reliable
historical dictionary like the OED. However, highly
productive patterns may lead to new words being overlooked
by lexicographers. An alternative approach involves analyzing
large text corpora, such as newspapers from recent decades, to
track the development and possibly decline in productivity of
certain patterns, like the use of the suffix -gate in words like
Watergate and Irangate.
(V) The "category-conditioned degree of productivity" (P= V1,m/ Nm)
This measure calculates the ratio of hapax legomena (words occurring
only once in a corpus) with a specific pattern to the total token frequency
of words with that pattern. This measure is based on the idea that
productive morphological rules are likely to produce occasionalisms
(rare words that occur infrequently), which is vital for assessing
productivity. The formula for P is V1,m (number of hapax legomena
with pattern m) divided by Nm (total token frequency of words with
pattern m). It indicates the likelihood that a randomly chosen word with
the relevant pattern will be a rare or occasional word.
(VI) The " hapax-conditioned degree of productivity" (P*= V1,m/ V) This measure
calculates the extent to which a specific morphological pattern contributes to the
overall growth of vocabulary. It relies on the idea that productive rules tend to create
rare, occasional words. In this measure, the number of hapax legomena (words
occurring only once in a corpus) with a particular morphological pattern is divided by
the total number of hapax legomena in the entire corpus, regardless of their patterns.
This method allows the assessment of productivity at a specific moment in time
without the need for a historical dictionary. These measures are most useful when
comparing the relative productivity of patterns that serve similar functions, such as -
ness vs. -ity in English. However, interpreting productivity measures can be
challenging when considering different morphological patterns or when taken in
isolation.
Thanks for your attention
For furher information and inquiries:

You can ask this: It’s NOT RECOMMENDED to ask this: